Diwali Update - or Halfway Hell

I’m cur­rently sit­ting in the library typ­ing this, relieved that most of my mid term exam­i­na­tions are over. I have taken the paper in Macro­eco­nom­ics and Oper­a­tions Research the two “main” papers in this term – and I can rest easy for “Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Sys­tems” which we take tomor­row. All we have to do is solve a case about how a par­tic­u­lar organ­i­sa­tion should incor­po­rate tech­nol­ogy into its oper­a­tions. That should be sim­ple enough, no? Well – tomor­row shall tell.

Any­way, this might be a long post as I have a lot to talk about. Once the midterms tomor­row are done, I shall be done with 3 of the six exams I take for this year. So that shall mean that I’ve done effec­tively half of year one. That’s pretty neat, con­sid­er­ing that it’s cer­tainly not felt like that long. I’m chug­ging along nicely aca­d­e­m­i­cally too – and what is reas­sur­ing is the fact that I still have the appetite for a good intense men­tal work­out before an exam. It’ needed, and it’s some­thing which I had totally not done dur­ing the four years of engi­neer­ing. There, so that cov­ers the aca­d­e­mics. In case you’re really inter­ested in the sub­jects that we did in this half-​​term here they are : Organ­i­sa­tional Struc­ture and Design, Mar­ket­ing Research, Oper­a­tions Research, Macro­eco­nom­ics and IT in Man­age­ment. Maybe I’ll talk more about a few of these courses in forth­com­ing posts.

It’s ironic that I leave the com­men­tary on the impend­ing place­ments for the third para­graph. It’s cer­tainly one thing which has been loom­ing large on cam­pus, and it’s some­thing which is star­ing every first year straight in the eye, like it or not. For those who came in late this is what happens.

The Sum­mers Process
Sum­mer place­ments are place­ments for Sum­mer intern­ships that first year stu­dents are expected to com­plete as a part of their course. This intern­ship will take place over April to June. Why is it such a big deal? Basi­cally the top firms on cam­pus, espe­cially to do with con­sult­ing and bank­ing use the intern­ship route for final place­ments. This is espe­cially true for invest­ment banks which hire exclu­sively through this route. So if you land your­self a sum­mer at one of these firms, and impress suf­fi­ciently (or as some say, don’t screw up) then it’s quite likely that you’ll get a final offer. This also means that you don’t have to worry too much about get­ting high grades for final place­ments in your sec­ond year, mak­ing life on cam­pus much easier. 

How does it work
Prior to place­ment week, firms come up with short­lists of stu­dents they would like to inter­view on the actual day. Mak­ing this short­list with your CV speak­ing for you is the first step. Then, there is the actual place­ment week. Firms are ordered in order of pri­or­ity and the top firms will come and hire on the first day, the next in row on the next day and so on. The firms which get cho­sen to recruit on the first day are called “Slot Zero” firms, the day going under the appel­la­tion of “Day Zero”. Obvi­ously banks and con­sult­ing firms dom­i­nate this list, and I’m guess­ing its quite tough for peo­ple want­ing to work for less “glam­orous” pro­fes­sions to ignore the lure of Slot Zero firms. There are a lot of things wrong about how the process works from a philosph­i­cal point of view, but ground real­i­ties dic­tate the process – and the truth is most peo­ple would pre­fer these firms above any others.

I have heard a lot about Day Zero pres­sures when you are sup­posed to “crack” the inter­view. I have also heard a lot about the “magic” sched­ul­ing soft­ware which takes care of the firms pref­er­ences of stu­dents and vice versa and ensures that the right stu­dents inter­view at the right time. The main aim is to get stu­dents “out of the process” as quickly as pos­si­ble (i.e. get them a job that they like) so that other peo­ple can try out ear­lier. I have very vague ideas about how this works, and it some­thing that I shall def­i­nitely write about once the day has passed.

The Prep
Stu­dents are expected to pre­pare for the Sum­mers process quite vig­or­ously. There is a huge sup­port sys­tem with senior stu­dents men­tor­ing the first years on the kind of firms that they inter­viewed with, their expe­ri­ences, tips and tricks etc. Senior stu­dents con­duct mock inter­views, give advice and con­duct classes to help the juniors with the­ory. For stu­dents gun­ning for a job with on the finance firms the bible is the “Options, Futures and Deriv­a­tives” book by John.C.Hull and “Cor­po­rate Finance” by Brealy-​​Myers. There is also a huge empha­sis placed on “per­son­als”; basi­cally per­sonal ques­tions about the inter­vie­wee, what he wants to do in life, and other such generic ques­tions. They tell us that this makes all the difference.

What’s Hap­pen­ing Now
This year IIM Cal­cutta goes for sum­mer place­ments on Novem­ber 9^th. The same(or sim­i­lar) firms will then go to IIMA and IIMB imme­di­ately after. Cur­rently as peo­ple get done with their midterms focus will shift to prepar­ing for inter­views, know­ing more about the firms you have received short­lists for etc. Life shall resume to nor­mal only after Novem­ber 9^th.

*PS: The objec­tive of this arti­cle is meant to be mainly infor­ma­tive. I want to dis­pel a few myths about what exactly hap­pens on cam­pus dur­ing such times. I’ve taken care to avoid insert­ing my per­sonal opin­ions even though I might have failed. I apol­o­gize in advance.