Emosanal Attyachar

Well I have not had any love affairs, none serious anyways just crushes and infatuations etc.. you know the works. Hence, I have been (un?)fortunate enough to not have any serious “adventures” on that front.

I have always been more on the side of being careful to the extent being fanatic about it. That’s why; I have never missed a single train or bus because I used to reach way too early for that to happen. Hence, no emotional trauma in running after the train, trying to catch it and some pretty women extending her hand, trying to help me get on board. Several of my friends had that experience on a daily basis, I mean missing the transportation and not women extending their hand part. Women, if it were up to them, would probably throw a 1000 lb weight at them.

For me, and incidentally thousands of others, one of the biggest trauma were the placement seasons for the 2009 batch of MBA class in India (not sure about abroad but I am sure that they couldn’t have been rosy either).

A very good friend of mine wrote in his blog post (Read it here) about how the MBA class of 2009 broke all records. To quote him “Less than 10% changing their jobs within one year, Maximum Salary is 9 LPA, 15% Placements are a given, There are a maximum of 5% beautiful girls in the batch, if any”. Granted this is an exaggeration but could not be truer in its essence.

And nowhere was this fact proven more than in the placement scenarios in 2009. Let alone an Average Joe engineering class. Even at IITs, placements were not complete. Announcements were made for students to either study further or kindly make their own arrangements. At IIMs, as they say where legends of crore rupee packages are made, the college authorities were frantic to get at least one placement per person and were finding even that a daunting task. This; when the 2008 batch had an average of 3 jobs per person. This; when the only reason why people come to IIMs is because they certainly attract higher pay packages (despite of whatever BS people say in their interviews). This; when people with 4-5 years work experience, who unfortunately decided to join a B-school; ended up getting a job with lower profile and lesser package than they were getting before the two years of B-school education.

Now, in this kind of situation, imagine the plight of a student who isn’t getting a job. The fact that nobody around him is getting a job is not much of a consolation to him at that point. The fact that other campuses are failing equally to get jobs for their residents is not too much of a respite to him. And the fact that probably the dumbest of all people seem to be getting job much earlier than the smart ones. Nothing, could be more of an emotional trauma than this bleak picture. Thankfully, not many of us suffered from post traumatic stress disorder. But a lot of us came close to it... really close!

And then there are formalities that you have to do. You have to, still, talk to people who have got placed, smile at your plight, make jokes about it and even force yourself to laugh at this situation. You have to answer the queries of people as to why the job scenario is this bad and the mother of all discussions “Amreeka ka share market”. And then there are endless rounds of Group Discussions and Interviews where you still have to try and give your best, trying to act like this is not you fifth interview of the day and that you are genuinely interested in the job because of the profile and the opportunities it may present and not just because you want the entire exercise to be completed at the earliest.

And no post on B-school placements can be complete without the mention of the ubiquitous, Elite group of students called “The Placement Committee”. I am not going to put a lot of description on that topic as that is going to be a separate post in itself. But those who have had an opportunity to interact with this bunch of rather “interesting” people would know what I am talking about.

What more could be more of an Emotional Attyachar than that, I ask?

Image courtesy: injbs.org, unemploymentality.com