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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Mad Men India

A briefing at Sterling Cooper India

Drona Dhopeshwar(Creative Director): (banging the table) Our planners believe there is a paradigm shift in the market.

Pankti Oswal(Copywriter): (lighting a lights cigarette and then taking a deep drag)Isn't it what we were told last briefing. What's with the paradigm?? No permanent address, aa?? Te he!

Drona: (sipping on chai with a contemplative look)Po da!

Sarvanan Ramanuj(Art Director): (legs resting on the table) Chee! Thoo! You cant freelance as a bulk SMS forward sender with jokes like this!

Drona: Anyways, what I've done is asked Servicing to discuss it with Client and work on a new brief.

Sarvanan: Accha! Jaddi sileney gaye hai! Ha ha ha ha ha

Drona: Eh?

Pankti: What Sar meant was Chaddi! So how do you suggest we work on a new campaign? We know the brief is not going to change!

Drona: Good call, punk. The brief may not change, but circumstances have. We cant get away with having cricketers as brand ambassadors anymore. And yet we have the IPL, which our clients believe will help viewers forget the trauma of having to wake up every morning last winter, only to watch India lose every game in Australia.

Sarvanan: Maybe there is a moral here. Maybe we should go back to film stars as brand ambassadors. What about Rajni?

Drona: (banging the table) I think we've got something there. If we endorse Rajni, the results of the cricket match dont matter anyway.

Pankti: And what's more, we have enough of Rajni jokes to work with for a month long campaign.

Sarvanan: Eggsactly! Lets first publish a set of visiting cards, and mail it to people.

Pankti: Okay?

Sarvanan: Dont you get it? Rajni wont give you visiting cards. His cards will visit you. Ha ha ha ha!

Pank: Oh my gawd!! Ha ha ha ha!

Drona: ha ha ha! And then, his card should only say "I'll call you" and have his name on it. What say?

Sar: ha ha ha ha!

Pankti: Ha ha ha ha!

Drona: Ha ha ha ha!

(Three hours later)

Pankti: I think this calls for a party. What a day!

Sarvanan: Yes! It's time to visit some old monks. In the name of Rajni!

Pankti: Man, Rajni is the life of a party, even when he doesn't attend it? Ha ha ha

Drona & Sarvanan: ha ha ha ha

And the three creatives live happily ever after. At a local bar. Till the next briefing.

Disclaimer: The above actions should not be imitated at work.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Resume Enclosed

I used to have a thriving business during the placement season at the Bokissam Ananthapadmanathan Institute of Technology and Science (B.A.I.T.S). And there were two reasons for that. I never considered myself eligible for placements, owing to my innate desire to devote myself to a detailed study of subjects from my earlier semesters (technically known as ordinances), like Electronic Power Instrumentation Circuits(E.P.I.C), Digital Electronic Signal Processing (D.E.S.P.O), Computer User Network Theory (C.U.N.T.) and some other crucial subjects on personality development like The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, and The Argumentative Indian by my debating pal from Cal.

The other reason was since I was far above the competition, my batchmates were more inclined to share some confidential information with me, like “Extra-curricular kya hota hai, be******d??” and “Career Objective kya likhoon, bo***i kay!”

So good was I at churning out resumes, that I’d earned the moniker ‘CV’ RAMAN. And the money was so good that I haven’t had to write a CV for myself till now, nearly seven years (okay five in my case) after college, when my old clients (a.k.a my batchmates) started sharing my trade secrets with their cousins, bhanjaas and their frnds from Gudgaon, yaar! So I’m now faced with the challenge of writing one for myself. But a bigger challenge loomed. How do I present my CV writing skills in my own CV? That’s a bit like asking a modest Hrishikesh Kanitkar to write about his skills of disappearing from the international scene after being the blue-eyed boy who hit a four in the third last over of the seventh final between India vs Pakistan at the third edition of the Coca Cola cup, celebrating Bangladesh’s second independence (first from India, and then from …wait for it….Pakistan). So before we digress and speak about the irony of the finalists of the Coca Cola Cup in Bangladesh, let’s resume (Nudge! Wink !) the discussion of my resume.

But before I begin, let me elucidate that this is my resume, so press Ctrl C + Ctrl V at your own peril, because it takes a lot of panache to carry off a resume like the one you’ll see below.

Name
: C.V.S.R.N.D. RAMAN

About Me: I’m a Go-getter. And that does not limit to going and getting you your cup of filter coffee.

Academic Accomplishments: Engineering. With honour.

Institutes of learning:

BE from B.A.I.T.S, Dharmavaram
State Board from RK Public School, Dispur (not the one of MMS fame)


Objective:
Yes, indeed. I’m mostly objective, unless of course Sachin is given out LBW despite an obvious inside edge.

Work Experience: 7 years of consulting bright engineers about their job prospects. It is said that their future was in my hands. In fact, I could give it to them in writing.


Extra-curricular Activities:

1. Represented School and College across several age categories at Kho-Kho with distinction.

2. Represented College across South India in Twenty Questions( also known as Tom, Dick and Harry at Bangalore and Engineering colleges at South Canara)

3. Roped in several Fortune 500 companies like McDonalds, Indian Oil, Tata Motors and Waag-Bakri Chai as sponsors for college events.

4. Won several Story Telling competitions since childhood.

Referrals

Enclosed in this mail is a document that collates all the Thank You mails for all successful conversions of Resumes into Jobs, and sometimes careers.

For interview calls, please write to CV_Raman@sachinroxmailbox.com