Dear Juniors,
Now that you have been introduced to committees and have been inducted into college (Both formally and informally), the next natural step is Committee selections.
Do you see everyone around flustered by the whole process, at this time at-least one year back I could classify the batch into broadly three groups
- The Ambitious and Confident
- Not so confident, but don’t want to miss out on whatever is happening
- Been there, done that, Not interested
A vast majority were in the second bucket, and although I am a fan of Mark-Twain’s Quote (Whenever on the side of the majority, pause and reflect), I was interested in writing and was up for any committee that would take me for writing. It Is not that I was /am a great writer, but I knew that working on something I loved would never seem like work, but like a much-needed break from academics. So choose your committee and vertical wisely.
Broadly if I had to classify, committees can be classified as
- Placement and related
- Academic Affairs
- Student Affairs
- Extra-Curricular and Co-Curricular
- Functional
The skill-set and aptitude for each committee are not very different, only the magnitude varies from committee to committee. Placement related committees will require a lot of your time as compared to other committees. B-Schools are also a lot about perception building, and committees help in this. This perception matters when you are trying to market yourself in front of a recruiter, or when you are trying to build your credibility in front of your own batch/juniors/seniors. Committees are also a good way to work with a different set of people you might not meet usually.
Although committees usually have verticals, there is a convergence of roles in each committee, and this offers both exposure as an appreciation of other’s work.
Committees are an easy way for colleges to get important work done through students. A sure shot way of getting people to work for you in a B-School –Dangle a CV point, set up a recruitment process, schedule Interviews and call out for applications, peer pressure and group dynamics will work beautifully and you will get a bunch of talented people eager to work for you.
So those of you interested in applying for Committees, how can you go about it?
Step 1: Brush up your resume – Make Sure your CV has all the relevant points that will be applicable to the committee you are applying to
Step 2: Talk to seniors, and find out what does the committee exactly do, the incumbent seniors would be the best people to talk to, as they would have had one year’s experience in dealing with things
Step 3 : Talk to your own batch on what their perception about committees, some of them might have friends in the senior batch who would have told them how exactly things worked
In my case, I was always interested in PR and writing, so I applied to only those roles which had these as a part of their Job description.
All said and done, does all this mean that people who are not part of committees miss out on all the fun and noise (Most often it is not).There are a lot of things to do on campus and committees are just a means to an end. There are several informal groups which get together and do what they love, the committee just formalises things and are a means to attain a CV point, but in a B-School you will never fall short of things to do.