Placement Experience - I

For most tech students the hardest part of their engineering come in placement season when they have to battle it out against their own friends to get a decent job.Contrary to that placement season in IIITA is a time of festivities.Some 25 companies come for 110 students with a aim to recruit an average of 15 students each... hence not difficult to imagine that by the time placements get over every idiot in my college manages to grab atleast 2 -3 decent job offers along with some cheap T-shirts (I got 1 from Yahoo !! beat that!).
By the way i managed to get an offer from TCS(2.36 lpa) and Induslogic(now Globallogic 4.1 lpa).

My First observation about the whole placement process is that if you did more hard work than your father in order to get in the Engineering college you study ,then you don't worry ..you are bound to get a decent job.

Second ,if you are good enough to be selected in TCS then you deserve much better than to go into TCS.

Third,no matter you study 2 months or 2 weeks you end up equal to all your batchmates.

Fourth ,Placement is very much like lottery in good colleges .Most of students being at the same level get all their offers solely based on their luck no matter what they claim .

My First offer came from TCS ,the company which aims to hire 30,000 fresh graduates this year even when the country only produces some 20,000 decent IT engineers every year out of which 18,000 do not in any way plan to go in TCS. Any applicant appearing for TCS will be scared to hell when he initially sees their written paper.But any person having only slightest of geekish characteristics should be able to see a pattern that TCS only prepare 1 paper for a whole year ,hence as far as your college is not the first college being visited by TCS and you have collabration with the geeks in other colleges ..you are safe.
My written exam was scheduled for 7 am in the morning.Now the thing is that even the saints in IIITA cannot manage to wake up at 6:30 in the morning hence a better idea was to not sleep in first place.So went to my lab at 3 a.m to have a final look at the notorious TCS wordlist ,with the help of mettalica to keep me awake ,the moment of 7 a.m finally arrived .Gave the test and comfortably cleared it so did my other batchmates....most of the ones who got rejected alledgedly cleared the upper cutoff.
We were asked to come with our CV for tech interview in 20 min.Now the problem was that i was expecting a time gap of atleast an hour as i had not taken a bath for 3 days ,had big nails ,shirt and trousers were not properly pressed ,tie knot not tied etc hence not in the perfect looks. So i gave the first interview of my life in a state that if my father ever heard of , would blow me himself with a bazooka .Anyhow, after lot of mishaps like forgetting my photographs in my room etc, I reached in front of my two tech interviewers.They had a look at my resume for some time and this is how the conversation went.

Intervw1 - How do you rate urself in C on a scale of 10??
Me - I am ok ..maybe 7-8 .
Intervw1 - do you code regularly??
Me - You can say that.
Intervw1 - Can you write a program to print character 'f' 15 times ??
Me - hhuhhh?( for 10 sec i thought what was the tricky part i missed in the question .. after which i wrote a simple loop doing what was asked for which even a class 8th student would feel insulted)
Intervw1 - Good explain what u did?
Me - You want me to explain this simple for loop(thinking why the fuck does he want to know about a simple for loop and then explaned it to him).
Intervw1 - OK you are good ...can u simplify it??
Me - simply print f fifteen times like printf("fffffffffff")
Intervw1 - Yes Yes !! that was the answer i was looking for ... u are really good..
Me -huh!!##
(Then the asked some more simple C questions which posed no trouble and then)..
Intervw2 - Do you know about operating systems??
Me - yes sought of (actually i had memorised some 450 pages of my OS textbook)
Intervw2 - So do you know what is an operating system huh huh ??
Me - (great i studied 450 pages and he had to ask from the 3rd paragraph) blah ..blah ..
Intervw2 -Good i clear you for HR ...

This is how my first tech interview of my life went.

Now came my first HR interview which the TCS refers to as MR (some Managerial Review Crap) . This was my most difficult interview as of yet not because of question but the way thay take their interview.
I had to face in front of me a hot HR chick named priyanka and a Senior tech manager(name not important!!).Now this can be a nightmare for a geek like me who hadn't had any verbal contact with a girl in more than a year ... they were playing with my emotions there which was not at all funny.The 50 yr old manager was staring me with such evil eyes as if the girl was his daughter.
Anyhow i managed to take over my emotions and manage to look mostly in the eye of the Senior manager.

S. Man. - Do you know abt Operating systems ??
Me - Yes (good god !! not again ..).
S.Man - What is time sharing ??
Me - Blah Blah....(thank god atleast he reached 3rd page).
SMan - Hmm .. speak on topic Role of IT in India for 3 min
Me -Blah ..Blah ..(I actually spoke for 3 min ... what came out of my mouth i myself dont remember but it seemed good enough for them).
Priyanka-May i say u have very good skills in strategic management .Are you planning to make a career in it??
Me - I am a techi in heart and plan to stay that way(Fuck man !! she said i am cool .. this is not that bad afterall)
Priyanka -Where do u see urself in 5 yrs?
Me - [Standard answer](now atleast i could freely stare at her without worrying abt the evil manager).
Priyanka - Are you mobile ??
Me - yes blah blah ...
Priyanka - thanku .. u may leave.

This was my first HR interview more then the tension and anxiety at that time i actually remember about that Chick (Boy she was hot!!!).Anyway after my interview i went outside and shared all my questions with fellow batchmates under geek code of Information Exchange and then went to my room to have a sleep.I came back at night to hear about the results of TCS ... and heard my name in the selected list ,so did 64 others.. This was my first job hence was special ... called home immediately and said the classic line to my mom "Maa meri naukri lag gayi maa!!!".After which i went to my hostel to celebrate by eating the cholle bhature prepared by my mess as dinner.The dinner was my mess trademark crap food and this is how i celebrated my first job offer ...not exactly the kind of party one would imagine to have after he was no longer unemployed ... but no complaints that day is still a special day in my memory with the neurons corresponding to the event flagged as "The day I lost my unemployment".