Pre Placement Talk - Games People Play ! !

Well... so today, after few days of attending some back to back back-breaking ppt's from some of the so called best in class organizations.. I have learnt a few things which previously were never important for me…

So here I am today, sitting in front of this computer sharing some of the classic jargons used by HR's of the companies during the pre placement talks. These are some of the most commonly used things in a ppt.

The words in bold somehow seem to have some deeper meaning...

Well... here goes the first one…

1. "End to End" is the in-thing now... 99% of companies give some form of end to end solutions as against their competitors.Sill wondering how thats possible!!

2. Anyways.. moving on to the next point.....something that you will actually hate to hear even one more time will be the great "value" that the company generates for the customer.

3.
Scenario : A company starts a ppt and it spends first 30 minutes explaining what the well known group (of which the company is the part) does, its billions of dollars of turnover and all the businesses its into.

Interpretation: Take it for granted that the company forms a useless part of the group and at best does some stupid backend job which no one else wants to do.

4. There will be some companies that will focus on something called "cross functional experience" that they give to their new hires. After boasting it so proudly, the next slide for their training programs will show that they will take you through 6 departments in 3 months and that will add some cosmic "value" to you!!!

5. The companies that shamelessly offer the least packages will be the ones that feel most proud in disclosing their package.To add to it, they will even start looking you in your face as if that miserable package would have made your face glow like a moon and given you a reason to continue living on this beautiful planet!

6. The package that the company will offer you will "depend". It will always depend upon factors that the HR doesnot think that you are capable enough or eligible to understand.

(This is what her body language/expressions/whatever will tell u)

7. If you are persistent in knowing what that "depends" means...

Then well.. it depends upon "what you bring to the table"

By the way.. where that table is .. or what i am supposed to "bring to that table" is still remains a well kept secret.

8. Your package will also depend upon "relevant" experience. Somehow no experience will seem relevant and after a few ppt's ... you will end up feeling like the most irrelevant person around !!

9. Opportunities that the companies will give you will always be based on something called "need".. believe me... for 95 percent of people there will be no such "need" when they need it.

10. If something depends upon "how you perform in the organization".. forget it .. its just a bait!!

11. When ever HR says "There have been cases...when so and so happened" in reply to your question for some opportunities.. ..you should actually interpret it as...

"as a policy .. this particular thing doesnot happen... atleast i have never seen such a stupid thing happening in the past 3 yrs i have been with the company...... but still 1-2 odd people out of our 50,000+ workforce ... i swear i dont know how ...but somehow managed it"

I guess you are a bit more clear about your chances now!!! :)


12. Most low paying companies will be in the middle of their compensation review.. which they guarentee "might" most probably result in better packages!

13. There will always be a set of companies.. who ... before the final moment of truth (read salary disclosure) will suddenly once again start talking about how people centric their organization is, its values and the growth it offers etc etc

These are typically the companies with good brandnames but offering peanuts in their salaries...

and someone has very aptly put it....

"If you throw peanuts.. you will get monkeys only"

14. And last of all .....if u are anyways proud to have worked for some seemingly esteemd IT organization like an Infosys or an IBM ... then better have a strong heart because some companies that you will desperately want to get into will look down upon you & shoooo you away saying ...

"We dont want people with BPO experience......" Huuuhhh

to be true...this one actually breaks my heart... :(

But all said and done... they have every right to treat you like this coz they all seem to have one common philosoply now a days....

"We dont offer jobs.. we offer careers...!!!! "

Is MBA worth it??.. my take

Day before yesterday it was CAT 2006. This year 1.91 Lac students took CAT with some dreams in their eyes. I also probably had the same dreams when I sat for cat 2 yrs back. But the question that comes to my mind is that is all this trouble worth it???

Most people take CAT coz they believe that doing MBA from a top notch b-school in the country will make them a star.

It wouldn't.

I believe that Indian MBA system isn't worth it for the two very simple reasons

1. 99.9 % of people graduating from top 5 or top 10 b schools don't even have the guts or the intentions to start any sort of business.
2. MBA doesn't make you rich!!

All the Indian b schools are churning out are brilliant people who can at best form the service class and help someone else's business.

Believe me.. Most of these people will form an insignificant part of the corporate structure of the top organizations they will work with.

And based on my analysis of the scenario.. The present booming scenario.. I can very well conclude that most of the jobs that are available today don't even need an MBA degree. Any person with a general aptitude for the job & pure common sense (which I believe most people have)can do it. Still most companies are caught up in the fever to recruit 'mba's' from top schools and pay them lavishly (atleast that's what the industry thinks).

So it logically takes me to my next point.. Are we mba's rich??.

I sincerely doubt this one. All we get is a decent salary which can ensure a decent standard of living. But it stops here. At this point you have to choose between a lavish living style (a lot many people believe that they need it coz they have worked for 20-25 years to be here) and your other needs which could be a house/car etc etc.

I know a lof of my engineering peers who are earning 10 lacs+. They haven't done anything great. They haven't done an MBA, not even from correspondence. They were just smart people.

But then most of the people who make it to top 5 b-schools are also smart, else the competition wouldn't have let them be there.

I know there are some lucky ones that get those ibanking profiles and other international placements. I-banking I believe genuinely pays but about other foreign placements.. I seriously doubt. All they offer is a similar living standard in some other country. And the media is quick to convert dollars to rupees and fancy the salaries that these people get.


One thing I am really sure now is that mba's aren't paid well. We ofcourse can afford air deccan economy tickets but we still dream of business class. We still fancy jobs which will entitle us to fly business class, ofcourse on company expense. But that too seems a distant dream atleast till 5 yrs from the time you pass out.

So where is the MBA dream...

I often meet business men who somehow graduated (BA's etc from unknown colleges) and pay much more income tax than what a MBA gets as ctc 3 yrs into his job. I amn't talking of exceptions here... these are just small time business men...

So where are we mba's????

Moments of Enlightenment

Well .. i heard someone say that 'Somethings never change'.

Do i intend to differ??

Ofcourse not!!

For what can be a better example of things not changing than my own self.

The placement season is on and the very important question, which i have been avoiding proudly for so many years is coming back to me... "Where do i want to go in life???"

But this time it seems that i have to answer that.

What??? No escape???

But do i have the answer??

No...not even now...

.. as i have said.. some things never change.

so what do i do now????... i don't know...

...probably i should start looking for an answer.

But where is the answer?

Some say look inside yourself and you will find an answer...

Believe me.. i looked...looked intently.. but thr's nothing like an answer there..

So..i need something else... but dont have too much time..

So i start asking people... i bug whosoever i feel might be having the slightest idea of whats goin on.. whats good and whats bad... infact i am doing a bit of that for quite some months now...

but all that i get from there is a mood swing from one profile to another... but probably thats a part of the game... as finally i might get settled on something

(atleast i hope so)...

Even seniors(alums) have started coming down to campus to give us the much needed gyan abt the whole episode and ofcourse to glamourize their own specific profiles...

It looks that finally i am beginning to decide... but i havent yet decided what i want to do... all that i am doing is taking an easy route and deciding all that i dont want to do...

Am i headed in the right direction???

May be...

May be not...

...Perhaps thats the best i can do...

And in all these moments of do's and don't do's .. i feel a lots of things should have been done at a much earlier stage.. but exactly which ones... that's again still a question.

So all that i can say i have today is some momemts of enlightenment... but if you think that these things will change the way i am.... come on.. dont u still know...

..."Some things never change!!"