One Year stand with ISB

This Blog aims to capture my affair with ISB and beyond.

Name:
Location: Hyderabad, India

I promise not to make this a chronicle of events unfolding in ISB or the world in general. These posts will generally qualify those events with my thoughts. At the same time I promise it will be enjoyable :-)

Saturday, November 18, 2006

The little piglet

We have a new addition to our family. Someone who came 2 months back. But it is occupying a major portion of my mindspace since it came. It remains a little sick and sometimes behaves funny. But it has done a great deal of help. Cant imagine life without it.

My folks are here on a holiday and enjoying the hyderabadi winter. You must know that back there where I used to live in mumbai, there is no winter at all. Here the nights have become a little chilly and I can find myself searching for a blanket before sleeping. Rest assured I ll be having a wonderful cool Xmas here in Hyderabad.

Speaking of Christmas, Last Christmas was my first white Christmas. It was a dream come true. And just like a fairy tale Christmas, it was actually snowing. But the only problem I was all alone. But thats the law of life right? You get some, you lose some, you cant have everything at the same, you cannot have some things all the time, you can have some things all the time, gawrsh what am I saying! guess am feeling sleepy, exams on Monday but no intention to study. Tomorrow I need to make an all out effort to do some serious studies. Ever wondered why we make plans always from tomorrow. Why not from now? Well am too lazy to think about that. I ll think about that tomorrow :-)

Coming back to the new someone who came into my life, we have named it piggy. Its because it looks like a little piglet and is very cute. It does a great job of carrying us around the city and takes Kandy to and from office or is it the other way round? never mind. Its all relative. Gotta go to sleep now. Otherwise God knows what I ll keep muttering. cya

Thursday, November 16, 2006

End of Term5

Today is the last day of term 5. We have exams next week and Term 6 starts the week after that. Cant imagine how quickly time has passed. However, it is ironic that the events that happened only a few weeks ago seem as if they have happened long past. We are doing so many things. The days (and nights) are so full. But this fullness seems to be taking its toll. There is a feeling of saturation. This is only term 5. 3 more to go. And the huge placement expectation. Things are only going to get more hot.
Talking of placements, this period is the moment of truth. This is the period (when placements have already started and many international companies have posted job openings) when you will get to know what is your market value. Since ISB is different in the sense that there are many here with comparatively high work experience, this is the moment when we ll know the true value of the industry experience prior to ISB. Whether what I have done in the past more than 5 years has substance or not. And what is the premium I can command on this substance due to the value addition done in ISB.
The Big Mac was on campus yesterday, to talk about the nuances of case interviews and the generally accepted approaches to crack them. They told us to keep it simple, start from basics, take help from the interviewer, dont ask naive or too out of the box questions, be creative, look at the bigger picture, dive into the details once you get the bigger picture right etc. Seems easy eh? wait till I start solving some sample cases.

Friday, November 10, 2006

The international placements are in full swing and quite a few have been shortlisted by the international Ibanks which came in pretty early this year. The opportunities available here are tremendous. This has led to a lack of focus and sometimes there is confusion as to where I wanna go. There is also very less time to think. Already Term 6 biddings have started. I managed to get all the courses I bid for in this term. Some of the finance courses are in very high demand and lot of people stand a chance of not getting what they want. Again a lack of focus?

Last Monday I alongwith some batchmates went to dinner with an executive of an Indian Software company from UK. He initially gave a presentation on the different activities of the practice he hailed from and the different roles available. It was great interacting with him and knowing about different openings available in the organisation. It remains to be seen whether those roles will come up during the placement week.

One course which continues to intrigue and surprise session after session is the marketing Services course. The prof really leads the class slowly and steadily to new insights through structured case discussions. The different "mental models" that he seeks to imbibe with relation to funcioning effectively in an organisation are really different and thought provoking. Most of the things are not what they seem at face value when you look at it from the organisation view point. The various different activities/processes established by an organisation seem trivial and of no consequence when seen from the perspective of an employee. This course gives the point of view from the other side and its truly amazing how all these things matter from a strategic perspective and makes the organisation truly what it is. The Marketing Services course seems more of a strategy course than a marketing one. For the aspiring ISBians, this is a must have in term 5.