Placements for me have recently concluded. That means I have a job. Yay! Now getting to the point of this post. It all started with a Pre-Placement Talk (or PPT) by a company. It was a consulting firm so they did their talk in style roping in a Firang partner whose mere presence silenced the entire auditorium of 400 odd final year students for 3 hours. I am not allowed to say the name of the company. That would be a Dark Violation. Obviously! (inside joke alert)
The guy was good, actually. Not just "white" but smart (He had a PhD in Maths) and was fantastic with a mic in hand. IITians have low patience and to hold them for 3 hours was no joke. I'd asked him a question which had bothered me for a long time. The question was this. "You're an American company with American clients. How do you justify using Indian employees to solve their problems?"
Now instead of answering this straightaway he says this, "Wow that's an amazing question. I have to take my coat off to answer this." Then he goes on to say. "We needed a talent pool from where we could get people who had a background in mathematics and were also interested in making money. We found such in India and we can sell this to clients"
Now this was very flattering for any student to be called a part of a "talent pool" and saying that it was "an amazing qestion" add the fact that someone wants to pay well for our services. Not that we haven't heard it before but again coming from a firang it carried that much more weight. That is not how I think. I'm just portraying what he must have thought he when he was saying all that.
The point remains that he didn't really answer my question. When you read between the lines you find out that he actually did. That right there is the first lesson in consulting (or any business). If you can't answer, for whatever reason, flatter the client :P
Here is what his answer meant. An average consultant coming out of an undergraduate college earns a basic salary of somewhere in the range of USD 50-65K. That is strictly speaking, just above average (around USD 45k). It is no secret that Indian employees are a cheaper (some may even say smarter) alternative. But the answer was really what he said. We're interested in "making money". The salary they pay here, around INR 12 lac per annum (USD 22.5k at the current rupee rate) is quite high as per the average Indian standard of living. The opportunities to go abroad (read US) are added incentives which are lucrative to us but make no sense to American graduates. Now how do they justify this to their clients? Since the services of Indian employees cost less, it costs the client less and the client is willing to trust the consulting firm with its problem in the first place, they can trust their judgement with choice of employees :D Another lesson in cosulting, creating win-win situations or at least showing that you are. :)
So there. This is what he should have answered but didn't. Why? I don't know. I guess he didn't say it in such clear terms because that's his job. To say only that which has the desired "effect" without actually giving anything away. Not that it would have made any difference if he would have said that Indians are cheap labour but they're still paying you more than other Indian companies. We're quite open about it. But again, it's his job. So all in all, a job well done Mr. I mean... Dr. X (remember he has a PhD and I'm not allowed to say names.)
Now why am I writing all this? Oh yes, value judgement time. I'm writing this because it was one of the better PPTs I attended. Is it bad to beat around the bush and say what the client wants to hear? Ethical folk may say yes. But on a more logical scale, there's no right or wrong, just results. If the client benefits and the consultant makes money out of it, what one said in the presentation is just something for the records. So that way his answer was justified or so I think now. Then I was too high to make sense of it (probably he was too :P). But I can be sure that I heard and remembered right. I always do. ;)
