Countdown to graduation

So the INSEAD story is enterng its last phase. So more and more interviews are coming – not that many actually; but just that I know what I’m going to be doing next week. Besides, I have also loaded myself with academics! I have taken 4 courses; 3 credits though. But the courses are really good ones – Industry and competitive analysis, Business planning workshop, Pricing strategy and Art of communication.

I was talking to a potential recruiter today and for the first time I felt my confidence coming back. A very interesting exercise I learnt from my Negotiations professor came in really handy. He said that he had identified 78 interests when he joined INSEAD as a prof. I did a similar exercise myself through some soul searching and found that it is an effective way of convincing yourself of an interest in a particular job or position. The way it works is like this – you manage to convince yourself of why you want the job, it’s half the work done. The other half is then convincing the interviewer why he needs you. That process can similarly be built up – I haven’t done that yet with any employer, but I’m definitely going to try it out with some of the leads I have.

Finally – b-school in general and INSEAD in particular can be such completely different experiences depending on who you are and how secure you feel. When we were coming to Singapore for the MBA, lot of people were telling us that we were taking a big risk. But we never realized why they were saying that! The point is that when you are sold to a concept especially like that of an MBA, you see only the upside. The downsides and the risks somehow get lost in the pile of examples. Of course, the risk downsides are not really that much of a downside – but risks certainly exist. And these can be extraneous. The diversity itself gets us down in many situations. There are so many Indians; software background and speak good English. How the hell will a recruiter differentiate Krishnan from Rama from Ajay. Everybody is equally talented or mediocre!