Corporate Roadies – The Unheard Story Part II

The Journey Begins

After three days of interviewing, we had finally zoomed in on the 9 people we wanted as our finalists. In another 15 days, we will have our first Corporate Roadies!! By then, I had established for myself the reputation I wanted to and the juniors regarded me as bit of a crack. I remember Karun coming and telling me that one of the juniors had a problem with the interview round but he did not want to confront me. So far so good!! But, this is where the fuck ups started.

While, we were brutal on the fuckups committed by the participants, extra caution had to be taken that we did not commit too many. However, as fate would have it there was a major incident on the very first day. The incident is classified and has not been disclosed here but the implications were a 2 hour delay in the start time of the event. So, we basically had to cut short the event timing which was kind of impossible. So, we decided to continue the event over two days.

Most of the participants did not actually believe that they had made it to the final 9 when I announced their names in class. Once we were in the class to ourselves I asked everyone as to how many people expected to be here. Only Deepayan, Harshit and Prashant raised their hands. Not too bad a job disguising our reactions!! I thought to myself. Ahem!! Harshit came out with an interesting answer. He claimed he knew that he had qualified because of the conversation we had after the interview. Impressive answer smart ass!! But I could not possibly show my everyone in front of everyone so I resorted to a cliched dialogue which I will live to regret courtesy Ankit Sakhuja. “Kutta paalo, billi paalo, saanp bhi pallo, par galat faimi naa paalo.”

Once all the prep talks were done we started with the main event. Gaurav was organizing the event and we had Ankit and Ram as the judges. In the first round the participants were supposed to name their team, draw a logo and justify their team name. Prashant and Deepayan were entrusted with the job of making teams and Deepayan picked Harshit last, a decision he would live to regret in Roadies. But then we are going ahead of the story. This round was followed by a stand according to your age round without saying a word round. No idea what this activity is called!! That was it for the first day.

The next day we were supposed to start with group extempore. But there was something left before that. Vote Outs!!! At the end of the first round events, the team of Srikar, Kunal, Prashant and Sahil had secured immunity. So, Harshit, Lalit, Deepayan and Ashwin were in the danger zone. The vote outs went on without much drama as they unanimously voted Ashwin out. However, an interesting reason was given for the only vote that was casted against Lalit. He does a lot of Politics. Politics, eh!! Something had to be done.

Corporate Roadies - The Unheard Story Part 1

It's been a long time since I last blogged and therefore probably if something this interesting did not happen I was done with blogging for life. But recently Harshit's blog about the Corporate Roadies experience compelled me to write about the Event.

Ideation Phase

Vinit called and asked me to come up with an innovative event for the Juniors and I had casually suggested him that we should hold Roadies for our Juniors. The initial plan we had devised was a much more raw form of the final product. We had planned tasks like Table Tennis Competition with one hand tied behind the back, running competition starting from the ninth floor to the ground floor but all these tasks had to be discarded because of the potential trouble hazards. Then after a lot of brainstorming we finally came up with the so called "Corporate" Tasks.

Interview Phase
Though I remember most of the interviews this is too small a platform to write about the entire interview process which spanned over 8 hours. So I will just talk about the interviews of the finalists.

Lalit was the second guy to come for the interview and his was arguably the best interview we took in entire Roadies. Though I and Shanky (My co interviewer) managed to catch him off guard at times he had a spark about him which was unmistakable. Like most of us he had entered B School as a dreamer and surely these two years of continuous grinding will help him focus and I am sure once he zooms in on what he wants to do he will do great in life.

Harshit's interview was on the second day and he appeared sorted out unlike Lalit and we found it difficult to fluster him. However, the primary issue we had with Harshit was the fact that he stayed within his comfort zone and did not really try to stand out. His interview was a 50-50 as we could not decide how he will react when he was put out of his comfort zone. But all the same he knew what he wanted in life and the conviction with which he answered was splendid.

Deepayan was the toughest choice for us as even we were divided as to whether we should select him or not. While he lacked the spark that the other participants had, his no nonsense composed way about doing things was praiseworthy indeed. His composure actually earned him the nickname of Ashutosh during Roadies and he emerged as a very strong contender indeed.

Sreekar's was probably the most interesting interview as he almost bored us to death for the first half in spite of being so fucking talented. We were about to ask him to leave before we asked him to entertain us and his singing and knowledge about music was fascinating to say the least. He was probably the most talented person but he simply did not know his own talents.

Some other interviews I distinctly remember are Prashant's, Ashwin's, Ankit Madan's and Apoorv's. However, regretfully I can not elaborate on them because of its controversial nature or the space is not enough out here. This is probably the most productive thing someone did in our Industrial Marketing class. However, the class is almost over and I will write about the details of the how the actual event unfolded some other day.