Thursday, December 07, 2006
Placements and Professionalism
Update 2:
@everyone .. about the bussiness analyst question
The reply he got was an arrogant "you are not suppose to ask me questions, I am suppose to". Would a little reverence to students hurt?
all i am against is arrogance of the interviewer. yes, the candidate must have done his homework.
"they should be well aware that none of engineering students have any clue of what business analyst is" etc are suposrting statement meant to justify that the interveiwer should not have been so surprized that he had to resort to the arrogance.
Update:
To my friends who have been placed in companies mentioned here, please don't get offended. I just thought speaking out against it will change things for better next time around.
The first session of placements in IIT Madras comes to an end today. There is a break for about two weeks for the inter-IIT sports meet after which they resume once again. I was disappointed by the lack of professionalism by some of the highly regarded companies here during the last two weeks. In fact, the unprofessional display was unexpected by some of the companies that had come for pre-placement talks (ppt) over the semester. There those handful of companies which refused to reveal their compensation packages even when the questions about it was raised during the question answer session. A mere hand waving "competitive package" was announced by them. It annoying when that the one thing many look for in a ppt (yeah, it's the money.. who cares about job satisfaction and social life anyway ;) ). This disregard to professionalism was shown by relatively unknown firms.
It was during the placement week that many of the renowned companies also let us down. It all began with Deutche Bank. Citing reasons of being unavailable during the first week of December, they were allowed to come for placement well ahead of the scheduled placement week. As it was one of the high paying jobs, no one complained. The shortlist was announced and interviews were scheduled at Park Shereton hotel. One of my friends, Ashish, who was short listed was interviewed. Being from an engineering background, non of us knew what exactly a 'business analyst' was all about. During the interview, he asked them what a business analyst exactly does. The reply he got was an arrogant "you are not suppose to ask me questions, I am suppose to". Would a little reverence to students hurt? They should be well aware that none of engineering students have any clue of what business analyst is. Their unprofessonalism (if there is such a word) doesn't end here. They shortlist three candidates to the final interview and have given the offer to only one student among them. The other two students still are unclear whether Deutche Bank is hiring them or not. Its already been over three weeks since the interviews. The students have had a few telephonic interviews. They offered them summer internship before joining the bank as a full time employee based on their performance. Even that isn't clear yet. From what I hear, Assistant registrar in charge of placements is very much pained by Deutche Bank. Also, The interviews stated at about 4 in the afternoon and went on till 12 in the night. They did not have the courtesy to offer at least the three students some snacks.
Shell was another company I was unhappy with. They came it with the offer of placements to all branches here. They asked all the interested candidates to fill in their online application form which easily took all of us 1 hour to fill. This was in the middle of the semester. After all this, they shortlist only the students from chemical and mechanical engineering. It not about the one hour that every one wasted, but about the communication gap between HR and Technical group which let us down. An internationally known company shouldn't so crass in its approach.
As my friend informs me, Fair Isaac cheated IIT Madras' placement office. It was agreed upon that those who cleared the prelim examination and appeared for test for r and d division will also be considered for other divisions. But, those who had cleared the first round of test but not the r and d round weren't even short listed for other divisions. When one makes such a small promise, why is it hard to keep them?
Yet another company was transocean. Two were almost offered jobs and other two waitlisted. During one the placement days, all four of them were flown to Bombay for interviews. As it turned out, it was a mere formality. The two were given the appointment letter, the other two were rejected. If the decision was already made here, why were the other two flown to Bombay (one of them is my room neighbour btw) missing a whole day of placements here? All they did was simply take away the chance finding a job the next day.
I don’t know about other (if any) unprofessionalism displayed here. But from where I see it, most of them were easily avoidable. If employers expect respect from employees, there is nothing wrong in employees expecting the same from the employers.
I am off on a week of travel (no sight seeing unfortunately :( ) for couple of programming contest Friday: Chennai - Delhi, Friday / Saturday Delhi - Kanpur, Sunday / Monday Kanpur - Delhi, Monday Delhi - Chennai, Tuesday / Wednesday Chennai - Bangalore, Friday / Saturday Bangalore - Coimbatore, Sunday / Monday Comibatore - Bangalore .... thursday is the only day of the week i wont be travelling at some point of time. Wish me luck for programming contests at Kanpur and Coimbatore :) Will reply to comments when free. I find Chennai winter cold, it goes to 6 C in Kanpur these days.
@everyone .. about the bussiness analyst question
The reply he got was an arrogant "you are not suppose to ask me questions, I am suppose to". Would a little reverence to students hurt?
all i am against is arrogance of the interviewer. yes, the candidate must have done his homework.
"they should be well aware that none of engineering students have any clue of what business analyst is" etc are suposrting statement meant to justify that the interveiwer should not have been so surprized that he had to resort to the arrogance.
Update:
To my friends who have been placed in companies mentioned here, please don't get offended. I just thought speaking out against it will change things for better next time around.
The first session of placements in IIT Madras comes to an end today. There is a break for about two weeks for the inter-IIT sports meet after which they resume once again. I was disappointed by the lack of professionalism by some of the highly regarded companies here during the last two weeks. In fact, the unprofessional display was unexpected by some of the companies that had come for pre-placement talks (ppt) over the semester. There those handful of companies which refused to reveal their compensation packages even when the questions about it was raised during the question answer session. A mere hand waving "competitive package" was announced by them. It annoying when that the one thing many look for in a ppt (yeah, it's the money.. who cares about job satisfaction and social life anyway ;) ). This disregard to professionalism was shown by relatively unknown firms.
It was during the placement week that many of the renowned companies also let us down. It all began with Deutche Bank. Citing reasons of being unavailable during the first week of December, they were allowed to come for placement well ahead of the scheduled placement week. As it was one of the high paying jobs, no one complained. The shortlist was announced and interviews were scheduled at Park Shereton hotel. One of my friends, Ashish, who was short listed was interviewed. Being from an engineering background, non of us knew what exactly a 'business analyst' was all about. During the interview, he asked them what a business analyst exactly does. The reply he got was an arrogant "you are not suppose to ask me questions, I am suppose to". Would a little reverence to students hurt? They should be well aware that none of engineering students have any clue of what business analyst is. Their unprofessonalism (if there is such a word) doesn't end here. They shortlist three candidates to the final interview and have given the offer to only one student among them. The other two students still are unclear whether Deutche Bank is hiring them or not. Its already been over three weeks since the interviews. The students have had a few telephonic interviews. They offered them summer internship before joining the bank as a full time employee based on their performance. Even that isn't clear yet. From what I hear, Assistant registrar in charge of placements is very much pained by Deutche Bank. Also, The interviews stated at about 4 in the afternoon and went on till 12 in the night. They did not have the courtesy to offer at least the three students some snacks.
Shell was another company I was unhappy with. They came it with the offer of placements to all branches here. They asked all the interested candidates to fill in their online application form which easily took all of us 1 hour to fill. This was in the middle of the semester. After all this, they shortlist only the students from chemical and mechanical engineering. It not about the one hour that every one wasted, but about the communication gap between HR and Technical group which let us down. An internationally known company shouldn't so crass in its approach.
As my friend informs me, Fair Isaac cheated IIT Madras' placement office. It was agreed upon that those who cleared the prelim examination and appeared for test for r and d division will also be considered for other divisions. But, those who had cleared the first round of test but not the r and d round weren't even short listed for other divisions. When one makes such a small promise, why is it hard to keep them?
Yet another company was transocean. Two were almost offered jobs and other two waitlisted. During one the placement days, all four of them were flown to Bombay for interviews. As it turned out, it was a mere formality. The two were given the appointment letter, the other two were rejected. If the decision was already made here, why were the other two flown to Bombay (one of them is my room neighbour btw) missing a whole day of placements here? All they did was simply take away the chance finding a job the next day.
I don’t know about other (if any) unprofessionalism displayed here. But from where I see it, most of them were easily avoidable. If employers expect respect from employees, there is nothing wrong in employees expecting the same from the employers.
I am off on a week of travel (no sight seeing unfortunately :( ) for couple of programming contest Friday: Chennai - Delhi, Friday / Saturday Delhi - Kanpur, Sunday / Monday Kanpur - Delhi, Monday Delhi - Chennai, Tuesday / Wednesday Chennai - Bangalore, Friday / Saturday Bangalore - Coimbatore, Sunday / Monday Comibatore - Bangalore .... thursday is the only day of the week i wont be travelling at some point of time. Wish me luck for programming contests at Kanpur and Coimbatore :) Will reply to comments when free. I find Chennai winter cold, it goes to 6 C in Kanpur these days.
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