Freeriders with a pinch of professionalism!

This post is a result of a news article that was recently published in The Economic Times instigating an instant spam on freeriders mail list.
Link to the article:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/IIM-A_to_revise_placement_fee_for_flagship_programme/articleshow/1502401.cms


Being a topic of utmost significance and a decision that we had owned till recently, we discovered the setting was just about perfect for a placecom meeting! The participants of this meeting are the free-riders. (Boopos, Candy, Cosmo, Daph, Deepthi, Oik, Peepu, Slippy, Me)

The stage was all set for another round of heated discussions. But, there is a small issue now. The last meeting was held a fraction under 2 years back. We were then purely the pizza ordering, room cleaning, chairs lifting, walkie-talkie communicating, file making, stationery storing, phone line connecting, catering-desk setting, dynamic scheduling, PPT attending, preferences matching, company logo pasting, e-pigeon maintaining, short-list withholding, CV dead-lining, interview scheduling, recruiter-faculty lunch arranging free-riders!

However, two years down the time line, would the placecom discussion still be the same? Or will all of us look at things differently given the “professional-ization” that we have been subjected to! Let’s take a glance as to how things have changed and the influence that professional life has had on us.

Given the gravity of this problem and the possible repercussions it could potentially lead to, free-riders decided to take a day off to meet at Placecom office, Wimwi, Vastrapur. The venue for the meeting was the same old rectangular room in placecom, now with air-conditioning support to manage the temperature that the discussion could possibly result into!

We entered the room and quickly assumed our standard seating configuration. Let’s take a peak into how the discussion started off.


Me: Let’s order some pizza yaar, long-time no free pizza!!

Peepu: Get serious guys, we are meeting after a long time. All I can say is that I missed you all a lot. Those were simply amazing days, those discussions, those night-outs at LKP…

Rest of us: abe koi iska senti band karwao…!

(Peepu then realized that no one actually reacted to his senti speech. Dumb silence ruled the room for 15 seconds. The leli had happened, now let’s get started with the meeting!)

Peepu: Let me set the context for this meeting. As some of you might have read, insti has decided to charge a fee of Rs 1 Lakhs per candidate across all slots. We are here to discuss this matter and I would like to hear your views on this.

(A pause of 15 seconds again…)

Slippy: Let me pitch in, since rest of you still don’t seem to be in any mood to discuss! While setting up the retail chain that I did recently, we had to pay similar amounts to the building constructors per store across all cities in India. I see a lot of synergies of this discussion with my current work and I think insti is justified in asking for this fees.

Cosmo: I think there are multiple sides to this issue. Being a CA, I know how difficult things can get between placecom and insti – the sheer mammoth task of reworking the credits and debits into different slot accounts will require a lot of understanding of accounting basics. Then there is this issue of deferred tax that comes into picture and we need to figure out the possible impact it would have on the resulting ratios that wimwi would get to…

(Dumb silence again engulfs the room; we are all reminded of the dreadful Manac classes and quizzes of first term at wimwi way back in 2003. Candy and I exchange “extreme give-up” looks! Boopos appears to have understood some part of this funda with a nod of his head that either implies that he actually got the funda or he is looking at this as an opportunity to improve his listening skills!)

Comso: … add to it, with the extra cash flow coming in, insti can think of investing in infrastructure bonds that I recently recommended one of my clients to invest in. Typically, high return bonds and there are plenty of tax exemptions under section 420 of Indian Accounting and Tax Act…

(We all again look at each other, with high levels of internal self-doubt and body language that read “anyone else in the same boat? Or am I the only one who still doesn’t understand Manac?” None of us dared to speak a word. It required a brave soul to pull the discussion further. Who better than the anti-placecommer to take it forward)

Deepthi: I don’t want any companies to come on campus. It sounds so stupid to ask for money – okay call it fees. Ever since this article has been published, the recruiting head of my company simply refuses to go any further than one sentence with me on phone call…

(Free-riders burst out in laughter. We all are reminded of Deepthi’s “heellllaaaaa” on phone. We totally understand the agony that Deepthi’s recruiting head had to face and he/she is perfectly justified in keeping the phone down. May be, it’s not the fees debate, it’s just Deepthi driving his/her reaction!)

Oik: Wot the hell? These booshtaards don’t understand the implications of this decision. I spent some time in US and there students from best of schools actually go out and give interviews. So, charging 1 lakh is not a lot and insti must do it. Wot the hell…

Deepthi: Oik, you don’t understand the consumer’s point of view. In all the surveys I have done for projects on campus and at work, my greatest input has been to prove that customers are lying about their preferences. Similarly, companies might say that they will pay, but eventually they will not… Aaai aaam pained by this decision…

Daph: What do you mean by they will not pay? I will Kung-Foo them and get the payment out! I might be getting old, but there is still enough to kick a few recruiters out! Just like I recently scared my boss to death…

Peepu: I think we are deviating a bit away from the main discussion. Being in an entrepreneurship environment, I know how important it is to focus on right things. Do you guys have any sense of financial impact this decision would have?

Boopos: Yeah, I think we should do that. Infact, I will do it tonight. Today seems easy. I should finish my official work early today, by 3am, one hour before my normal time. So, in that hour, I will make an excel model and run different simulations and scenarios for impact of 97 variables including interest rate and exchange rate fluctuations on fees income of placecom and the resulting valuation. I will code a macro for this and when you guys receive the file, simply click the run button. I should send this out by 4am.

(trinnng trinnng… trinnng trinnng…looks like someone just got a call. Oh, it’s Candy with his psued “hello” on phone. He blushes and says “yeah, sure, this evening sounds perfect to spend some quality time together on this”… and rest of us are like… “dude… kya crack maara hai!” He finishes the call and is back to the discussion. To break the anxiety (and jealousy?) surrounding the placecom room, we asked Candy… “ehh… bandi?”… and our man nods in disapproval… “again a call from my boss… chutti pe bhi he wants to have a conference call to discuss the slides… uski to @#&**@^#…” to get back the discussion on track, Candy pitches in with his 2 cents…)

Candy: I will think about the whole situation from buy and sell side point of view. In the recent deal that I had worked on, we supported our client on raising funds for the acquisition that they had decided to go ahead with. So, if the need be, I can help the recruiters raise funds for the wimwi recruitment process. It should be fairly straight forward, after all this doesn’t even look close to a deal of billion dollars. Tell you what, I will actually not spend my time and energy on this, I will ask a new fachchi in company to take care of this.

Peepu: That is a valid point Candy… I think you are right.

Daph: But, there is a chance that companies might make us sign a bond in return, given the high levels of “job switching” that is going on these days…

(I was like chilling out in one corner of the discussion table… I looked at everyone else… and it struck me…they all had chipped in, everyone had put in some CP or the other… ohhh crap, I haven’t said a word till now. What would fellow-free-riders think of me? That I don’t even have a point of view? I will not let this happen. The setting is perfect for a consult CP… I need to show the vision that I have for placecom…I gather all my thoughts to put a consult CP)

Me: Firstly, thanks everyone for all your views. This was a very “insightful” discussion that would go a long way in enhancing our differentiation as wimwi placecom freeriders. But, I can’t believe we have gone through the entire discussion without slides. I think, we need 2 circles at the top of slide, overlapping with a triangle in the middle and then a solid rectangle at the bottom of the slide to support our vision. Then we need to consider the synergies and the factors that would feed into creating sustainable competitive advantage for wimwi placecom in the medium to long term. Once we have envisioned the new placecom with new fees structure, it is critical to get a buy-in from various stake holders. One key question that we need to answer is: Is collecting fees the core of our placecom strategy? If not, shouldn’t we be looking to add value to our core verticals like building sustainable relationships with recruiters? My view to the entire puzzle surrounding the fees issue is that the answer probably depends on the adjacent externalities and the resulting internal fit! We are talking about a potential paradigm shift here!

(There was silence in the room again. I was like… wow, I have proved myself to be a stud!... look at all of them, they didn’t follow anything, total lack of vision I would say… ehhh… sudden change in configuration of the room… oh noo… another typical ending to placecom meeting as Boopos screamed out… Tharki ko bumps!!!...)

Disclaimer: The above post in no way supports or opposes Institute's decision to change the recruitment fees structure. This post is purely for entertainment and any other conclusion resulting out of this post would be purely coincidental. In any case, free-riders are only a minority subset of Placecom 2005 and therefore do not represent the batch's point of view on this topic!