At an Indian Institute of Management for a three-day placement training workshop, the schedule is so tight that there is barely time to breathe. I have worked 16-hour days in the past, but interviewing candidates for that long can fry the brain. The trainer, in this case me, must listen to everything the candidate says - from why they chose to do an MBA to which specialisation they are considering - and point out mistakes besides offering encouragement.
There are some 350 students lined up for the interviews, and only five of us. Three of these are newbies, so the exercise is practically on the boss' and my shoulders. We start at 9 in the morning and over 30-minute sessions, hear students out and give them feedback. There are freshers and workex candidates; IITians and everyone else; there are the young and not-so-young. There is enough diversity to credit the institute on its admission process.
But this piece is not about the students; it's about my employer. My organisation is a blandly incestuous place - every employee, apart from me, is a former student of Roy, the boss. This creates a hush-hush, wink-wink intimacy that can spill over into work life. Since I am not part of this comradeship - and don't see why I should be - I often become the victim of subterranean manipulation.
The three newbies get paid per interview, while I, as an employee, take a fixed salary, so there is this race to pile more and more students on me. Roy walks up to me and assumes his most ingratiating self: "Don't stretch interviews too much, you know. I have already told them the basics. Try and wrap the sessions in 15 minutes each." It's like speed dating, without the benefits.
They make you suffer, these money-minting bosses. Here on campus, if you want to take a five-minute break, they won't let you. "There are three students waiting for you," they would say. If you ask for food, they will delay it interminably until you are unable to speak because of hunger pangs. If it's 2 in the morning and you have already interviewed 30 students since morning and all you want is to curl into a bed, no, you cannot, because there are always more students in line.
It's 11 pm and I haven't eaten a morsel since afternoon. I feel my eyes glazing over, as the hundredth candidate tells me why she chose not to work after engineering. My answers are now well-rehearsed and there is a hollowness to the entire exercise since the responses have become assembly-line. I decide to sneak out for dinner since I know it's nowhere in the offing. The moment I am out, I receive a message from Pooja, the co-ordinator: "Are you returning? There is a girl waiting."
I reply: "I am on my way to the canteen. Give me 10 minutes." She answers: "Let's do one thing. You come back by 11:30, and I will keep two group discussions for you." I message ok and hurry along. When I return, some 10 candidates are waiting for me to begin the GD. "Four more are expected in a few minutes," Pooja says excitedly. "Why don't you take an interview until then?" I can't help pitying the look of desperation on her face and say yes.
By the end of Day 2, it is clear to everyone that the workshop has been a resounding failure. Most students have begun grumbling about the pace of the interviews and the similarity of responses. Scores of them have not been covered yet and there is only a day left. Roy and I are overworked and underfed, and I feel I might get unwell.
Come to think of it, packing 350 students over three days among five interviewers was never going to work. Since we will be paid only if the students are satisfied with our work, which now seems not to be the case, there is a growing feeling that this trip has been in vain.
All of this makes me sad, because I wish the experience were better. The campus is beautiful. Winding roads take you atop a hill on which it is situated. As far as the eye can see, there are lush trees and low-hanging clouds. In my introductory session, as I faced bright-eyed students, I saw myself - my friends, the earlier me - in them. Away from home, in the heart of wilderness, beautiful, gentle thoughts came to me.
These students will leave, I said to myself, others will come, they will leave too, and so on, the cycle will repeat. But this campus will stand, witness to those who came and left. The solitary campus offering its fleeting beauty to the traveller. Here, everyone is a passer-by. But the campus will not let us forget. It will live in us, and when we see it again, or a likeness of it again, we will be taken back to it, and to our younger, happier selves.
That was Day 1. Now it's all misery.
The author has switched too many jobs in the past and hopes he can hold down this one
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
