Term 5 is over. The final exams are on Monday and Tuesday. The placement starts on next Saturday (Jan 8th). Campus is suffering from placement blues.

I have to prepare both for technical (for companies such as MS, Yahoo, Amazon ) and also for HR (for IT services companies) interviews. Currently I am running out of time. I usually sleep by 12 but now I am sleeping at 2. Still, I have covered only a small portion of what is needed to be covered for the interviews.

In this interview preperation confusion, I am not submitting good EOIs. I am unsatisfied by my EOIs and my only console is that most of the companies don't read EOIs. Shortlists will be coming by next week. Hope I will be shortlisted for interviews for the companies I am aiming for.

The blogs may not be regular till Jan 8th. But I will try to post daily once the Placement starts.

Still, we have not yet settled on scheduling the companies ... This is taking a lot more time than expected ...

And my placement prep is moving at a very slow pace. I am also confused whether to target small companies with high-pay or take a pay-cut to enter into large brands. As I am looking only for IT, my options are limited. May be, I should apply to one or two marketing companies as a back-up.

And campus is getting ready for placements ....Everyone looks serious. There are a lot of discussion going on about what companies to apply and how to prepare for interviews. Everyone looks worried. ... Placement blues ...

Yesterday I met an interesting person - Joseph Sigelman, CEO and co-founder of Office Tiger. I spent nearly an hour with him and his team. He was here for the pre-placement talk and I was in-charge for the talk. He is a Harvard graduate and had a lot of respect for the ISB. He didn't have any powerpoint slides but made the session very interactive and engaging. He offered very senior roles such as head of operations, Acquisition Manager etc. As far as I have seen, people from BPOs are very interesting ...

In Novartis (International)PPT, the HR manager said that they have recruited only from the ISB till now and from this year, they are thinking of going to IIM A,IIMB and XLRI. It seems Novartis is very impressed with the ISB and has decided to hire mostly Indians for worldwide positions.

Today YSR Reddy, CM of AP was here for inaugurating k-hub. K-hub is an initiative by centre of entrepreneurship, where they will fund entrepreneurs of AP. A lot of security measures were there and we were made to wait for half-an-hour for his ten minute speech. Let me not speak politics here :)

Tomorrow will be the last day for the preplacement talks. We have seven PPTs scheduled tomorrow all after 7 PM. I think it is going to be a hectic task to handle these.

Today I organized PPT for Fidelity. Fidelity is here primarily for IT roles and the job and pay were attractive. Finance guys were little disappointed as they didn't have roles in Asset management. I then attended Computer Sciences Corporation PPT. I wanted to apply for this, but the company required minimum of three years of experience ( I have two and half) and is not lenient in this constraint. So I will not be able to apply for this.

Yesterday I was in-charge for Google. For me, Google role was not as attractive as Amazon or Microsoft. I am interested in Product Manager roles while Google is here for Business Service Manager type of role. But still I would be applying for Google. Come on, its Google !!

Today it was a pretty relaxing day ... Had only one class ... Operations Strategy. The class was good and Professor Bassok is rocking ...

Somehow we PLACOM guys have managed to rank and schedule the companies for interviews. We have come up with a first-cut draft and have circulated it to students ... I am hoping for a lot of feedback and the schedule might even change dramatically.

Our ELP ends on 27th but there's a lot of pending work to be done. I have to think on scheduling the ELP activities and Placement prep accordingly so that one is not affecting the other ....

Yesterday I had a chance to chat with a Senior manager from XANSA, a BPO company, after the preplacement talk. Actually after the talk, my whole perspective about BPO changed. I was thinking of BPO as more of a call centre, false identity and American accent type of thing ... He mentioned that they don't take low-end work such as call centres and described the typical work. He was from IIML and said that BPO is challenging as it combines both Operations and People management ( He said that atleast 30 people will be reporting to me if I join as a Manager). Anyway now I have some respect for BPOs and see a good opportunity there.

Today I was with Raja Shanmugam, Director of Business Development from Mindtree. He is a down-to-earth person and said that humility is one of the characters they are looking for when they come for recruitment in Top Bschools. Mindtree is here for overseas positions mostly in US or Singapore. One good aspect of being a placement committee member is this opportunity to interact with key people from industry.

Today I was chatting with an alum from Microsoft. He was saying that the life there was pretty relaxing. I was assuming that Microsoft will be drilling its employees and was surprised to hear that it was otherwise.

I was going through some of the sample questions from MS interview. There are a lot of hardcore OS, datastruture and Algorithm questions. Sad part is that these questions will be thrown only to the guys who have Computer Engineering degree. Other guys will have a non-technical interview it seems.

I am far behind in terms of Interview Prep. I have to brush up project management / SDLC concepts, read books on Domain knowledge and HR questions, browse some websites on OS/Datastrucure basics .... Phew ... And I have only some 20 days left ... In these 20 days, I have to wrap up my ELP, my assignments and give two exams ...

Today we had ISB Leadership Summit. I attended the morning session and skipped the afternoon session.

This night the campus is buzzing with energy, fun and enthusiasm ... Our Alums are back for the Annual ISB Alumni Meet, Solstice ... Tonight we have a party and Tomorrow we have rock show.

Yesterday after the CTS ppt, I had a chance to chat with Aarti, ISB alumnus working in CTS. Apart from interview procedures, she talked about life at CTS. It seems that CTS is a good place to work and it has great respect for MBAs. After the chat, CTS has moved up in my placement priority list.

Today we had Vcustomer CEO in our Tech Entrepreneurship class. He is a very down-to-earth person. He narrated his story of how he started his venture. His preplecement talk was also different. He didn't use any Powerpoint or Video, but just talked about BPO industry and his strategy. If at all I apply to Vcustomer (still not decided), that will be only because of him.

Today I missed Sasken PPT. Fin guys said that ICICI prudential PPT was also good !!

Today's Operation Strategy class was good, atleast for me. I already knew most of the things , but he was emphasising on those concepts and was building further on it. While I was enjoying the class (due to his lively examples and casual approach), Suresh who was sitting next to me kept on complaining that the class was boring. Finally after the class I found out that all the things taught in the class were already known to Suresh, who has worked with Pepsi and other beverage companies for more than ten years. May be, he is jealous that I am learning in one year all that he learned in ten years :)

Fever is spreading in the campus. When I went to see the Doctor, there were more than 15 students lined up. So, I returned to room and just took some medicine. Now I am feeling better and think will be able to attend Satyam and CTS PPT scheduled for today.

Non-IT students may think that I am not giving any update on Finance/Consulting/Marketing companies. I really don't even track about Non-IT companies and think there's a substantial misfit between me and Non-IT jobs :)

I am down with fever again. Same as last time - Body pain, Throat infection, Shivering ...

Somehow I managed to attend the Computer Associates PPT but missed the Amazon PPT. I think both the companies will be paying above average salary!

Today we had an interesting session on Browser wars in Technological Entrepreneurship class. Digital Business Models class on ERP and CRM was also interesting. I should thank my friend Siraj to make me enrol in these classes. Initially, I was so focused on getting Marketing Concenteration that I enrolled in all Marketing classes though they were not that interesting to me (Marketing guys say these courses are awesome, may be I don't have that feel for Marketing). Then I realized after talking with Siraj that Concenteration is not that important when compared to attending courses I like. So, Now I have changed my mind to specialize in Technology !!

The KPMG training was a complete waste of time and money. We paid 5000 Rs for this traning and it was useless. The PPT was very unorganized and I didn't have any take-aways from the session. I have Operations Assignment Tomorrow and Portfolio management assignment on Tuesday. It was with this heavy work-load, I attended the six sigma training. Think about the frustration I will have.

We had ITC infotech PPT yesterday and the HR head who presented the pitch had great respect for ISB. He agreed that ISB students had to be paid a premium than what is paid for students from other schools such as XLRI. But still the pay may not be that attractive with the kind of loan we have. This is the case with most of the IT service companies. They may pay a premium but that may not look attractive. But this respect for ISB will turn into other inatngible benefits such as great work and job role!

Oops! I made a mistake ... It was only 53 students who applied for yahoo and I misspelt it as 153 in my previous blog ... I don't think any company can attract 153 applications from the ISB...

Today I had KPMG six sigma training ... It was not that useful but could be helpful as a bullet point in my resume .... I also had my ELP presentation and that went pretty well ...

Because of the six sigma training, I missed the Verizon PPT and an opportunity to interact with Ramki ...

This blogspot site is irritating! I am typing for the second time and I lost whatever I typed before!!

I had ITC Bplan contest today. we did well in the Presentation but screwed up in the QA due to the lack of research which inturn is due to the lack of time.

Yesterday I applied to yahoo for Product Manager position. Total of 53 students have applied. Yesterday we had presentations from Microsoft and HCL. I attended MSFT but missed HCL. Have to decide whether to apply for HCL. Today we had Mckinsey PPT. They distributed Mckinsey mugs, folders etc and arranged for a high-tea to give better impression than Marakon (Singapore). I didn't attend the PPT but managed to get the Mug :)

I have decided not to participate in any other competition as this requires hell a lot of time! This week I didn't do any interview prep and hope to resume my prep next week.