All about the ‘con’ in consultancy
Written in the form of a diary, this book is the hilarious story of Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese, a graduate from a management institute who joins a consulting firm called Dufresne Partners.
This book was waiting to be written. Written in the form of a diary, it is the hilarious story of Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese, who happens to graduate from a management institute in Ahmedabad and joins a consulting firm called Dufresne Partners. The book opens with Einstein, as his friends call him, getting up rather late on what is Day Zero of the placement week. With 10 minutes to go for the first interview, Einstein lands up with uncombed hair. Now that’s when the placement co-coordinator of the institute comes up and informs him that he has 10 minutes to get his hair straightened out or he would be barred from campus placements under the “potential cause of institutional ill-repute” clause. Einstein rushes to the nearest water cooler and finds a skinny girl in a suit standing there. Taking her to be a junior, he asks her to pour a cup of water gently over his head so that he could straighten his hair out. He also makes a mental note to “seek her out later and chat her up Einstein-style.” Sometime later he walks into a room to be interviewed for a job with JP Morgan. He sees two gentlemen sitting there, busy with their BlackBerrys and waiting for a third person to join them. Any guesses who this third person turns out to be? Well, none other than the skinny girl who Einstein had asked to pour water over his head. Well, sorry for giving the story away, but the book is full of such ‘Inspector Clouseau’ (of the The Pink Panther fame) moments. After being rejected by JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, Einstein takes up the offer from Dufresne Partners, though he tells himself that he had always wanted to join Dufresne.And then starts Einstein’s “fumbling” journey through the corporate world, where he tries to be a management consultant and impress his batch mate and lust-object, Gouri Kalbag. Sidin Vadukut, who works for a business daily, and was once a management consultant himself, does a great job of exposing the hypocrisy of management consultants in particular, and organisations in general. Dork is a light, quick read and should appeal to MBAs and non-MBAs alike.