Recruitment Season Part 1

It is that time of the year when final year students of all shapes, sizes and IQ levels try to parlay their expensive degrees into somewhat meaningful careers - thereby absolving them of the guilt and regret they might otherwise feel for having spent most of their university lives passed out.

Most hopefuls I come in contact with are considering accounting, finance (I hate it when people lump those two together - they are clearly different and only an ignoramus would think otherwise), law or consulting. Clearly the poster boys for "meaningful careers". I guess this is because these careers don't really require an understanding of string theory (of which we have none), but plenty of fleece theory instead (of which we are abundant in). It's also the fastest way to repay the student loans from your parents/the government. A Nobel Prize takes, what, at least 25 years of hard slogging, and you only get $1 million (which you'll probably have to share)? In commerce or law, you can easily get that in 20*.

Sometimes we get randoms from the Arts faculty who have somehow come to the conclusion that studying Turkmenistani philosophy makes them perfect investment bankers. Maybe so, but until they can prove they know how to securitise and hedge it, they will have to settle on being management consultants (which they invariably do).

In commerce and law faculties throughout the sunburnt country, students listen with eagerness as waves of investment banks, law firms and consulting firms ply their wares. Nothing much changed from back in my days. Common themes become obvious early on:

- every bank, law firm and consulting firm is Number One at something... #1 junk bond syndications team... #1 M&A advisory house ("OF COURSE you should take them over!")... #1 in "most number of recycled knowledge peddled out to clients for fat fees"... #1 in "most number of conflicts of interest"...

- every student will try to impress, even the lowliest analyst or legal clerk, trying to curry favour to "give them an edge" during the interview process. Analysts and clerks, despite their enormous workload, usually like attending careers fairs because they get to lord it over students. It's the only ego boost they will get at that stage in their careers.

- there will be at least one director/partner (invariably male) representing at the careers fair who will hit on a much younger hottie (invariably female). And they will get away with it. This will earn great hate and respect from all male students, motivating them to emulate said director's/partner's success (for better or worse).

- students will all try to ask questions which to them sound unique and intelligent... not realising that question has already been asked (probably originally by me all those years ago), is no longer unique, and makes you sound like a twat who doesn't deserve to even work as a doorman for any of these prestigious firms.

- firms will usually fall into two categories: those that boast about their "work-life balance", and those that scoff at it. The former will bait those Generation Y'ers who believe work is an optional activity, just like lunchtime soccer, yoga, and committed relationships. The latter will bait those who think they are "elite" and have no use for such nonsense as exercise, family, or the ability to make decisions without using nested IF functions, and hence don't need balance. Either way, the end result is eager beavers of today ---> rocket fuel for tomorrow.

Anyway, I was asked to participate in this year's carnival to represent my employer and paint it in glowing terms. As much as the afternoon off would have been nice, I declined for two reasons:

- another firm is still using their three-year-old brochures... and I'm in it. How you could justify using the same brochure when over half the people in it have left is a mystery to me. This has to be in breach of TPA or something.

- they stuffed up my original application... twice. I am still bitter over this.

As a compromise, I voluntarily promoted our graduate program via email to contacts, especially for the Asian offices. Actually this is rather interesting on its own, and deserves its own post later. For now, I must find some other distraction from this stupid game of chicken that we are playing with the client.

* Under certain unrealistic Modigliani-Miller-type assumptions.