Funnycontrol | Campus placements: The IPL of college

Representational image. (Photo: Charles DeLoye via Unsplash)

As yet another IPL auction looms around the horizon, I am reminded of the way I was auctioned in B-school.  I am referring, of course, to the summer and final placement process. Because, apparently, final placements only take place in winter. The student placement auction is so much like a beauty pageant, I am only amazed we don’t have a swimsuit round as well. And the lies we tell the recruiters when asked “why do you want to join the company” is no different from saying “Mother Teresa, World Peace”. I saw a B-school feature in the news recently with figures of the mean, median, mode and mediocre salaries. All B-schools advertise their placement and salary figures while rejecting you if you answer in the MBA interview “I’m here mainly for the placements”. This self-contradiction is one of the best preparations for corporate life ahead.

The placement statistics tell you the percentage of students hired across different verticals like BFSI, Consulting, Marketing, FMCG, etc. Accordingly you can make a pie chart of the likely physical and mental ailments they will suffer. Those hired for sales roles should also invest in liquor companies and hedge their bets by also investing in the liver treatment segment. No B-school placement process is complete without its lingo and short forms. So, Colgate Palmolive will become ColPal. Pronounced as “Coal Pal”, not to be mistaken for Adani. And the super biggies of consulting will be crunched into “MBB”. Which I presume translates to “Main Bhi Bachelor”.

The process itself involves students wearing formal suits while asking if there is work from home in the interview so they can continue to live in the hostel. A key word you will keep hearing over and over is “shortlist” as you skip through more arbitrary filters than a matrimonial website. And, at each level, you must respond to every question with the same prepared answer like you’re the White House Press secretary. Then, of course, there are the Group Discussions. The most important ones happen in the washrooms, mainly on which CV is to be pushed and which one is to be pulled, like a B-school version of Schindler’s list. It should be noted that in some B-schools the placement committee is indeed called the CRAP team with no irony whatsoever.

Meanwhile, on the recruiters side, HR is instructed that the gap between the candidates’ lies on their CV and their own lies in the pre-placement talk should not exceed the gap between CTC and Take Home. It is believed some B-schools even tried to bring SpaceX to campus this year. But on discovering that the job posting would be on Mars, many grown adult men and women declined saying “parents wouldn’t allow”.

Of course, in this GenZ world, the placement process is not completed if selected candidates don’t post glowing accounts on Linkedin praising the company and themselves to high heaven. High heaven, of course, is also the way many candidates prepare for the brutal placement season. The placement is held to be the single most important outcome of your MBA or engineering course, a lot like the outcome of the sorting hat in Harry Potter.

One feels for the KL Rahuls of the process who find themselves unplaced at the end of the usually three-day jamboree. Relatives automatically start adjusting the quality of CVs they are shortlisting at their end for the next “placement” process in life. Many campus romances also bloom into marriage or break up into depressing Instagram reels depending on the outcome of the placement process.

As for me, when I got placed in a financial firm from campus 17 years ago, a corporate comedian with humour column in Moneycontrol is not how I expected the subsequent pages of my CV to fill out. But I guess life comes a full circle, as today everyone from an investment banker to an insta influencer chases the same likes, comments and shares. So, please like, share, comment on this article as well. As it will help to get placed on Day Zero in the algorithm.