The Money Pit

Ah, the news of your first job acceptance. The sense of accomplishment… hard work paid off… regular income… tightly controlled schedule… waking up at 6… loss of social life… wait, why did I want to get a job?

A local bank was conducting a mass interview at KLB today for the senior students who are to graduate in May. The post, should you choose to accept it: insurance sales. Excitement was in the air as the girls poured over the morning newspaper to brush up on current events. That’s one thing that interviewers will usually ask you in India, and these girls almost never read the paper, so they had a lot of catching up to do. This was in the morning, and I realized that a job interview would be a good opportunity to observe some cultural differences. Never having landing a stable career-like job before, I don’t have a lot of comparison, but I figured that it would still be interesting.

First were group interviews. 50 girls were applying for the 10 posts available, and the two interviewers from the bank started by talking to them in groups of ten or so. From that group they narrowed it down to about 20 “finalists.” Singular interviews were carried out after that, and the 10 girls who were finally selected received and signed a sort of contract. Then there were pictures. Each girl was snapped being handed the letter of acceptance from Principal Ramdev (which I found curious, because he had nothing to do with the interviews), and a group photo was taken afterwards. Finally, the girls broke off into groups to call their parents and tell them the good news.

The people who didn’t make the cut? No problem whatsoever. More interviews with more companies would be conducted in April and May, so there was ample opportunity remaining to get employed. In fact, several girls told me that they didn’t want to even get the job at all; they would rather continue their schooling and receive and MBA. So they were glad to not be accepted.

I talked with one girl afterwards and asked her if she was glad that she got the job. She said she was, and I asked if this was something that she wanted to do. Without hesitation, she replied, “No.” Curious. She was one of the ones who seemed actually quite excited to get the offer. She clarified by saying that she still had to talk to her parents first, and she wasn’t entirely sure that it was what she wanted to do. I then inquired what it is that she did want to do for a career.

“Something where I can sit down and make a lot of money.” Well, at least she knows what she wants.