Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Campus Interview


I was in 3rd year Engineering when the "Campus Placement" bug bit me. Me, and my friends "P" and "D" spent quite sometime in the placement center. We took quite a few tests ... mostly analytical / logical. Though securing a job by the end of the third year was in our mind, it was more for fun that we went to the placement center. During the vacation after 5th semester, we were told that ours was a new branch of Engineering and not many companies understood our curriculum.
We, a bunch of classmates, took it upon ourselves to visit several companies in Bangalore and educate them about our curriculum. We came up with a nice brochure and learnt about various companies that visited our college from the placement officer. The guys and girls decided to venture out independently. My aunt "S" provided accomodation for us (girls). Her place was close to several companies we had to visit. The activity was exciting and fun ! This was our first Public Relations assignment:)
I would like to believe that there were some positive developments as a result of our efforts. Some of the companies which had earlier not allowed our branch, wanted to give us a try.
Our college required us to give out the "Dream Company" name before we started attending interviews / written exams. I was confused as to which company I should opt as dream company. Daddy came to my rescue and suggested ABC...
My first company written exam was a disappointment ... I made it through the second company till the final round of interview (HR). I was greatly frustrated when they told me that they were really not interested in my branch .... just that they wanted to give a chance. They never expected that anyone would make it thus far. I was too shocked to even argue at that time !
The next day came ABC company. My written exams went "ok" (I thought) ... and decided to pluck some fresh guavas from "P"'s house. I was merrily enjoying my fruit, when I got a call from the college, that I had cleared the written exam and had to attend the interview in 30 mins. I rushed to the college and made it just on time ! Only then did it dawn on me that I was attending the interview of my "Dream Company". I gave it my best shot. I was the third to get interviewed. There were several others and we were told that the results would be annouced later in the evening around 8:00pm. I decided to head back home.
With amma / daddy's blessing, I came to the college around 7:30pm and I saw a few of my classmates already there ... they came running to me and congratulated me !! Apparently the results were out sooner than expected and I had been selected !!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I have an interesting story about my campus recruitment too. I was still in my 5th semester then, and hadn't really yet touched the core Computer Science subjects. One of the questions they asked me at Infy interview was - What is paging? I wasn't aware of the paging techniques used in the Operating System's memory management. Those were the days when mobile phones weren't that popular, but pagers had a good market share. So I answered to that question as - Calling the paging company and sending a message to a pager :-). They just couldn't control their laugh after a moment of surprised silence.

Shyam said...

nice blog.

One interesting question - where do you get those pictures for your blog???

One thing... campus recruitment should be discouraged. It hamper's students' approach to advanced education. If you argue, "you need not go for placement processes and stay away from them", then, I would say, "I cannot be left behind if my mates are in that process". This will create dilemma on students who really plan for advanced studies.

So, basically, we have to make the companies do "Open house" for graduated students and not students currently in school/college.

PRIDERA said...

ha ha ha !! I really liked your honest answer about paging Roshan ! And come to think of it, you are right too except that perhaps the interviewers were looking for a different answer :))

Shyam, I must disagree about discouraging Campus Interviews. It gives a sense of achivement / security for the students and they should not be deprived of this pleasure at that age :)
Regarding the images ... google image :)
http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi&q=