New aspect of my MBA life

OK, first of all I know I am blogging after what seems to me like a century; it is all thanks to the internship cell of my college I am a part of. Now that is a lie, not the fact that I am a part of the internship placement cell but the fact that it is taking up ALL of my time. Well it is taking up all of my afternoons and evenings for sure and I have been too lazy to blog at night. But yes, today I have found the time and the subject (most importantly) to write.

Now let me elaborate on what is this placement cell; it is a seven member team, each of who are losing their minds to place the remaining 44 in our batch. This is for the summer internship that is a part of our course. It is supposed to be a 6 weeks thing where certain lucky organizations are about to get 6 weeks for free labour. And we are the ones responsible to search for these organizations.

Well initially I was extremely excited to be a part of the team. Very enthusiastically I had given the interview and was extremely thrilled to be selected. Little did I know what was in store for me. The first month went by smoothly as we were all waiting for the company database to come to us and did nothing, until a bomb fell upon us informing us that the database would not be forwarded from the Pune to the Bangalore campus and that we had to generate our own database. With two months to go and 44 people to place, it was time to fasten our seat belts.

Now started a parallel BPO equivalent job where the telephone was our best friend and google and afaqs, our soul mates. Since then all we have been doing is calling up every tom, dick and harry possible just to reserve one internship. Now this, very frankly is an extremely interesting exercise though frustrating as well. You get to talk to all kinds of different people, from the ones who say they are not looking for interns to the ones who say "Sorry, not interested" (as if we were calling them for setting up a new caller tune). Not to forget ultimate respondents who, after about 10 minutes of asking all kinds of questions and finding out information finally ask “What do you mean by interns?” (OMG seriously, are you kidding me) In such cases you have just no other option than to just hang up and curse under your breath. While there are few others who before even finding out what the call is about, say in an extremely imperious tonality, “We do not pay interns” (Wow you really are an inseparable part of the industry, aren’t you) And because we on this side of the receiver are the ones who are desperate for placements have to say, “Yes Sir, that is no problem at all”

The ones though, are the ones who think they belong to the royal family of Queen Elizabeth and that it is too down market for them to come on the phone to talk to unimportant people. Believe you me, I have come across such people as well who hop from one meeting to another every 30 seconds and finally when the same excuse becomes too trite, the assistant would reply, “She just left the office” (yea right, mein toh kab se jhakk maar rahi hoon yahan par) and then you swear some more to ease the frustration and dial the next number in your long list of prospective target organizations.

Finally it is only when you lose all hope as all the companies from A-Z in afaqs have been contacted all including phone been banged on your face to extreme sweet rejections, also the poor telephone requires some maintenance service is it also has borne the brunt of some of your frustration, that from some where you find some ray of hope. Suddenly life seems good again as in a jiffy you get a bunch of people placed and I am saying this with no afterthought, the feeling is truly amazing, it feels awesome to hear the immeasurable happiness in the voice of your friend or colleague when you tell him/her they have got placed. That is when you feel that it was all worth it.

So that is how the entire process goes and now I have to get back to making a list of some more agencies who would be hanging up on me in the near future, but there is no escape as my job is not yet over. So ciao!!!