Career Options and self discovery

One of the better events that happened during the orientation week at ISB was the career perspectives forum. The forum was conducted in a panel discussion model and there were five panelists, all alums from ISB. The backgrounds of the panelists and the order in which they spoke are

1. Management Consultant
2. Investment Banker
3. IT Strategist
4. Marketing Professional
5. Entrepreneur.

The forum basically had two parts to it. First the speakers came up and talked about their profession which was followed by a moderated Q&A session. The first speaker was the management consultant. Due to the fact that he makes his living out of powerpoint presentations he decided to buck the trend and instead talk without a PPT to support. Management consulting in his words is the job of dealing with CXO level problems. Typical assignments range from 4 weeks up to 5-6 months. The diversity of the assignments and thrill of working with the top-management of clients obviously gives the career highs in this industry. On the flip side there is a heck lot of travel. Our speaker for instance flies out every monday morning to a client site and stays there till friday evening. After 5 years in the industry he dreads the sight of an aircraft and always keeps an air-sickness bag handy. To put in a nut-shell consulting is a thrilling career for one who wants the broader perspective, loves to solve other's problems and for one who is either not very family oriented or has a very supportive family which understands his career aspirations.

Next came the investment banker. True to his profession he looked very much emaciated. He called on to the finance honchos in our batch and beckoned them to investment banking. I-banking, as it is popularly known, is among the highest paying sectors and salaries to the tune of $200,000 are more the rule than the exception. Investment bankers probably handle much higher stress than consultants and usually have 65 hr work weeks. But the job is really rewarding with the large bonuses and the high profile work style. A key learning was the fact that career shifts into investment banking by engineers/IT pros are rare and very difficult in 1 year MBA programs.

The IT strategist was up next and the first thing he asked for was a show of hands from all who had an IT background. This year's student directory claims that our batch has only 28% students with technology background but the show of hands indicated something much bigger. This instantly thrilled him and he said that the IT industry needs all of us to come back and is also ready to welcome students from other backgrounds. He was commenting on the multitude of middle management opportunities in IT and the way the outsourcing wave was booming. In his words, the industry has still got a long way to mature and opportunities are galore for ISB grads in IT. It was really gratifying to listen to him as career advancement in IT is exactly what I'm looking at accomplishing.

On came the marketing lady. She talked a lot about how every consumer decision is influenced by marketing and she also talked a lot about branding. As is expected out of any management discipline hectic schedules, excessive travel and high targets are to be expected in this role. The auditorium had a good number of marketing enthusiasts and her presentation struck a great chord with them. She also alluded to the marketing side of IT and it rung a few bells in my head too.

The stage was finally set for the entrepreneur to come in and walk away after winning all the hearts. He started by saying that as an entrepreneur you can be a consultant, i-banker, marketing pro and a lot more single handedly. He took a dig at every profession and also drove home the point of personal satisfaction that he derives out of being an entrepreneur. He also talked about the mental strength and risk appetite that one needs to have to set out on his/her own. This guy was really amazing 'coz he had his venture running even when he was studying at ISB and he used to travel every weekend to take care of stuff. It was absolutely fantastic listening to him and I'm certain that his speech inspired entrepreneurial ambitions inside the minds of a good number of people.

After this the experts clarified a lot of questions from the audience. I thoroughly enjoyed this session and gained a lot of insight about what each of these professions meant. Hearing about more and more options can confuse you a bit but it also lays a path to self discovery. For now I know that I need to tread this path soon enough !

Section D - Rocks

The orientation program culminated with the Talent Nite yesterday. The class of 2008 brought out all their talents to the fore. We have great guitarists, percussionists, singers, dancers, mimics and theater artistes. After heavy partying till 4 AM on saturday I was down in the bed whole day and consequently ruled myself out of the section D practice sessions and out of any stage performance. I really hate myself for doing this but I had some solid (not bloggable) reasons for not getting out of the party zone that night ;-). So I decided to be part of the cheering squad and chant our section slogans.


The stage performances were really impressive. The evening started with a poem dedicated to the class of 2007 by one of our batchmates. Section D guys produced some really brilliant stuff. Sudipto on the tabla, Sravanthi and team with the skit and Kanika, Sumiti et al with the dance all rocked their way and earned loads of points for the team. Eventually we finished second overall. Section F's skit called "Dhanno ka Pati" earned them 2000 points and the overall championship. I thought the section F cheering squad also did a fantastic job improvising new chants every 5 minutes.

So the gyaan and fun week finally ended with the entire batch of alums who stayed back going up stage and singing a couple of songs for us. I guess it was a really emotional moment for them. Over the week I realized that each one of them was so very proud of the ISB brand and they put their best foot forward to convey this message to us. The parting words from our alum Mala was "We all will be there for you not just the coming year but throughout life". Truly our alums rock.

Today is a rest day for us. I should pick up my pre-term booklets and glance through them a bit.

Orientation Madness

It has been a roller coaster first week at ISB so far. I would have shook hands with atleast 200-250 new admits and would at best remember around 100 names ! First lesson learnt "Unless you spend some quality time with a person you will not remember his/her name. Shaking hands just for the heck of it is really useless".
The batch of 2007 is doing a really fantastic job with the gyaan sessions et al but man the schedules are really crazy. The earliest I have slept so far is 2:00 AM and that too on the day I landed here.

After registration on saturday things started rolling with the dean's address on Sunday(April 15th). ISB wants to convey the message to the new batch that sunday or monday ISB will keep buzzing all along. The speech by professor Ajit Rangnekar was really insightful. His speech totally captured the students pulse. He took a jab at everything from IITian prejudices to unwarranted placement pressures to honor code violations. The clear hype on management consulting was very obvious and I got to learn that ISB was really a pro-consulting school. I donno how I will benefit from this but lemme play the waiting game.

The next four days have been really crazy with sports, treasure hunt, team buildings, gyaan sessions, club presentations, career perspectives, leadership development session and a case workshop. I had my first midnight gyaan on wednesday when the informal gyaan from the Biz Tech club went on till 1:30 AM. I tasted first victory in ISB as part of the section D Tug-of-war team. In section D some great bonding is happening. Looks like we have a great legacy to carry forward from our previous batch. Big time cheering is going on during the fun events and some of our chants go like "Go D Go" and "Jeethega bhai jeethega, section D jeethega".

Already two chicks have light a flame in my heart but both fizzed out after I saw them smoking. I thought smoking these days is out of fashion but I was surprised to see atleast 50-60% of the girls smoke. Right now preparation is on for the talent night on saturday night and by all projections the craziness will continue till end of this week. Pre-terms start next week and hopefully I'll get into a groove and manage to balance my act.

Rough Start

After a comfortable train journey bunch of ISBians from Chennai reached hyderabad this morning. In what could be one of the biggest shocks I have had so far my name was not present in the list of admits in the main gate. The guys checked all the student villages and my name was not present anywhere.

What the heck !!! Did I really have an admission offer or not. In a period of two hours two million thoughts passed my head. Finally my name was found in the master list at 11:00 AM. The first impression did not go well but I'm keeping myself positive about the whole deal. After all the admin folks are not demi-gods. Small mistakes do happen. But the fact remains that my heart stopped this morning !!!!

Meeting with Indian Cricketers

Apparently a second string Indian team consisting of former players played(and won) Pakistan in a charity match at Toronto. And guess what the team traveled with me in the Air India flight from Toronto to Delhi. Got a chance to chat with them a little bit and also managed to get a few pictures too!!!

Toronto – Ploughing a lonely furrow

Finally I reached Toronto this morning at 6:00. My tryst with Air Canada is over. I’ll try my best never to fly Air Canada again. I immediately checked with Air India on my flight this evening and got to know that the flight is delayed to 2:25 AM on Monday morning. Phew ! At least I got some time to go around Toronto. Took a cab from the airport and checked in at Deluxe Inn. I was taken care of by a desi cab driver and then a desi hotel receptionist. I see too many desis in Canada (some in really deplorable conditions) and I could clearly sense that each one is longing to be in India. I can see their eyes sparkle when I ask them the very obvious question “Are you from India?” Checked for a tours to Niagara, but the bitter cold plus the Sunday meant that there were no trips. So took a longish nap till 2:00 and took the Toronto subway to get to the “Union” station at downtown. The subway system is very similar to the one in Singapore. Here there is an east-west line and a U-line from mid-north west to down south and all the way up to mid-north east.

A forty-five minute journey split across two trains made me realize the size of Toronto and I reached downtown. This is a typical downtown, the familiar glass-plated concrete jungle, if you will. It was not very difficult to spot CN tower, the very purpose of my visit. With a $26 entrance fee I could go up to the second level observatory. The only other buildings of this scale I have visited were the Sears Tower and the John. F. Hancock towers in Chicago. A 44 sec trip on the elevator took me to the first level observatory which is around 346 metres. The view of the Ontario Lake was simply superb. I just got reminded of Chicago because the Michigan Lake view from Sears tower is almost very similar to this one. Looking at the ground from the glass floor section was quite a scary thing. After getting an extreme picture here, I went up the second level observatory (447 m) which is rightly called the top of the world. I have decided to add a few other high rises to my to-see list are

i) The Ostankino Tower, Moscow
ii) Petronas Towers, Malaysia
iii) Empire State Building, New York
iv) Taipei 101 Tower, Taipei

Back in the airport the 2:25 AM flight is now pushed to 6:30 AM. What a journey this is turning out to be. God please save me !!!

Terminal Musings

Never in my wildest dreams have I thought of the proposition of spending a whole day in an airport. Some excellent co-ordination by my company’s travel department and a big snow storm at Toronto has got me stuck at the Calgary International airport now. My original flight has been canceled and now after being standby for 3 flights I’m waiting for the fourth flight. Although I’m mad at a lot of people I’m taking this time to just cool off. After all I haven’t had any time for myself since April 2006. I was busy all of May 2006 winding up my first 100% mainframe project (curse my efforts at becoming versatile). And then I was busy preparing to fly to India for Divya’s engagement. All of June 2006 flew by with the engagement work and trying to reserve a marriage hall for the wedding.

Talking with Sreeram ( a.k.a Kulguru) during my vacation was a really big turning point in my life. He egged me to take GMAT and told how strongly he believed that I could be in a top B-school. What a great friend he is…You are great machi. Then came the two months slog balancing work and GMAT preparation. My college time MBA aspirations were all too obvious to my friends because I cracked the CAT 2001(It is a different story that my naiveté did not help me convert the interview calls). But this time I kept a really low profile about my second attempt at getting into a B-school. I can count with one hand the number of people who knew that I was preparing. Even after getting a pretty decent score I kept everything under the warps about my applications. I know that a lot of my friends are angry with me because I was operating so clandestinely. This MBA thing almost ate me full time up to early December and by then I was ready to fly back to India. Divya’s marriage happened on 11th Jan and in the middle of all commotion I had my ISB and RSM interviews. I then set out to Pune to help Divya and Sujith settle a lil bit.

Another nice twist was this Canadian due-diligence assignment. A couple of good meetings during the client visit helped me land into this fantastic assignment. I consider myself really lucky to be part of a team doing due-diligence for a $100 million deal…Do I really need an MBA I thought after getting picked up for the assignment. I met some really exceptional Infoscions here. The good quality in this team was the fact that even though the team members came from so many different offices each one knew to how to work cohesively towards the one goal of collecting and crunching as much information as possible. After a terrific presentation of the DD findings to the client yesterday, the team disbursed.. Once I head back it will be my last month with Infosys. I have learnt a lot from her (Infosys) and even though we are breaking up now in not so good terms (I got indications that my promotion is being withheld :-( ), it is a relationship that has shaped me. Okay, the pork ribs and the glass of wine are empty now and I’ll put a full stop to my inebriated rambling too :-) !

Calgary

Today it is two weeks since I came to Calgary. This place will last in my mind for a few reasons. First was the shocker of sorts admit from ISB which I got immediately after I landed here. The next thing is the biggest thermal shock I got in life. In spite of the fact that I lived three winters in Kansas the cold here was at a different level. I landed here to face a -23ºC for around three days with continuous snow. Work started slowly but with this kinda low weather I started feeling low myself.

But bang came the Chinook wind, another fantastic new phenomenon I learnt and the temperature came up to +2ºC. I read about these winds in Wikipedia and came to know that these moisture laden winds can bring up the temperature by even 40ºC.

Then came the weekend. Yours truly still has a valid US drivers license. So me and my roomie here rented a car each and drove the eight member team to the Canadian Rocky Mountains. . It was a scenic 2 hour from Calgary and the view of the snow capped mountains was really scintillating. We went up the Sulphur mountains in a Gondola and then hiked (board walked) from Sulphur mountain to Sanson's peak. It was bitterly cold and to add to the misery we played with the snow and my lips totally froze. It took a while for me to recover but all in all it was fun.

On the way back we stopped at Lake Louis. In fact we walked on the frozen lake. Watching kids play ice hockey was a real treat. We wrote our names on the snow and clicked our cameras.

These two weeks have been one of the most intense professional learning periods in my stint with Infosys. Well Infy probably realizes that these are the last few days I'll be dating her and she wants to treat me well !!! As we get into the last week of the due diligence work gets out of proportion. I just hope that I can squeeze in a few hours and catch a glimpse of the Polar bear at the Calgary zoo...

Itz gonna be ISB

Finally I decided that itz gonna be ISB. A couple of ISB admits advised me to mathematically analyze the situation. So my admit decision has turned out to be my first b-school style problem.

Here is the matrix I came up with. Just plain totals as opposed to weighted scores to keep things simple. ISB beat RSM considering my requirements. So i think I'm on my way to ISB even though RSM is a lovely school!!!

Columns
A - Diversity (1-5)
B - Reputation in US (1-5)
C - Reputation in Europe (1-5)
D - Profs (1-5)
E - Placement (1-5)
F - Family Visa/Acco (1-5)
G - Low Cost factor (1-5)
H - Alumni Network (1-5)
I - Exchange Progs (1-5)
J - Total
------------------------------------
Parm | A B C D E F G H I | J |
------------------------------------
RSM | 5 2 5 4 3 3 3 3 4 | 32 |
ISB | 4 3 2 5 4 4 4 5 4 | 35 |
------------------------------------

Scoring Key
1 - Low/Poor
2 - Average
3 - Good
4 - Very Good
5 - Exceptional

Results time

All the results of my MBA applications are out now. It has been a gratifying two out of three admission offers. Even though the ding from INSEAD was painful admission offers from ISB and RSM, Netherlands make me elated. I now have to decide between ISB and RSM. Each school has itz own selling points.

I chose to apply to RSM after a lot of thought. The summer internship at RSM(I'm from IT and I actually don't plan to change my stream but want to decide between strategy or marketing within IT), the diversity of the class(students from 40 countries) and the Personal leadership development program are the key things that made me decide on RSM. But RSM is high on the fees front and is slightly low on some aspects of b-school rankings but ISB doesn't participate in any rankings. Becoming a global MBA makes RSM really attractive.

As for ISB itz reputation is second to none in India and it is catching up in a very very big way around the world. The class composotion is the best in India(In fact I believe it will be more competitive than RSM) and the placements are also very good. I also want to settle in India in the long term which makes ISB very alluring.

Thatz the problem although I realize it is not a bad situation to be in!