Right from my childhood I have this bad omen of not being able to find my name in lists displayed on notice board. Lists containing the names of successful candidates. Whatever 'list' on which I got listed were not the paper driven ones, what I mean is: I have had success finding my name in e-lists of successful candidates but not the physical lists. In fact I dread searching for my name in them.
The reason for starting this blog with this piece of crap is because most of the shortlist of companies for the summers process are provided in the physical lists.
McKinsey was the first to come up with its list, BCG followed soon. And I had luck with neither. Though I never had much of hope with them, but the sight of people congratulating each other for being listed did bother me. ( JEALOUS??? Is it inhuman to be jealous ).
Let me put it over here, throughout this period of "short lists" - the run-up to the final day, I had my luck following a peculiar sinusoidal pattern. It started from a trough and whenever it was at the pick I had a plethora of calls and then again trough.
My Luck started favoring soon as the first call that I got was from A.T.Kearney and HSBC on the same day. Macquarie ditched me. It was hard to understand their shortlisting criteria. Bain followed suit giving me a call and suddenly I had three calls inside my kitty. No mean achievement considering that it was just the beginning of the season.
I soon got to wake up from my slumber as I started down the downward slope of my Luck Curve. Looking back I found I have two consulting shortlist which I never believed I would be able to convert and just one i-Bank shortlist. In the meantime I had lost out on JP Morgan, Barclays Capital and A D Little. Oho and Rothschild had not shortlisted me in their first list (Which was a strange piece).
The first derivative of my luck curve once again showed positive signs when the next day I got a shortlist from ABN AMRO, I was really happy with this one for I was among just 12 shortlisted for the same. One thing worth mentioning over this list is, it had a strong "Bong-Connection" associated with it. About 8 of the 12 were either Bengali or were from Calcutta.
The next day was the peak for me as I had three more short lists. Rothschild had modified its', and the other two were biggies!! Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.
HUMMM!!! I was restricting myself with the dream of getting about 3-4 calls and at this moment I had 7 and still about a quarter of the day-0 shortlist yet to come.
I remember making a comment at this point "I don't need any more short list ,for If I am not able to convert one out of 7 I cannot convert 1 out of 20". Though The statement was true to my heart it became true to my destiny as I did not get a single more shortlist. Temasek, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Deutsche all gave me good kicks on my ass. The "Kicks" which charged me up to prepare even harder.
