The Job Hungry Final Year
- In Training Forum
- Last Updated on 10 August 2012
- By Harry
- Hits: 2956
Most of you insti-goers could argue endlessly on the best fit paths to nirvana. Come to final year, and you got one holistic mantra to attain happiness that’s absolute and truly sustaining – ace a job. The intricacies can wait – ‘one core dream is enough for me’, ‘strict no-no to software’, ‘I want 3 jobs!’, ‘how about a finance co?’, ‘mere ko toh sirf PSU chahiye!’
From the ‘looking-forward-to-it’ ever since the day you did engineering to the already swarming undergraduate population,
to the building anticipation, and the drama that ultimately, untimely unfolds – this whole thing in a nutshell adds up to one real life motion picture. The teasers and trailers go out as you watch all the hoopla over your seniors’ placements from a spectator’s perspective. And then, before you know it, it’s your time to face the music and see how soon you can dance to it. Dancing would be equivalent to a status update on facebook that fetches you, your highest ever likes in a highly revered fb career!
The journey of the job hungry final year begins with a transformation to gentlemanliness that’s minimal on the behavioural front, and painfully oblivious on the visual front. Mowgli’s with unchanged dressing habits for the past three years go on to wear pleated formals. Then there are people with sworn affliction to the jeans t-shirt combo, who learn, with utmost unwillingness, to wear a shirt, and don a tie over it. Friends, juniors, other mysterious companions, all end up bestowing heaps of praises i.e. adjectives synonymous to ‘smart’ or the likes. Well, that’s just – the politically correct thing to say. On a reality check – there are some with such godforsaken get-ups so as to resemble Indian batsmen stranded on English and Oz pitches. Who cares, it’s all for the greater good.
Without any leads, a movie misleads. So there we have the Woody Allens, or the more human-like, the Farhan Akhtars, who get to direct the act, and then act themselves. The Placement Coordinators. People who are all of a sudden elevated to a demigod status. People who set their base camp at the TnP building and fight the battle with a handful of tools – cell phones, land phones and a cyberoamed world wide web. People who are expected to deliver, or take the fall. People who deliver, and still take the fall. People who are ‘People Chosen’.
Now NITR doesn’t have a Day Zero of placements. People do celebrate their own day zeroes though. Two three companies down, and the carnival truly sets in, rumors keep flying. Not just plain rumors, but rumors with exaggeration, rumors with spicy inputs from each of its carriers. Amazon has been confirmed for December. An unknown IT company set for Jan first week is offering 40 lakhs. That guy from Civil, his PI round went on for a mind boggling three and a half hours. Infosys taking four minutes per candidate is more believable!
There’s jubilation, there’s rejection. And then there’s parental pressure. ‘You call 5 lakhs a package? Our pados-ki-auntyji, her son earns 15!’ There are some who get so affected (offended) at the thought of facing parents without a job in hand that they stoically resolve to stay back in the hostel during the Durga Puja holidays! There’s also a friend-al pressure, just for a name. When all your gali-mates (corridor mates) in the hostel are placed and you are not, you go weird, stop seeing people. Of course, there are upsides to the no-job status as well. Your project guide might excuse you off some serious project work, until you crack a biggie. Post to that – who cares about the project anymore?
Another placement season has kicked off at NITR. Wise men have one specific advice for such situations – ‘There’s life beyond a job as well. So, ‘pressure not, panic not.’ A better counsel would be – go grab a job first. Wasn’t that the foremost reason you came here in the first place?
