Friday, September 26, 2008

A month at AIM..........Still a long way to go.

On this 17th of September, I completed exactly one month at AIM. However it is now 26th of september that I am writing this blog. It took me 9 days to take some time out and write this blog. I would also like to thank a friend of mine to inspire me to write this blog. Inspiration is one thing you require when you want to do things other than lucubrating and analysing loads of data while at Asian Institute of Management.
This one month has been like a roller coaster ride. There were times when I have felt a high which was when I have been upto the mark and performing to the best of my potential, while other times I have behaved like a mediocre. The standard deviation has been very high but believe me I am trying very hard to make the mean, median and mode of my performance equal and reduce the variance and standard deviation. Please forgive me for using this B*******t because this is what I have gone through in the last few weeks and also accused of the same by my batchmates. But as it is said-"the first step towards correcting a problem is acknowledging it". Luckily I have made good friends within this month who brought to my notice this weakness and made it imperative for me to overcome this weakness. I have learnt a lot in these last few weeks and came out with the conclusion that this world is all about continuously adding to your qualities. You can always ask for a premium if you can produce quality consistently.
Normally people have a dream before embarking to their journey of becoming an MBA; that is to make it high in the corporate world, open a new industry or become elite consultants. But my dreams have changed to solving accounting problems , determining whether it is a debit or a credit , solving and analysing cases with my CAN group and sometimes waking up in the middle of the night and looking at the clock to make sure I am not late for my classes. The common assumption in all these condition mentioned above is that I was lucky and have had the time to sleep. Many times it becomes difficult for me to decide whether the activity I performed the previous night is actually called sleeping. However I have managed to survive and hope I shall do it for the next 15 months. But for the moment I can claim I am 1/16th of an MBA. This term instills a feeling of value addition in me and also reminds me that there are just 15 such similar fractions left for the rigour to end. Who knows after all this rigour I may again start dreaming about the dreams aspiring MBA students often see i.e flying high, making it to the top of corporate ladder and ofcourse riding that elusive Mercedes , Ferrari or BMW(ofcourse the hybrid model when it gets launched, crude at 130 dollars is driving me crazy).

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Recruiters Night 2008 @ AIM.............

Guys Please do appreciate this particular blog and the blogs on the recruiter night by other 4 guys of our batch - Rajdeep,Yuva,Ghosh and Johan. The two reasons for that are, firstly We were officialy not allowed to be a part of the event. Especially Yuva took a good initiative to get us all to be part of the event and finally Regnard helped us to sneak into the hall where the event was taking place. Secondly, We all had our CAN group timings changed so that we can attend the event. So special thanks to our respective CAN group to make this bit of sacrifice.

The event was scheduled to start at 6:30 pm on 3rd Sep and the venue was SGV hall in the AGCM building. We had MBA and MM students looking really bright in their formal attire's. Compared to these guys the 5 of us looked out of place in our casual dresses. However we were told by Regnard that it was a part of the plan to get us dressed up in casuals. The highlights of the event were Welcome Remarks by our president Mr. Francis G Estrada, followed by speeches from Enrollment and Placement Cell Executive Managing Director Mr. Santos and Students representative of MBA Dec.2008 (Mr.Madhusudhan)and MM 2008(Mr. Rajan Ananthanarayan). Everybody in their speech explained the importance of the rigour that students go through while they are at AIM. The representatives also gave presentations on the background and diversities of the current batch. This was quite necessary as to bring home the point to the recruiters, the quality of AIM students as compared to other B-Schools. One particular point that Madhu rose (which was followed by a huge applause) was that, the Students of AIM have Energy, they Inspire and they Create. The companies who took part in the event included QTEL from Qatar, First Gulf Bank from Abu Dhabi, Ayala Group-Philli., IBM-Philli., Pfizer-Philli., JP Morgan-Philli., L&T, RCBC Bank, Telus-Philli. and first time at AIM, Deepak Fertilizers -India. All 5 of us were under the impression that this event is going to be like a Placement event that happens in Indian B - Schools. However CV's were not allowed at the event and the only things you could do is to talk with the recruiters personally while you are taking your dinner and exchange your visiting cards(so guys be ready to make your visiting cards till next year). This was something which came to me as a surprise(commom how can recruiters judge you without your CV). The other thing which bothered me was this event came to an abrupt end with Prof. Ricardo Lim giving the closing remarks immediately after the speeches while the recuiters still remained unintroduced. The event started at around 7:00 and people were taking their dinner at 7:30. I was told that the idea behind it was that more people can spend time with the recruiters, one on one, while everyone was having dinner(By the way the Dinner was the best thing that night as told to me by Johan). I dont know how many students would be able to take advantage of this event however the good news is that the recruitment at AIM has started on a positive note this year with Cognizant Technology making 10 final offers and HCL technology making 2 final offers even before the recruiters night. The Seniors still have 4 months to get placed and I wish them all the best. For our batch there are things to be done at a large scale as we have May batch this time and also have more students in the Sept batch. But looking at the Quality of Learning at AIM and particularly the quality of students in our batch I dont think we would face much difficulty if we can get our acts together. Do shoot in your queries in case you need some more details regarding the event. You are also free to chip in with your suggestions about how would you want the recruiters night next time. So that we can have a good database for the things to look forward to for the event and which would help us plan in a better way.