Back to Cognizant!

The placement season is over and I am glad to announce that I have been placed. I will be going back to my old employer, Cognizant Technology Solutions. I will hopefully be put in the banking vertical and be located in Chennai. Thus ends the great quest of a job at the end of a MBA course. Well, the course is not over yet…but for all practical purposes, it has now lost its importance in our eyes. The placement week itself was more stressful than I had imagined. I thought I was very calm and composed and confident. But just one rejection shook me up and I realized how vulnerable I was to failure. I am forced to follow some protocols here which do not allow me to disclose which company I am talking about. This company came to campus about a week before the official placement week that started on 30^th Jan. And it wasn’t just me who was disappointed. Scores of others who were rejected were also dejected and depressed. I hadn’t imagined the kind of gloom and negativism that set in throughout the campus as companies started their pre processes and shortlists started coming in. We MBAs are supposed to be a self confident lot. But a lot of that is actually pretension. Placement season makes even the most self confident soul feel humble about himself.

By the time 30^th Jan arrived, I had regained my old self confidence. I knew that confidence, calmness and composure were the key to get through placements. And with the amount of preparations I had put in over the past few months, I knew that I could not rely on my knowledge- coz I don’t have much of it. So confidence and composure was very crucial. Thankfully things ended well and I ended up in the IT sector as I had wanted to. The interview itself was very cool. I had never expected it to be that way. The subject on which my knowledge was tested most was Formula One racing! I couldn’t have asked for a simpler interview. Anyway, I guess I got placed at the right moment. At around 7 pm people who were yet to be placed started getting anxious. Some cried- especially girls. The tension was explicitly palpable. I stuck around till my other room mate was placed. Then I quietly got down and took a drag and went back to the hostel.

By the end of the day, less than 20% of the batch was remaining to be placed. These guys were placed the next day. The placecom guys did a really commendable job. The first year students who handled the show were extremely good at their task and kept the inevitable confusions to minimum. The quality of the companies coming to campus was not compromised even till the last moment. Unlike the previous years there were no ‘bulk recruiters’ that took candidates in droves. Yet everyone got placed very fast. When placements ended, around 40 odd companies were yet to come! This speaks of two things- the marvelous effort of the placecom guys in convincing so many companies to come to campus, and the present crazy demand for MBA students from institutes like NMIMS by corporates. I guess the official placement statistics are not out yet. But the average salary this time will be substantially higher than last time’s figure. A look at the salary figures in top b schools over the past 5-6 years will give a mind boggling picture. Wage inflation is running up like crazy. It will have to stop at some point. At least the party hasn’t ended until I entered the dance floor!

Well, that was placements @ NMIMS for you. Now that it is all over, life is boring. But I am glad that I got most of what I wanted from placements. I am back at home now. I have a pleasant feeling going around in my head now which I would like to call- peaceful relaxation…