Consultant blues

Who is a consultant ??
A consultant can be defined as a person who takes your watch and to tell you the time and doesnt even return your watch.

If you've heard this before and laughed your heart then you should note that this is as close as anyone can get to define a consultant. But this being my first LIVE project I want to put in whatever it takes...but..

Job of a consultant is no easy job and I've just began to come in terms with the reality. The initial euphoria of working on a consulting project has faded and am beginning to feel the pressure.

• Working till late night,
  
• Visiting the office daily so that we clock as many billable hours as possible,
• Documenting every obvious thing so that the report puts a telephone directory to shame,
• Always keeping the staff on the move by asking weird reports of data,
• Meeting high profile people of the company so that everyone knows that a consulting team is actually working on something important.
• Putting up with the unkind look and attitude of employees.
• Getting obsessed with work to such an extent that it actually takes its toll on relationships.
• Getting frustrated as things lead to nowhere and you've no one to guide.
• Spending sleepless nights in the lab documenting and researching on the net.
  

and the list goes on...

Its kinda becoming very demanding to actually get along... Our profs are so busy that most of the times we are ending up re-inventing the wheel .. and there's no one to guide us properly.

The submission date for initial report is nearing and we are no where near the deliverables. Past few days have passed like hours of a day. I was really surprised when i realized that its been more than 10 days since our majors got over and I'm stuck in this project with little realization about the happenings of the world around me.

Gotto take a serious break before I lose my senses but then we've got our submission date nearing ... How do i get through this ?? This question hurst the most when we realize that this despite our efforts to put in as much as we can ...

Hope this project sees the daylight.

Inspiring People !!!

This is a very interesting post which will surely stay in my memory for ever. Why ?? Coz I've actually met a person who told me that he got inspired by me. Sounds so cool na ... and i bet it would sound the same if i hadnt asked him further questions.

But then not everyday you meet a person who says that he/she is inspired by you. So i decided to dig a little deeper on what aspects of mine had actually inspired him.

Brief background - This guy is Ashish who's done his B.tech from REC Rourkela and passed out last year and has come to Delhi for his IAS preparation and is currently assisting us in our consulting project.

So, when I asked him he told me that his academic track record was almost same as mine . He scored about 66% in his engineering ( now i guess i dont need to divulge my % ). Now having a similar background I still managed to get into DMS and inspite of getting a low cgpa of 7-pt something i could manage to get into IBM.

I know he's kinda reached a conclusion or rather got inspired prematurely but then as long as someone's getting inspired you shouldnt bother the process. On interacting more closely with him, I realized that ...

He stronly believes in " Aaj kare so kal kar, kal kare so parsu
Itni bhi kya jaldi hai, padi hai bahut saare baras"
( It means what you can do today , do it tomorrow and what you can do tomorrow do it the day after, what is the hurry, you've got lots of years to live - plz bear with my poor translation skills)

This might be very shocking to hear from an IAS aspirant but thats not it, there's more to that...he believes that there's always a shortcut to success and he doesnt like wasting time in trudging along the hard way and would rather like to spend the time in finding the shortcut. He strongly believes in resting and says that he's got a time of a life to live and he'd rather like to live it peacefully.

And amidst all this he finds me - a completely casual person who's just like him and still could manage to achieve whatever I've achieved.

Now the above sentence can or rather should be taken with a bag of salt and I assure that I'm just quoting whatever he'd told me.

So that's it .... he was inspired by me ( though how he'd got is a bit dicey ) but I will sincerely pray for him to get through IAS. Atleast I'll be able to tell my kids that an IAS guy was actually inspired by me :P

IBM rocks !!!

Yaaaaaaaahoooooooooo...now i totally agree with nature as I finally got something that I actually deserve ;)

I got placed in summers with IBM - Global services. Just within 3 hrs of knowing my disastrous result of my first semester, this news had given me enough reason to blog a new post on the same day. First the basics...
Stipend - Rs 18000 per month
Expenses - Rs 1500 per month
To - fro air fare ( not sure about this )

So that means that I'm officially employed during the summer and I can sleep in peace for now. Had some bad experiences earlier for my summer placements and I'm happy that finally i made it into a company like IBM. I couldnt have asked for more.

This would've brought more joy if not for my semester result.

Anyway .... life goes on ...and I'm off making some very important calls ;) . Thank God.

7 Point Someone

For the uninitiated the title above suggests my C.G.P.A ( Cumulative Grade Point Avergae) of my first semester :(( . Now one caveat is that it isnt as good as it might seem to you in the first look coz the topper scored 9.3 and I almost topped from the last ....almost - but not actually.

I was shocked to know that I performed so badly ( or maybe others performed so well ) ...whatever might be the reason ...I'll have to face it ...I'm a Seven Point Someone...not even someone infact .....seven point something....yeah thats all i can say right now.

Infact, I personally feel that a perfect 8 would've done justice to my hardwork but then I dont understand this nature's law - " Who the f*** told you that you'd get what you deserved."

It was tough telling this to my mom on phone and asked her to convey the same to dad as i didnt have the courage.

Thats all for now..

Vicky ban gaya Consultant

Yeah...I know it sounds very funny but it is true. I always cribbed to myself that I deserve better things in life and on a handful of occasions it was genuine too :D.

But this is really awesome. I'll tell you why....

To cut the story short - My prof got a consulting project with XYZ Ltd. which wanted him to assess its manpower requirement as it is planning to expand by 25%. Now as all profs are supposed to be busy, it was trivial to note that he was busy too so he thought of leaving this project. But dunno why he decided to take it up and as he was stressed for time he decided to delegate it to the most efficient, diligent, intelligent and above all smart students in the class and he chose 5 students of all including ME ( this should explain my liberal usage of adjectives :D).

So, to cut it really short - he wants us to do majority of this assignment under his guidance so that he's able to complete it in time and we get some REAL & VALUABLE experience in the process.

The best part starts here....we were asked to introduce ourselves as a consulting team and not as students in the company as that might make the employees a bit casual in providing us the proper information. We were given all the tips and tricks of being SMART consultant and the way we should carry ourselves. It was more of a crash course on "How to become (or project oneself as ) a consultant in 1hr".

Bottomline was " KEEP YOUR EARS AND EYES OPEN"

So, there we were a consulting team of 5. Infact a smart consulting team ( as our prof would like to call it ).

Day - 1

We reached the office after our prof briefed us about the project, introduced ourselves as "Consulting Team". Met with the manager of consumer marketing dept and she arranged for a series of presentations of various departments. Now this was the most boring part. We actually had to sit through 3hrs of presentations prepared by them. I would have definitely fainted if not for the sandwiches and coldcoffees that were supplied during the presentations.

After a gruelling session we went to the cafeteria to have our lunner (its like a brunch - meaning something which you eat between lunch and dinner..cool na :P ). We return back to the office when i recalled something (sorry for digressing but i forgot to mention that my prof had already briefed us that their office had a majority of women workforce) and was expecting some smart encounters.

And much beyond my expectations there were many smart looking women in the office who werent really smart ( hope you get the meaning). The company also has a News Television Division and all these were the future correspondents of the channel. And I found very hard to keep my "EYES OPEN" which i was supposed to as a good consultant lest i might be misunderstood :P.

We went on to interview the employees and winded up by evening. It was nice trying to live up to the new found celebrity status of a consultant which I hope to do it well for the next few days too.

From my first day - the best part of a consultant are the free lunches and coffees ( as all of it gets reimbursed) and the free pick-up and drop facility provided by the company and the bad part of it is that you cant be yourself and have to look very matured , responsible and shrewd which i dislike for obvious reasons.

Right now I'm very tired having worked from morning till now ..and if not for my excitement of this new found celebrity status, I wouldnt have had the energy to blog this.

PS : XYZ company owns the leading newsweekly and a couple of news channels which are the best. Name changed, again for obvious reasons.

Mission Accomplished.

Ok. Officially I'm done with my first semester and hope that I actually get through it also. Yeah, you got it right...I've screwed up some subjects so badly that the prof will find it easier to get himself nominated to Nobel prize rather than giving me an A grade in any subject. :(.

Having said that there's some good news… I've got a winter project with a company and will have to start right away from tomorrow.

Tomorrow being a tuesday ( widely considered as inauspicious to start off something new ), my well-wishers expressed their reservations about this project. But then always remember that " Beggars cant be choosers ". So when people are fighting hard for a winter project then I better take this up considering my affinity towards nonchalant philosophies.