Day Zero

Ya, its about placements!

But this was an event organised by MDI, Gurgaon in their annual fest 'Imperium'. It was an operations game and this is how it went.

There was an online elimination round like any other B School event. We were given a set of 10 puzzles to be solved in an excel sheet and a time window of 2 hours. The game started at 12 midnight and submission deadline was 2 am. We were a team of 2 and did 8 questions in 90 minutes and submitted it. Rest 2 questions were not really worth trying, so we gave up.

Next day, a notice was put up (they had created a blog) that two of the questions have been canclled as there were some mistakes in them. We had not attempted one of them but the other one's mistake was minor and most of the participants had apparetly rectified on their own. There were lots of comments on this and I am still not sure what final decision was taken. They were quite firm in taking only 8 questions into consideration.

The results were finally out and we had made it! Next round was to be played in MDI campus, which meant a Delhi trip for me :) :) Going back to Delhi after almost 6 months was something I was really looking forward to.

Well, well...we reached Delhi after a delayed 4 hour train journey :D The on-campus round also had 3 rounds, so to say. The objective of the game was to "place" maximum number of students in a simulation game of 2 hours but before that lots of gorund work had to be done, which were the submissions in the previous rounds.

Firstly, we were given a profile of 50 students and details of 20 companies. We had 1000 points and had to bid as well as rank a company. There were 6 teams in the finals and all had to do the same. The restriction was that a company will visit maximum 3 campuses (i.e. teams) based on points bid by the team. If the bid clashed, then the team which has given a higher rank to that company will get it. We were given 2 hours to go through profiles of all the students, write-up of all the companies et al. Finally, we had to come up with the bid points for all the companies and their rankings too. Also, each team will get 10 companies in their kitty.

After doing this, the next round began in which we were told which 10 companies we have got. We got 9 out of our top 10 choices :) Well begun, we thought! Next task was to "slot" the companies. There were 5 slots and each slot could have just 2 companies. This is where we made 2 blunders. We gave wrong slots to 2 companies (which we obviosuly realised very late :D) and hence it hit us hard, really hard, in the end.

After the slotting business was over, the simulation game started. At the outset, I must say, the MDI guys had done an excellent job in making that simulation game. The programming, interface, logic, ease of use and just everything was too good about it. Here, they had introduced some uncertainty too. For example, if I slotted a company at 8 am, it could come earlier or later also (it was quite close to real placement process). Moroever, they gave us details of 5 rooms where interviews could take place. The condition of all rooms were different and there was a waiting room too. There were two more concepts - motivation level of companies and motivation level of students. Both were at a level of 100 to start with and varied according to many parameters. For the comapny it was dependent on room given, quality of candidate sent, waiting time between 2 candidates, number of candidates they selected, if rooms were full then the time spent in the waiting room (there no interviews could take place) etc. For the student, it decreased according to waiting time, interviews attended in terms of time and numbers and number of rejects. It was clear that once a person got selected in one company, he/she is out.

The simulation game was for 2 hours and the time frame in the game was from 7 am to 11 pm. Those 2 hours were intense as companies kept coming, space had to be allocated, students who had applied only to be sent, keep a track of students being selected and kind of students which need to be sent for a company etc. Finally, we were able to place only 26 students and we lost. But, in the end it was enjoyable experience :)

An excellent effort from MDI.

The MBA effect

When one has completed 1/3 of MBA, some of the concepts learned are bound to have an effect in decision-making and analysis.

My term 2 ended on 12th Dec and term 3 was scheduled to begin on the 15th itself. I was supposed to go to Delhi for 13-14th weekend for a competition in MDI, Gurgaon and next weekend (19-21) again in FMS, Delhi, again for a competition. I planned to leave on the 12th evening, come back on the 15th morning and then leave again on the 18th evening; thus minimising my number of classes being missed.

When I told this to one of my classmates, he advised me to stay in Delhi for a week, which was not such a bad idea given 4 days in Delhi would be a fun-filled stay. Well, I told him that I would miss one-week classes and its a matter of 5,000 bucks for a trip. Now, this is where cost management concept creep in :D

I told him that our term fees is 60k for a 10 week course and hence 1 week classes cost me approx 6k, so missing them does not really make sense. But he said, our fees is a sunk cost, so it should not really be considered for decision making. Then we discussed at length about how can we find if spending extra 5k is worth or not. We concluded that if somehow are able to 'quantify' the value added and it turns out be more than 5k, then missing classes wont matter!

We laughed in the end that this is what MBA does - complexifying (if that word exists) such a simple thing :) Well, in the end I did went to Delhi twice in a gap of 5 days and not because of 'value added' but because of attendance issues!

My Delhi trip, experiences in competitions in MDI and FMS will be posted soon.