A Regular 20 something

What do you want out of XLRI ?

2010-07-29T06:33:00.000-07:00

1. Be a 7 pointer.
2. Give my best as a placecommer.
3. Increase my concentration levels.
4. Understand time-management.
5. Know the limits of my mind and body.
6. Leave with long-lasting memories
7. Leave with a good job.

Pursuit of Happiness

2010-07-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

Pursuit of Happiness Thread
Pagalguy.com

I had written this post 3 days before XAT 2010 and it is something I cherish.
I was understanding who I was and the answers were there to be found out.

I am: Happy
I think: Sometimes, a little too-much. Working on that.
I know: that everything will be fine.
I want: to do what i love doing ( right now, I want to do well in XAT )
I have: had arguably, the best year of my life ( 2009 )
I wish: that this year as well, I will find out more about myself
I hate: over-eager, over-enthusiastic colleagues at work
I miss: my home-town ( Ranchi ) and the different sights and sounds associated with it.
I fear: nothing in particular
I feel: that life is simple and staying happy is simpler.
I hear: voices in my head . No, actually, songs by pink floyd most of the time.
I smell: ( I have a dead nose ) , that things are turning out just the way they were supposed to.
I crave: for the day I'll change the lives of the not-so-priviledged and the ensuing satisfaction within me . ( Sounded phoney and hollow to me a year ago, now it doesn't ).
I search: for happiness in the little things in life ( have to thank Prem Bhai for his great post, the great poet Iqbal also said this, so did Chetan Bhagat at Symbi)
I wonder: if this year will be even better.
I regret: my procrastination. Again, working on it .
I love: Pink Floyd, Calvin n Hobbes, Maggi, Pasta, Comedies, watching Rooney play.
I ache: for the people who do not get opportunities like us
I care: for my family, my friends, myself and for God.
I am not: an extrovert.
I believe: that one should find his true-calling ( Step 1 ) and have the conviction to follow it ( Step 2 ).
I dance: when I am delightfully high
I sing: when I am alone.
I cry: when I am alone and sad. ( touch - wood ).
I don’t always: 'be myself'.
I fight: when I see something unfair and can't remember the last fight.
I write: about the world as I see it.
I can usually be found: on Gtalk, FB.
I need: to spread this happiness
I am happy about: who I am ( right now ).

Amazing questions.
Great way to do some soul-searching.

Placements

2010-07-25T10:24:00.001-07:00

Here's a jist of the placement process followed in the top IIMs. There is a placement committee consisting of around 5-10 people who are students of the 2nd year. There is a placement chairperson who is generally a prof. who will take care of external communication and contacts if necessary. The placement committee, which is the student body, is the core body that performs all of the work relating to placements.

It starts off in the first year-end. The body contacts companies that are existing recruiters and keep good relations with them and coordinate for pre-placement talks for their juniors' summers. These pre-placement talks start around August as soon as the junior batch comes in. These are basically for the current first yearites summers. This is the first point of interaction to bring in more companies into campus, where the placement committee tries to form some sort of a relationship with companies that are not yet visiting campus.

Once summers end (in November generally), then the main placement process work starts big time. New companies are again tried. Placement committee has to get through several levels in a new company to generally get that company to campus. Initial contact is made through maybe some alumnus in that company or some contact through an alumnus / professor or even student. Once initial contact is made, then the placement committee keeps persisting on this contact and then tries to get to meet the HR, puts in a pitch for that company to come to campus. And if it succeeds, then you have one more company for the finals!!!

While this is happening, lateral placements for those with more than 20-22 months of work-experience takes place around January. Before this, the companies that are coming for laterals come and give their PPTs (pre-placement talks). Laterals process is a process that generally takes place over the weekends. All those who satisfy the eligibility criteria (more than specified work ex) can sit for the laterals process. Each campus has a certain restriction on number of job offers in laterals. That generally varies based on the business environment. The process generally consists of a GD/interview/many rounds of interviews. There could be negotiations in salary figures based on work-experience. Once the candidate accepts the offer, he can hold this company in abeyance and still sit for some other company during the final placements. It is not that he needs to immediately sign up with the company.

After lateral placements are over / while they are going on (laterals since is spread out in weekends goes on during December/January/February), companies that are going to come for the final placements in March start giving their PPTs. Students choose to attend PPTs of their interest to get to know about the companies. In addition resume collection for these companies also start. A few companies have their standard resume formats which candidates need to fill in while a few other companies take the standard institute format resumes (which are generally 1-page resumes). Placement committee coordinates along with the placement office (which is an institute level body that may be staffed with a couple of external people to help out in the logistics of sending hard copies of resumes / coordinating other postal arrangements / visits by companies / stay of company people etc. etc.) and then send these resumes to the companies.

The dates for the placements for the top 3 IIMs are decided in consultation with each other. Once these dates are decided, they are communicated to the companies. The entire placement process lasts for typically 4-5 days and each these days are divided into slots / days (nomenclatures differ for different campuses). Slot 0 is generally when the top paying international banks / consultancies come (since these are supposed to be the most vied for jobs). Day/Slot 1 is when almost all banks and the top FMCG companies turn up (HLL/PnG). Day / Slot 2 is when all marketing companies and other banks turn up. Day/ Slot 3 is when almost all the system companies turn up. Day/Slot 4 (if anyone is left) is when all other sector companies turn up. This is the general trend but there are obviously exceptions to the rule.

Close to the final placement dates, companies shortlist people for the next round of selection process which again may consists of GD / written tests / interviews etc. Generally, banks have an aptitude test (Written), before the GD/interview round while marketing / systems companies go in for GDs and interviews directly. These lists are sent to the placement committee which in turn informs all the students about the shortlists. Once these shortlists are known (not all shortlists come in advance, there are quite a few that come just before the day of placements or even a few come during placements!), students start preparing for the companies. Preparation is obviously a continuous process. Those who are serious even start preparing as early as December for placements that generally take place in March.

The placement process - As such this 4 day adventure is really what I have said it is - an adventure. The entire placement process and how it is managed in those 4 days (scheduling of students, coordination amongst students etc. etc. is a separate 5 page essay by itself and varies at the process level according to campus and is too detailed and is not worth mentioning here). I guess it just suffices to say that after lots of pressure and tension and heartbreaks and what-not, students most often land up with a job of their choice. Since most of the salaries are what have already been displayed beforehand in PPTs, there is not too much of negotiation at this stage / process. And also there is a tension to get a job and come out of the process as soon as possible! And once the student gets the job, he comes to the placement committee control room and signs out of the placement process. This 4 day process - not only involves the placement committee but almost all of the students in the first year (the first year students are the ones who conduct the placements since the second year students are themselves involved in the process). Each team (there are lots of teams like the control room team, the tracking team, the hospitality team, the reception team, the infrastructure team etc. etc.) is staffed adequately with first year folks. And god-willing, the entire placement process comes to an end by the time Slot/Day 3 or 4 finishes!

Hope this is detailed enough to keep you engaged for 10 minutes!!!

Cheers!!!

1st term

2010-07-10T15:00:00.000-07:00

28 days into the first term and I am still happy.
Attended an amazing seminar on - "One Becoming a Social Entrepreneur". Missed a couple of classes, but it was worth it. Anshu Gupta ,Founder/Director, GOONJ and 4 other social entrepreneurs were the chief guests and the talk by Anshu gave me goosebumps. It just felt as if all my questions were answered. Goonj is an amazing organization and Anshu's thoughts were different, yet inspiring.
As far as the workload of acads is concerned, I am at peace here. I don't take a lot of pressure and have had just 2 quizzes so far. The prof who teaches us Accounting is God-Like. I am sure that I'll learn accounting in the next 2 months. We have 3 quizzes lines up in the next 3 days, including the all important and most dreaded QT or the Quantitative Techniques quiz. Seniors have already scared the shit out of us. Prof Gango is just too smart for us. I'll have to buck up and study hard, if I have to get 30/30 in the 1st QT quiz.
The football world cup is going on and to my delight Holland have reached the final. I was watching the semi-finals in the common TV room and the seniors were telling me that I should enjoy whatever time I have in my hands as I'll not get any more time to waste in 2 weeks time.
I am also playing TT whenever I get the time.
The subject that I have the most interesting is OB -1 or Organizational Behaviour -1. One of the profs asked us to write down what we want from XLRI in the next 2 years. I'll do that right away and maybe, post it on my next blog post. I have stood for the Placement Committee or Placecomm as they call it. 17 of us are still left in the process, out of which 9 will make the cut. It will require a lot of sacrifice, but as I like doing the job, I went for it.
The more days pass by, I realize I made the right choice by choosing XLRI over IIM K. I feel comfortable here. The culture is really amazing. Its 3:41 in the morning on a Sunday and I have to study for the next 4 hours, (QT :P). We have had our Wet nights, Punch night, etc.
Time to study in my half inebriated state.

1st Term

2010-07-04T05:59:00.001-07:00

The 1st term has begum and it is in full swing. We had our first quiz, a surprise quiz, yesterday. Ironically, it was ManaC (Management Accounting). The prof is excellent and I am pretty sure that by the end of this term, I would have learned accounting.
The elections for the committees have started as well. I have applied for Placecomm.
Will update more later..

The First Week @ XLRI

2010-06-19T00:09:00.000-07:00

Sitting in my room 215 in Father Enright's Mens Residence at XLRI, I can now say that the feeling of being an XLer has sunk in. I have got a room overlooking the JLT. JLT or 'Just Like That' is a green lawn with a few steps in the middle separating the hostels from the academic centre. It is small yet beautiful campus and I have found a strange liking to the place. I came here exactly 6 days ago and time has just flown by. Prep classes, GBMs (General Body Meetings), pre-reads have hardly given me any time to waste. I am pretty sure that at the end of two years, I'll have found the limits of my mind and body.

The profs and the peers are really intelligent. IITians, guys from SRCC, Xaviers are really smart. XLRI has been designed in a unique way. Coming from an engineering campus, spread over 500 acres, the 30 acre XL campus is a relief. There are 4 hostels - 2 for boys and 2 for the girls.
The rooms, generally have double occupancy in the first year. There are 4 guys named Varun in my batch. Even, my roomie's name is Varun. All-in-all, a nice chap. The learning centre is the place where all the classes take place. It is a just a stone's throw from the hostel. We have been having GBMs (General Body meetings) till 3-4 am every morning. It is an excellent
initiative by our seniors to help us adjust to this fast-paced life. They give us intros of major subjects and teach us fundamentals.

We have all been warned about Managerial Accounting or Manac and Quantitative Techniques. These are the two subjects that will test us the most in the first term.

Got to run now. Meeting my mentor/buddy for the assignments.
A long and exciting day awaits.

Starting off at XLRI

2010-06-12T01:24:00.000-07:00

New faces, a new city, a new life and by God,
'The child-like wonder is back'.

Some 20 hrs to go before I start off for XLRI Jamshedpur (on a 3 hr bus journey from Ranchi).
I am as excited as Morgan Freeman was in Shawshank Redemption, when he finally goes to meet his old friend in Mexico. Well, the feeling is the same. I can barely sit still now.

Lifts

2010-01-27T04:24:00.000-08:00

A lovely incident... ( wow.. never thought I'd use the word lovely :P ) . After lunch, I was going back to my cubicle on the 5th floor, when the lift lost power. This was not your run-of-the-mill power loss. This was a long one ( 3 mins :P ). The lift just stopped and we were left to stare at the darkness, with only one thought in our minds - God!! What did we do to you ? In these 3 minutes, I was taken back in time, when I wondered about the magic of lifts. Growing up in a small town, I remembered the times when there were no buildings with lifts in our colony. I was totally in awe of the people who lived in buildings with lifts :) . I remembered an incident. I must have been 11-12 at the time and I had this fascination of getting on a lift. Well, thankfully, I had to go to Nivaranpur with a few friends. Now, this is a locality situated beside the Over-Bridge. There was one building there, 'Himalayan' which had a lift. I remember my eyes lit up when I saw it. All of us decided to take it a shot and get on the lift. But, there was one problem. The gate-keeper was aware of young kids making excuses to get on the lift. So, he duly asked the name of the person we wanted to meet. We need not know anyone in that building. Then, in a moment of divine intervention, we remembered that a teacher lived in this building. After shouting out his name, the gatekeeper informed us of his flat number. He lived on the 4th floor. That meant, we had to use the LIFT.

I still remember those 15 seconds spent in that tiny lift. It was divine, legendary and I was happy. I still get goosebumps thinking about it.

Now, 10 odd years later, lifts are so common that we are never about getting on them.
They have become as-they-say-'common-place'. Maybe, we take things for granted. Maybe, we lack that child-like enthusiasm and wonder. But, I have to thank that power failure for taking me back to my childhood, when happiness was as simple as getting on a lift and lasted all of 15 seconds. I guess that's all one needs to be happy - finding joy in the little things in life.

Last day @Globalization And Public Sector

2009-10-14T22:36:00.001-07:00

My 'adieu' mail was sent this morning. The mail I wrote is as follows :

"
Hi,

My stint as a member of the EBS Financials Globalization Team comes to an end today and its time to bid adieu.
I have learnt a lot here (actually, 'lot' is an understatement) and I hope to keep doing that for a long time to come.
16 months, 360 odd bugs and 2 (minor) ERs later, I can firmly say that I am leaving
with greater confidence and knowledge, and a vastly improved understanding of Oracle Applications,
of the product life-cycle and the software industry, in general.

Simultaneously, I have been bestowed with a wider belly, less hair on my head, a slightly reduced sense of humour
and most importantly, some new friendships, which I believe, will stand the test of time.
Coming straight out of college, I felt that this journey was very engaging and fascinating.
I have worked with some really nice and dedicated folks.
I would like to thank all of you for your help, guidance and support.

I will be working in the Fusion Financials Receivables team, and sincerely hope
that someday our paths cross. Wish you all the very best for the future. And do stay in touch.

Thanks and Regards ( I mean it here :) ),
....
"

A totally feel good mail :)