Ramya gets a job, and other news

Well, this post has been a long time coming but I have been placed, about two weeks ago. I’m joining Price Waterhouse Coopers GRID division. I’ve asked to be placed in their Mumbai office with Hyderabad as my second preference. And I’m mighty kicked at being called a ‘consultant’.

The run-up to placements had been a crazy time for me. What I did before placements is literally a manual of what one should NOT do. I was probably the last person in my batch to submit my master resume to the Placement Committee. And I did it only because finally, a submission had come up! And working on my resume was a euphemism – I spent a few hours on it and showed it 2 classmates and then made some of the changes that they recommended - that was it!!

It was crazy because most of my classmates had been working on their resumes since late December, early January, showing it to seniors, alumni mentors etc and constantly working on it to improve it. And here I was finishing off a single page resume in a few hours. In fact, two of my friends kept exhorting me to keep working on my resume and atleast that induced me to make changes as I went along with the submissions.

To make things worse for myself, I did not study at all. My entire ‘placement preparation’ consisted of about an hour running through some personal questions, another hour reading some sector reports and another hour going through a presentation on marketing essentials. This was all that I could bring myself to do. This while everyone around me was studying every single day, completely giving up on their social life!! In fact, I had quite a few friends telling me I should take placements more seriously.

Now I’m not proud of my attitude before placements at all. At the same time, I just could not bring myself to take it as seriously as the others were doing. It was weird because I myself had serious doubts about whether it made sense for me to take things so easy when everyone around me was working so hard. Despite these doubts, despite my usual habit of conforming, I just could not bring myself to prepare. Funnily enough, the doubt was not whether I would get placed – the doubt was on whether my attitude was acceptable – was I going overboard while being the rebel?

I felt a raging frustration at the rest of the batch. It was only placements, damn it!! Sure it was important and I do understand that your first job plays a large role in shaping your future career. I appreciate the importance of getting a good first job so that you can have the career you always wanted. But the kind of obsession we show totally shocks me. Sure, give placements the importance and the respect they deserve but then, realise that where you get placed does not determine the rest of your life.

Is it because I am lacking in ambition? I wasn’t sure about what kind of a job I wanted. I knew I wanted a job which involved interacting with people, minimum time spent in front of excel sheets, and certainly not routine work. I would like to be able to different things everyday. And yeah, I wanted to get about 40-45k in hand, after paying my taxes. That was all I wanted from my job – and any job which was going to fulfill these requirements was going to make me supremely happy.

Now I don’t know if I was aiming too low with that but I knew that was what would kepe me happy and that’s all I cared about. Apart from which, I knew I was going to work only in India. Atleast this helped me to be very selective when applying to companies. I did not apply to any Day 0 companies because I wasn’t interested in the I-banks, and the Day 0 consults idea of work- life balance didn’t match with mine.

I applied to all of 8 companies in Slot 1 – I concentrated on companies which offered consult – general management roles. So I was looking at TAS, Accenture, PWC kind of stuff. Apart from this, I applied to one retail bank – HSBC – more for personal reasons that professional. I stayed away from everything else. In Slot 2, I applied to about 10 marketing companies – here I went by rather base ideas. For example, I did not apply to Castrol coz I did not like the idea of marketing engine oil. I’m meant for the Pepsi’s and Cadbury’s of this world!

I then applied randomly to a few Slot 3 companies – about 3 of them which I found interesting. I was most keen on consult – general management type of companies, marketing companies being my 2nd preference level. So I applied to about 20 companies for placements – I was reasonably confident I would get one of my top 5 preferences and even if I didn’t I was going to be equally happy with any of the other companies I had applied to so placements was quite peaceful for me and the only thing about the whole process that caused me grief was the footwear.