My Day at the Races
Well, so I finally got a job and this time around I dint have to wait till the last day. Mine got over in day 0.5 (for those who don’t know the IIM system this is supposed to be decent ;)). With not many interviews to go through, I made it to the other side unscathed :).
Before I get into the post placement bliss/afterglow let me take you through the process. So, the deal is we have the whole thing happening over a period of 5 days where every last one of us HAS to get placed. People are made to wait from 6 AM to 2 AM every day. We have companies coming from morning till night. They come with their shortlists and then we have the GDs and interviews. This goes on and on. It’s absolute mayhem.
I got out on the 2nd day so it was pretty good otherwise it would have been a sobfest. Seriously! I mean think about it, you have people getting jobs left, right and center and there you are going from one interview to another. Talk about peer pressure.
My trials and tribulations started on the 1st day itself with two shortlists to very nice companies indeed. I was so happy, I mean I wanted to do marketing (through the process of elimination again). Well, it dint work out so good for me with two seemingly nice fish markets later, I was chucked out royally.
The next day started off with two shortlists, both consulting. Now, up until this point of time I was gung-ho about the whole me-getting-into-marketing and me-becoming-a-brand-manager dream. As soon as this list was out I was all in for consulting. I always wanted to be one, somewhere down the line I was just attracted by all the glamour and glitz of the ad world :D.
With a very fast update from Disha (our in-house career counseling club), I found out that these interviews are quite different and are mostly case based. I was so scared because you see, numbers and I have drifted apart after CAT. But with some good old confidence building exercises such as IIT/IIM/Girl fundae session I was ready or as ready as I ever will be. Also listening to Maybe this time over and over did help me.
After making me wait for what felt like 3 days, they finally call me. As soon as I enter the room, all the gyan that I took from KS went out of the window. The problem with me is I ramble on if I am nervous. But, the interviewer was a lady and I guess she took pity on me and was quite friendly. All in all it was more like a chat and we ended up talking for an hour about everything under the sun (read CV). I was quite happy after this round, if I say so myself.
I went back to Hades or the Waiting rooms as we dearly call them, fingers crossed. I did get my next call in like 15 minutes and at that point all I could say was praise the lord :D. This round is supposed to be the clincher. The case based round. This time, it was a guy; he was pretty cool, started off with my favorite question on earth: what are your hobbies? I was so happy I could have danced at that point.
So, I talked and talked about my obsession with movies, we discussed directors, Indian Cinema and consulting in movies. I was just thinking that this is the perfect interview ever when he pulled out a case and said “enough with the niceties lets get back to business”. It was like a dousing me with cold water, back to real life where people dint care about my movies :(. He gave me a fairly simple case which I did solve after a lot of fumbling with numbers (I forgot how to do simple addition!).
I was pretty sure that they were not going to call me back; I mean who would want an idiot with sub-par math skills. I was on my way to another interview, this one was also a consulting (I don’t know what the deal was, I was a pariah for all the marketing companies, but the consults wanted me :D). I was about to go in when the liaison stops me and goes “You have to go back for a third round”. I had to seriously pinch myself, I couldn’t stop grinning ( I mean after my calculation disaster they still liked me :))
I was all but dragged back for another round, at which point I was just floating on a high. I went in grinning like an idiot; the interviewer was a partner (which meant he was so high up on the food chain that I shouldn’t even think about bullshitting). He started talking about hyd and then he asked me the “do you like travelling?”I was like Hell Yeah :D (with some major dancing in my head at this point). I basically talked about my whole Eurotrip, my love for everything French and Barca. This was the best interview I had, hands down.
After this the @#$@#$ made me wait for like 5 hours during which I had to face four more interviews ( as long as we are not offered a job, we are alive in the placement process, ergo we should attend all/any interviews till the offer is final). It was the worst 5 hours of my life. I was on the verge of breakdown. Self doubt is not your best friend at this point, but you can’t shoo it away.
They did finally tell me at around 10 in the night and then took us all to dinner which basically was to scare the shit of the new joinees. They talked about working till 1 in the night and travelling 3 weeks a month. Oh goody! Can’t wait to start!!
Almost forgot, me going to Bombay! P and K also got the same location so, yay us!
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