“Have you ever done it before?”, She asked me confusingly
“No. This is my first time.”, I replied innocently
“Ok. Then it is acceptable”, She replied while hiding her disgust
I was shattered by her comments. I somehow gathered courage to say shamelessly,
“I actually worked on it but that’s the best I came up with”
“I’m sure, you must have worked a lot on it and I’m sure, improvement is there…. but to tell you the truth, this is not up to the mark”, she replied in a consoling manner.
“Ok. Can you tell me what to do? How to improve?”, I asked her diligently
“First of all, it doesn’t look like that I’m holding an ISBian’s …”
“Yeah, I understand but I’m not able to understand how to do it..”, I cut her in between.
“See. The problem is… I can’t read this” she showed her helplessness.
“Ok.” I tried to look calm
“See, I understand that you are from technical background but this is not MBA CV. The recruiter will not understand all these words you’ve written” she clarified.
“Ok. I got it. I’ll remove all these words. But the problem is that if I remove these words there would be nothing left on my CV”, I tried to explain my dilemma.
“There is already nothing in your CV” she put forward her opinion bluntly.
“Ok” I was dejected.
“Even I was from technical profile. I will forward you my CV. You can have a look at that CV and rewrite all this stuff” she tried to console me.
“Ok. Thanks” I replied.
“It was nice meeting you.” She ended my resume review session in flat 10 minutes and didn’t waste much time on a lost cause.
I came out with a crushed paper in hand and a broken heart. I was not able to understand how all my work experience is meaningless and I don’t have anything to write. After some stray thoughts, I finally gave up and head towards my room.
If you are an average person with no unique or different achievements, you need to have a good sense of humor to live sanely in ISB. Thus being an average guy, I fulfilled my duty and laughed on the entire incident.
Just when I was browsing through my mails, I saw a new business competition mail. My eyes twinkled and all the insults and the feedbacks started moving in front of my eyes.
“This is it”, I shouted loudly with in the four walls of my room.
“I’ll win it and get the CV bullet point. My CV would be unbeatable now. I will show her and the world that my CV is not a piece of waste. I’ve done something in life”, I shouted again with a devilish laughter.
The competition was open only for teams and not for individuals. Now this scared me.
“Who will form a team with me”, I thought loudly.
Whom I need, they don’t want me… And those who need me, who wants them in the team…
Everybody wants to form team with Dean Listers, a rare breed in ISB. Finally I somehow formed a team of 4 losers and registered for the competition.
ISB somehow listened my loud thoughts and starting wrecking havoc in term 5 through assignments, reports, quizzes, forced/unforced PPTs and what not. No matter how hard we tried, ISB made sure that 4 of us would never meet for the competition work. So, in the end, we split up the work among ourselves and decided to meet two hours before submission deadline with individual deliverables.
In between I met another animal in ISB called Freeriding. It is a tool which allows you to sign up or volunteer for multiple activities in ISB and gives you a right to claim all the achievements from that activity without the obligation of work required for that activity. Some people entered into ISB with freeriding as an inherent trait and some have learnt this art to perfection in last 6-7 months. And, just to follow the latest trend, one of our teammates also decided to use that card on us.
On the deadline date, three of us met and waited patiently for the fourth guy who has stopped responding to my mails and calls from last 3-4 days. After half an hour, I decided to go to his room and meet him. Luckily, I saw him on the way and waved my hand. The guy immediately picks up his phone, gave me a sign to wait, turned around and never came back. I stood there like a fool for 5-10 minutes before I understood the genius of that smart bastard.
Finally, when there was 1 hour left for submission, we decided to complete his part and submit the entry in one hour.
“Let’s add the marketing strategy”, my teammate told me
“But we don’t have a marketing strategy” I replied confusingly.
He smiled at me and opened his previous Business competition entry PPT. He copied 6 slides and pasted it in our PPT.
“Just change the name of the organization and we are done”, he replied confidently
“But….”, I was confused
“You haven’t done it before?” he asked me
I recalled the golden rule of survival in ISB.
“Not with PPTs” I winked and we both started laughing…
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