What's in a name? ... that too in a MBA - ISB?

Well for once this post is not about how ISB as a brand adds value to your resume yada yada yada (it does).

This post is not about how the name of the school or the institute from where you have done your education and / or MBA matters etc. That debate we can save for a later date.

This post my dear friends is about our name (at least mine) and what kind of impact it has. While on campus and even today when I go to the ISB campus I land up meeting the sexily named Chopras, Mittals, Goenkas, Shahs, Sharmas, Kalras, Kumars, Reddys, etc etc and I suddenly squirmed at the "Yadav" tag in my name.

Now before you start thinking I am not proud of my name etc etc, let me set the record straight. I am too narcissist to not like anything that I am associated with including my name. So I do say with "garv" that I am "Yadav, Amit Yadav" and then follow it up with a "How you doin?" (This is where I failed most of my job interviews).

But me and another of my dear friend from my batch "Nishant Pandey" had this conversation once on the campus during the placement season. We discussed what kind of a mental image will the recruiter conjure up in his / her mind when they read the name "Yadav" or a "Pandey" on the resume. Will they think of a suit clad smart looking professional or a village baboon sitting on a buffalo and talking about strategy. This was a discussion in jest and now thinking back I think this surely would have been when Nishant was trying to console me when I did not make one of the shortlists. We laughed about it and also ideated about whether it makes sense to actually add a picture of ours to the resume (I know it would have been more detrimental in hindsight)

But that discussion did linger on in my mind for quite some time and every time I now get a resume in front of me I consciously try to gauge if there is a bias that is creeping in because of the name. Another thing that we experienced during the "Gender and Leadership" sessions in ISB - You will always have biases and can never be unbiased. The trick is to be aware of your biases when you are making decisions.  The prof (I forget her name) also said that if you ever get rid of your biases you will lose your sixth sense.

....... coming back to the point....... I did eventually get a job and so did Nishant and both of us are doing pretty well in our industries and roles. We did not notice any bias against any name during the process but the thought of me being pictured by some recruiter as a "typical" Yadav (don't ask what that means) was pretty funny.

In conclusion, there is nothing in the name : you may be a Yadav, Pandey, Fernandes, Goenka, Mittal, etc, your employer will still make the mistake of hiring you :)

ISB - Stats with Bob Stine

Our Statistics professor for the first half of the First Term was Robert Stine - one of the wittiest person I have ever met.

One day when he was teaching in the class and someone's cell phone rang. He just blurted "Say Hi to Mom" in the middle of whatever he was saying and carried on as if nothing happened.

Here are some of the funniest one liners that he used in his class - courtesy Deepak

What is this life at ISB?

Today when I came home in the afternoon and saw my daughter watch the squirrels play in the jungle behind my accomodation at ISB, I felt sad.

Till that time, I had never noticed the squirrels who are my immediate neighbours. It reminded me of the W.H. Davies poem - Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

So goes the life at ISB - and still you do not get the greatest grades :-(

Why MBA ? Why ISB ?

Of late I am receiving a lot of queries on whether people with 8+ years of experience (or 7+) do MBA? Whether ISB is the best place for it? Is not IIM A better?

Doing MBA or not is a very personal decision and the reasons why one would take up business education in his / her career will differ. Hence I (or for that matter anyone) cannot give a concrete answer on whether MBA will help in any career or not.

I would rather pen down the reasons and the logic why I chose to do MBA at this stage and why ISB:

My take on this was very simple.

In IT (from where I came) nowadays position (leadership) is more a function of time than anything else. However that is the same reason why we see so many not so deserving candidates getting positions of power and authority more because there is no alternative (I call it the TINA factor).

Business Management requires to have a holistic picture and the decision making has to be in line with that holistic view. For example, I as an Engagement Manager may feel that continuing work in my current account is the best option, without realizing that I may not be adding value to the organization. I may also as a manager hold on to resources and under utilize them rather than release them for more productive and profitable use. I have worked under some of the best managers and have also seen some not so good apples in the industry.

I have seen so many PLs, PM, and Relationship managers who have no clue if their project is doing good or not (in financial terms, customer satisfaction etc). Many times I had to explain to people in leadership position that we are here to make money PERIOD. Many managers do not understand the importance of margins, up sell, cross sell etc. I being a CA always viewed everything from a financial angle (which is a myopic view as well). I realized that I am missing the holistic picture.

There were two ways to mitigate that gap. Read up or Go back to School. For me Go Back to School was a better option because I wanted to learn in the right fashion and understand the concepts and perspectives. The next question was - Full time or Part time - and the answer for me was Full Time - If this (managing) is what I intend to do going forward I cannot take half measures. The next question was One Year or Two Years - I decided for one year because I think the 8 years of exp has given me the basics on which I can build up. The final decision to choose ISB was simple. It is the best school in its category across the world. The visiting faculty profiles are great !!

Hence I thought that I do not want to become an incomplete manager. If I want to lead or manage I need to have all the right tools.

ISB was my first choice and here I am.

You all too need to do some more thinking on why you want to MBA and then make the choice. I was also helped immensely by others in this decision making. The decision took 2 years to materialize. So it was not something that suddenly popped up in my head and I jumped into it.

MBA can make sense at any level as long as it makes sense to you.

Dunking Anthem @ ISB

Not me Not Me I cired aloud.
The folks are unforgiving.
They Pulled me out

They threw me , they dunked me
when I tried to flee
for once I was basking
in the wet Glee !

OK OK - why this sudden rush of poetic justice you ask.....

That is because Prakriti has penned down an amazing Dunking Anthem over here (and it is far far better than the one written above)

Game Theory @ ISB

Prof Bruce Allen who shows us around the amusement park known as Economics in his fun filled but fast paced ride, taught us the Game Theory last week.

The Cournot
The Nash Equilibrium (I understood the Bar scene in The Beautiful Mind - in that lecture)
The Prisoner's dillema
etc etc

Now I am trying to relate this to the 'games' that we were playing in our Marketing Class. In our Marketing Class the Class participation (speaking and adding value in the class) is graded and thus there is a payoff for speaking in the class (as long as you make sense).

As per the Game Theory we all in the class were competitors who had a decision to make:

Should I speak or not? Do I have a valid point or not?

If I speak and do not have a valid point then others will counter me and I may lose out on the Class Participation (or so I thought at that time).

So many times, I think I held up my thoughts more because of shyness (now being in Business school you can call it Game Theory :))

.... now why am I writing all this at 2 am?
....... I need sleep
..........I need a life
..............I need a vodka maybe :)

ISB - Some Pertinent Questions

There are some pertinent questions that all aspirants to ISB (or maybe any B-School) have:

1. Is my Profile Good enough to get shortlisted in ISB?
2. Will I get through to ISB?
3. What can I do to improve my profile to get into ISB?
4. What GMAT Score is good enough for my Profile or what is the minimum for ISB?

and I think once a person is near selection or is selected

1. What is the payoff for this ISB - MBA?
2. What salary can I expect in the placements at ISB?
3. Is it worth it?

The funny and the frustrating part of this exercise is that you can easily guess the answers to these questions yourselves.

"IT DEPENDS"

This, I am sure, is true of any Business School and any profile. There obviously are some of the general concepts that you should know about.

ISB values its diversity a lot. What it cannot make up in the international diversity it makes up in its profile diversity. We have more than 10 doctors (experienced Surgeons etc), 60+ CAs who have diverse experience themselves, IIT Engineers with wonderful backgrounds, Journalists, Economists, Entrepreneurs, Consultants etc etc. Thus if you can add to this diversity then you are always welcome. However this does not mean that if you have a background that very few on this planet may have you have an automatic entry (the other criteria of Leadership ability, Need to do a MBA, recommendations etc are required)

This also does not mean that male IT Engineers are shooed away as is the common misconception. Nearly 50% of the batch is from a IT Background. But you still need to distinguish yourself from others and remember that the competition is tough.

I hope one day I get the time to write about what I think one should do to stand out in this competition. (My views obviously)

Life at ISB - Hectic to the Core

Life so far ....... hectic to the core

One week gone - 51 more to go.

It has been a roller coaster so far, but I am enjoying it.......... at least philosophically.

On the Grades front, it has been a mixed bag

I got 6 out of 8 for Class Participation (which is basically shooting your mouth off in the class --- on a serious note it means how effectively are you contributing to the learning exp in the class ) - this is above average score I got 5 out of 5 in the first Eco Quiz and 2.5 out of 5 in the second eco quiz - these two are so far above average scores
Our group got 57 out of 63 in our first eco assignment (again above average)

The group assignments are funny, because the egos and the so called "leadership qualities" of people are showing up.

We are a group of 5 ( for the first 6 months we are more or less a team)
1 - an IIT engineer with 3 years of Infy exp - brilliant chap - absolutely
2 - a BITS Pilani engineer with 4 years of Kanbay exp
3 - an economics graduate with 2 years of exp in Ernst and Young Consulting
4 - a CA with 3 years of exp in Banking (Lending to SMEs) - fun loving

They are wonderful team . Most of them (including me) have worked in teams with a hierarchy and with at least one boss. Here it is completely a flat structure. So it gets funny sometimes and someone ends up moderating . I think things will settle down in a couple of weeks once we know each other well.

Most of the assignments are Group assignments and thus it will be fun working with these brilliant minds.

Happy weekend at ISB

Happy weekend at ISB - The Indian School of Business

I know that there is still one more day to go in the week.

But that is how it is over here. We have lectures only from Mon - Thu. Cool isn't it?

Now that is where the fun ends, because the last 3 days of the week are more jam packed than the first four. There are tonnes of assignments which take your day and night. (just as a relief I thought of writing to you at 4:52 am). The amount of pre read that we have is so much that if I could maintain this reading speed for 2 months I can read all books in TCS library.

Anyways, core Term 1 has begun and life is hectic beyond doubt. The class hours are ok but that is all. Nothing else is close to OK. But I am not complaining because the professors are amazing. The guy who teaches us Statistics is a world renowned author and his books are used around the world as a textbook.

I have Marketing, Accounts (Basic), Managerial Economics and Statistics for this term (5 weeks). I have been given 'exemption' from Basic Accounting only if I submit a research (independent study) paper by end of the term. I am going for that option. I have decided the topic of Valuation of Brands. Let's see how it goes. I thought that rather than attending the classes and showing off in front of non CAs why not take something different. Anyways, I have taken the year off for studying so want to utilize this to learn something. It would have been far easier to sit in the class and top the same (Grade A) but where is the fun in that. So I will be graded based on the Paper that I submit. There are other CAs too who have taken this option.

I am finding it difficult to cope up with Statistics, but hope to catch on.

Amruta (my wife) and Sai (my kiddo) are doing fine. I think they stay somewhere close by because I do bump into them every now and then :-)

Thats all for now -

@mit