The longest month of my life

The bad part about IIT experience was that I never had to undergo a recruiting process as such. Applied to 3 firms and before I knew I got in one of those. Story ends… over here things were very different. January started on a good note and thankfully I managed to get in to a lot of close-lists. Surprisingly enough, not many people I thought networked well got in the final call but then they had a choice to bid… most of them did. Even I had to bid for 2 of the consulting firms here, but overall I was left with a lot to spare in the end.

With recruiting taking the fulltime focus, classes became increasingly boring and sadly I decided to miss them to gain that extra inch in the interviewing process. I am sure they chose the subjects too accordingly. The operations management was all about primary mathematics and managerial accounting, although an interesting course, was made to feel like to most boring classes to go to, specially on Monday 8 o’clock. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t find the elective on Legal Aspect of Entrepreneurship to be interesting either.

In addition to classes and coming back to an all-important recruiting, I lost nerves too once in a while. While I made it to second round of some very good consulting firms, I was never sure of myself in the second round and I think the lack of self-belief did cost me a great deal in the end. Also, all these trips to Chicago and overnight stays at various hotels made me think about consulting as fulltime career a great deal. The worst was at BCG Chicago, where I simply could not sleep the whole night and made a complete mockery of myself with the partner. So this guy was an Aussie and anyone following Indian cricket knows how much we hate the people from down under. Besides the point, I was asking some stupid questions on Mathematics Olympiad and likes… gosh I knew I am done there. Goodbye consulting! OK, at least for the summers L

What was even more interesting about the whole month was to see was the changing colors and behaviors of the fellow-classmates. A minute before sad and out fellow turned in to a near-celeb with just one phone call. Asking about the internship became a norm and even then people without an offer thought it to be offending at times! Good that I didn’t crack this way and had a nice time overall. Managed to get some good offers and decided on product management at Dell. Also, once I froze my choice there was no fishing for some more bucks for me. However, all said and done, some of feedbacks were really humiliating and I felt like giving back some harsh comments once in a while. Thankfully, I didn’t let these comments bog me … for example “Manish, you are probably the best profile, but we are looking for brand ambassadors for the summers” gosh I could not stop laughing over the poor guy… just cause I am not from a specific color or sex that they want to make ambassadors the fellow is making this up and expecting me to take it good humor I guess!!!
Anyways all said and done, it’s going to be Austin for the summers and I am really looking forward to it now.