Why PPTs are important to attend

The resume and the interview process form a very integral part of the corporate recruitment process. No wonder, then, that you'll find every Harry and his kin writing books on self-improvement, developing communication skills, resume-writing and even interview-dressing. End of the day, it is about marketing yourself. Ofcourse, some may debate that it is about selling yourself. I believe marketing would be more apt.

The best form of learning is hands-on. Is that not why they say you need to have industry exposure before you do an MBA? In case of a resume-submission process, there might not be much room for error but there definitely are opportunities to learn from your immediate surroundings on how best to market yourself and how best not to.

Take, for example, the Pre-Placement Talks (PPTs) that are currently happening on campus. The idea is that each company will speak to final-year students and market themselves with the objective of luring students to join them. It's an exercise to impress (of which, another form is the recruitment process of resume-GD-interview).

The students read about the company and it's karma on their website and if the company is particular good or particularly bad, they read about it in the newspapers as well. So, when a company comes on campus to talk to the students, they have an hour or two to impress the panel - which in this case, consists of the students. The standard trick is to get a few recent graduates and ask them to talk about the company, get a hot-ish HR chick to run through the "what we are looking for" slide and get a couple of guys, who can talk. And talk in a manner that can save their lives if it comes to that.

And when you sit through these presentations every other day, bartering a considerable amount of sleep, it is hard not to make a mental note of best practices and worst practices, which is why I love attending these PPTs.

A few things that a company just MUZN'T do are:

• Paraphrase the sentence "We are the most awesome company in the world and we kick ass!" and repeat it every other minute. The rationale is: If you are so awesome, it is likely that we know it and anyway, saying it a trillion times doesn't make you more awesome, it just gets onto the nerves of people. [Resume tip to self: Do not SAY you are confident, smart and a team-worker; SHOW it through activities]
• Open the presentation with a guy who has no clue of how to keep an audience engaged. And worse, one who reads out his slides and carries a heavy Indian accent. It is like GMAT or GRE, your "level" is determined by the first few questions you answer and then it gets progressively difficult if you do well. [Resume tip to self: Highlight your best on the front page. By the time the resume-reader reaches second page, he would have already decided]
• Start at 5.30 PM and go on till 8.00 PM. What's that statistic about attention-span of human beings - 20 minutes at the most or the like. So, two and a half hours is 8 times of that! We hardly manage to pull through our 50-minute classes, how are we expected to sit through for over two hours and not loathe the speaker(s). [Resume tip to self: Keep the resume short and sweet. If you don't have anything to say, then don't.]

On a somewhat unconnected note, it reminds me of a quote by the marketing guru, Seth Godin "You can't fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience".

Reliance Fellowship for Stanford MBA | Summer Awesomeness!

I think summers are a great time. Infact, summers are friggin' awesome times. I remember thinking last summer that things cannot get more awesome than they already were. This summer is slowly standing up to beat it!

A kick-ass coincidence is this: Three of us (I will qualify 'us' soon) had applied for a really amazing scholarship being offered by Reliance Industries called Reliance Dhirubhai Fellowship. It is an all-expenses covered scholarship to pursue the two-year MBA at Stanford University. It is not restricted to college students, infact most of the guys who apply are people with extensive professional experience.

So, of the 1500-odd applications (as of last year), Reliance selects about 50 fellows and then finally Stanford selects the 5 who will be offered the scholarship. So, that's a cool 80-odd lakh scholarship for two years!

The information page can be accessed here.
The list of fellows of last year is here.

Anyway, the coincidence part is this: Two of my friends...

- Gaurav Sapra - BITS Goa, just finished college this year - He is one of those 'childhood friends' that they talk about in stories and movies.

- Aniket 'Uss' Pangarkar- Insti fellow, going into final year now - He is my mentor, guide, chuddy-buddy etc. etc. He is also my partner in most, if not all, crimes in the insti. (They say gay-partner, but that's not true, trust me).

... and I had applied for this fellowship. And to our respective utter disbeliefs, all the three got through to the top 50!

So, while we reel under the sheer awesomeness (yes, indeed flicked from Kung-fu Panda) of the coincidence, those two have started preparing for their GMAT (provided free of cost by Reliance to the finalists) and I, having already taken my GMAT last month, am planning to write a book on how awesome summers, even summers like the ones in Chennai, can get! :-)

Getting the professors to meet

It's 5:55 AM on my watch. And I am thinking about the following:

If two professors (generic term) A and B, and a student have to meet, how do they decide on a venue?

In my specific case, the details are as follows:

• A and B are not from the same department
  
• A is a senior-ish Prof., B is an Asst. Prof.
• A and B do not know each other
• The student (me!) has to set-up the meeting

I am dumbfounded on how to decide the venue. I wonder how these things work.

By the way, it's 6:01 now.

PS: If it sounds trivial, I'd suggest wearing my shoes for a while and walking a few hundred meters.

Father's Day: To the CEO of my life

To my Dad, who has given me much much more than a middle name, here's wishing a Very Happy Father's Day and a lifetime of health and happiness!

To the CEO of my life, here's acknowledging his contribution in making me, me.

PS: I don't think I can ever pen my thoughts about my dad - it is just too pure, and yet too complex a relationship to be expressed through the mere medium of words.

Happy to lose to _my_ CBSE topper!

For once in my life, I am conceding defeat with a grin from ear-to-ear.

Beginning today, I handover the tag of the 'smartest kid in the family' to my worthy opponent and fierce competitor, my sister for her amazing feat in CBSE class X. She has gone miles ahead of me by scoring a mammoth 94.2 % in her tenth.

My (paltry) 86 % is now put to shame - my days of glory are over :P

(And she seems to have better friends than I do. Most of her friends seem to be 90+, with one particular girl scoring a holy-cow 98.8 % aggregate.)

So, all my efforts (let me take some credit!) are worth it.

Here's to my sis: Take a bow honey! I am so so proud of you.

PS: Her Social studies score at 96 brings me to tears. How on this earth can someone get 96 in SSt!!

I think I am in love..

.. with her. Again. Hopelessly.

... when you bump into the engineer within you...

Strange things happen when you are enrolled for an engineering degree. Especially when you are neither particularly delighted about the field nor are you bestowed with the skills of Niccola Tesla.

Following is a Gtalk conversation with a friend of mine who is a complex function of engineering skills, innocence, intellect and disinterest. The background is this: he is supposed to stay back in Summer [yes, the mention of 'Summer' was warranted because its the Chennai summer that is being referred to] and finish his project which involves setting up two modems and making them 'talk' to each other.

No, he is not a technician at Devraj Computers. He is a pre-final year student in the Electrical Engineering Department at IIT Madras. Getting back to the project, he has to use two postpaid sim cards and insert them in those modems and make them work (if not in reality, atleast in his report). Among the other things that were a pain in his ass was the fact that his prof. forgets to get his ID card everyday AND/OR forgets to get photographs to obtain the sim cards. BUT, lets leave that there.

I knew that he was not particularly enjoying the work, so as a good friend I asked him about the progress of the project. Here's the excerpt :

me: dude, how is the project going?
him: pain
me: why what happened?
him: modem dude
one of them broken and other not working
me: ohh ok
him: with the working one, i actually called my cell :D
it was aawesome
me: he he.. first time felt like an elec engineer enh?
him: yeah dude
it was like magic!
no kidding
me: ha ha ha ha ha ha
ok ok.. :D :D
fack! magic it seems
him: yeah
me: trippy man.. trippy
him: anyway, if the modem gets repared i will be done with saarathi for good.
me: i will blog this!

This leads me to quote by Robert Heinlein, a famous Sci-fi writer. He said:

"One man's magic is another man's engineering."

There are indeed those times when we feel engineering is mythical and magical - those are the rare occasions when we - I am referring to the people in my boat alone - bump into the engineer within.

The first time I can recall it happened to me was when I first saw my name dancing and turning and twisting in rainbow colours in the screen saver on the 15" CRT of my first computer. (Yes, we've all done it! ) Ofcourse, this has got nothing to do with engineering!

The last time it happened at IITM was when a Latex code (non-pervert perspective at this juncture is appreciated) worked on my computer and did NOT work on my Prof's computer at the time of submission.

"Magic Sir", I should have said then, "Pure Magic!"

PS: If you bothered to click the Tesla wiki link and read about him OR you are one of those kids my mom talks about who knows everything about everything, including Tesla - and are even fractionally (?) turned on, then check this Bad Ass article about Tesla out.

The 34-second shocker!

It is around 2 'o clock in the afternoon. I had to call dad but my phone battery was dead. So, I call him from my friend's phone. Here's the conversation:

Me: Hello Papa
Dad: Ya, who is this?

I am his only son!!

Anyways, just goes to show that people subconsciously decide what to say without actually processing what the person on the other side of the call is saying. Apart, the conversation lasted 34 seconds (which just follows this post.)

"Bhaiyya, solve question number 11 a. What should be the magnification?"

Five reasons why class X students, with brothers who are pusuing engineering, should not have access to too much technology:

• Email enables them scan pages and pages of class X question papers and mail them across for instant answers. 
• Facebook enables them to keep track of status messages - where you are going, what you are doing, who you are going with and so on - and figure out when you lie to them saying you are going for cricket practice.  
• Google Talk enables them to buzz you online and ask you to solve those irritating optics problems which you try and avoid.
• And while you intelligently go invisible on Gtalk, they IM you on Facebook and ask the same optics problems.
• And when you blog about your miseries - they instantly get an email in their inbox and soon you are explaining your stance to mom and dad. To make up for it, you promise to buy them the coolest electronic gadget immediately after the exam!

Incidentally, my sister is in class X and she is taking her boards soon - and no, the above is a general observation.. _not_ born out of my experiences.

PS: Incase you need any Maths/Science question papers of class X, do email me and I shall be happy to send you the papers of last 10-15 years and pre-board exam papers of almost all schools in (and around) Bangalore. 

PS2: If you are wondering why I am perenially invisble on Gtalk, you now know why. 

[@ Akshata, I am just joking honey - you know how much I love those optics problems right] 

Following might help your sis (or bro) if she (or her) is in class X:

1: No, my sister's name is not Rajeshwari - And no, I have no clue who Rajeshwari is.

2:That is the solution to some random two-taps-A-and-B-fill-a-container-in-blah-blah- - -how-much-time-will-it-blah-both-together. 

3:Huh?! I am sure you all can do that right?

The Perfect Phone Call

Every now and then, I come across newspaper articles which border insanity and at times cross that. A few days back in the TOI, there was an article on what constitutes a perfect phone call. Another reference of the article is here.

The research suggest that an ideal phone call should last 9 minutes and 36 seconds!! It should contain a healthy mix of current affairs, opposite sex, health and such stuff.

Three minutes should be spent catching up with news about family and friends
One minute on personal problems
One minute on work/school
42 seconds on current affairs
24 seconds on the weather
24 seconds on chat about opposite sex
12 seconds, staying quite

Another interesting discovery: One in five people spend the maximum time on the phone talking to their mothers. Even more fantastic is the following:

Only 3 % of people named their father as the person they spent most time on the phone with – because dads hand over the phone to their wives.

My personal probability of mom being at the top of the list, at any point of time depends on the following factors:

• Whether love life exists or not? If it does, whether it is on track or not?
• Exams going on or not? [If yes, frequency of calls to mom increase!]
• Whether my sister is having her exams or not? [Same as above]
  
• Balance in the phone [Lesser the balance, the more missed calls that go home]
• Whether dad has asked me to courier the fee receipt or not? [If yes, DON'T call till you have sent it, which usually is not soon]
• Bank balance and the slope of decrease of the balance [Higher the gradient, higher is the probability that I bypass dad and call mom directly and use the powers vested in her :-) ]
• Frequency of 'achievements' - Perhaps, there is no one who is happier than mom - so makes sense. Marginal benefit fundaes.
  

With dad it is far far simpler:

Dad has a fixed set of questions :

• Wassup?
• Do you need money?
• Why is your CGPA falling every sem?
• Why did you not send the courier yet.. #@$!$!!
• Want to talk to mom?

There have been times when I have finished the above conversation with dad in 7 seconds!! But thanks to the research finding, I am not as guilty anymore - I guess its meant to be that way. Let me not challenge nature! ;)

Since we are talking of phone calls, I leave the reader with the following pic of my dear buddy, Ugri, talking to his then would-be girlfriend and now is girlfriend. This is the wing-phone in our wing and the time would be around 1 AM some August night of 2008. What all people do for love! :-P