We went recruiting at one of the super premier institutes a few days ago. We expected that we would meet the brightest minds in the country and that we would be hard pressed to exclude candidates from the shortlists or the final lists. Alas, we met very few such. We did meet a lot of people who had clearly worked extremely hard to make it into these hallowed portals, but somewhere along the way, they seemed to have forgotten why it was important for them to get there in the first place. It was almost as if getting into an elite institution was the end goal in itself - not as a portal to higher opportunity later.
I wonder if the process of preparing for the entrance test sucks all the juice out of a person; so much so, that there is no further ambition left in life.
1 comment:
I feel that the students appearing to be out of depth, is something closely related to how the Placements' process operates in institutes. The kind of mix of personalities in these colleges (inspite of the filter of the great big exam) is huge. However, constant signaling that there is a certain personality type fit for placements, and that everyone else has to aspire to it - the extroverted (Group Discussions), charming (Personal Interviews), conversationist(supremely confident storyteller) (And if it's Management Consulting, we'll add "insecure" somewhere too)
Consequently, the great tragedy is that students all across the board try to fit these stereotypes, and fail miserably. The ones who succeed are the ones who get placed on Day One. And so on. (Let's keep Computer Science Engineers out of this)
There really is no "prestigious" space for the polite, sharp, inquisitive minds any more, because they're all trying to be aggressive in GDs, all-knowing in interviews, and failing at it.
Add to that, I've come to realize that most companies are appallingly bad at figuring out recruitment. Recruitment exercises at companies end up becoming either pure exercises in powerplay, or just means to impress the senior guy who's with you (at the cost of actually getting good recruits sometimes).
The situation gets bad at the top grad colleges specifically, because of the high-stakes game Placements become. Self esteems become diminishing exponential functions of the number of days elapsed since the start of placements.
The only good working way I've found of spotting good talent on campus is outside of this whole circus, either through informal channels (clubs and groups, which you stay involved with as alums), or to let these students rediscover their bearings, and hire them after they've wasted their first couple of years on someone else's money (laterals).
Post a Comment