Looks like its all over

I am writing this post using opera, and its showing me ads of the Didgeridoo Gallery. Seems kind of wierd that my blog brings up ads of didgeridoos.

I just got one of the most awaited mails if my life

"Your Product Management grade is 2.70
Please contact PGP office for any further clarifications. All the Best, HB RAMACHANDRA PGP Office
"
That means that I WILL be graduating on March 28th.
Having just recieved and accepted a job offer yesterday this became all the more important. And as i promised one of my friends its time to break open the bubbly.
But before i do i just have a few thoughts about the placement process, in particular the media hype about it.
Theres just been a post on our local messagins system calling everyone to a particular place to celbrate the expected completion of final placements 2006.
I've had reservations about actually posting this. I actually wrote this a few days back as soon as the effect of the media hype had sunk in. In fact thats probably why its so vitriolic.

For those of you who dont know, the IIMs(and most Mgmt Institutes in India) have a segmented placement process. The companies are segmented into
1. Slot/Day Zero: I-banks/Consults/amd anything similar offering lots of money or foreing posting
2. Slot/Day 1: Anything which has bank after its name, couple of big soap companies,a few slot zero type companies which dont have the brand image good enuff to be at slot zero and some it companies added for good measure.
3. Slot/Day 2: The rest
4. Slot/Day 3: The rest
... and so on ad he whole batch is placed.
Of course there are laddering and other solutions where some companies are Slot 0.4 or Slot 1.6 or even 1.4. Its all really wierd.
Bascially what this means is if you are marketing/it guy you have limited chances till Slot 2 actually starts. Which is fine, except this time the Great Indian Media Industry had other ideas
They along with the PR guys of the various IIMS came up with creative masterpieces both in print and in tv to hype up the entire placement process.
Since i am in an IIM all i can say for certain is that the aim of any press release is to out do the other IIMS and to make sure that nothing in it can be disproved. Dont get me wrong i am all for competition and competing for media share is also important. And there's no point in being holier than thou and spreaking of theoritical constructs like the "truth".
Dont get me wrong Day Zero offers are awesome and the careers of these people is really stellar to say the least and they hype behind them is worth it.
However there are other consequences of such hype.
On the morning of slot 1 here, when the larger part of the batch was yet to be placed, the whole world began to assume that everyone here already had a Day Zero kind of offer in hand. By that i mean parents/friends of students yet to be placed. Everyone started recieveing phone calls, emails and orkut scraps congratulating them and asking them about their offers. It was kind of ok for me because i had already one offer(not day zero but still...) and most people i knew, knew about that and hence there wasnt much ado.
It can be really nasty when you are tense about getting any job and someone asks you if you are going to New York or London. In fact one of my friends who is kind of popular actually had to change his orkut profile to indicate that he was still looking for a job and that he would inform one and all once he made it.
Just imagine you've attended a million interviews for a zillion jobs, with no positive response. You come back to your room to tired to stay awake, too worried to sleep and someone calls you up and asks you how many millions you will be making.

I dont know what can be done about this, but there was a lot of unnecessary pressure on guys who are already really stressed out and i think this can be avoided. My only suggestion is to kind of start playing the media game only once the entire batch is placed.