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Saturday, June 24, 2006

I got a job!!!!!!

So this is how it feels!!!!!!!! Earning your first job, passin a real aptitude test and a real interview. Boy all those MOCK tests were really sitters compared to the real deal. The story goes like this.........

I got to the college at 840, slightly wet from the drizzle today morning. Saw the buddies of my class over there, all in formals. So was i, but i had on a different shirt as i ddnt wanna ruin my prized possession - the shirt i earned from my quiz @ Amrita TV. Had been saving it for so many days now. So there i was trying to put up a good show, so that by the end of the day, i get into WIPRO, a company that started off as a vegetable oil sales company to the multi billion dollar comporation it is now ( i knw many of u ddnt know that fact abt Wipro). Now am not sayin all this cause i got into this company and being loyal to it. Actually am very happy that i got a job and i can rely upon to it if my CAT preparations screw up big time.

So lemme continue with the recruitment process. Reached there and then went to the hall where the Pre Placement Talk(PPT) was scheduled, only to find that the projector ddn't show the image on the laptop and all my friends were trying all tricks in the bag to make it allright. Then i came in the scene, at first even i couldn't do anything. Then as they say "the magical touch" happened and ZAPP! it worked. Now i came to realise the biggest blunders i made today:
1-i ddnt take the audio out cable that was in my table(for the PPT)
2-i ddnt take the 2 photos required(considering th fact that it was me who msgd evry1 in the college to bring them)
So, i thought of all th bad times in my life and prayed to god that this day shdn't be among those. So we tried to make an audio jack in the 15-20 mins we had. Vivek went home and brought some audio jacks, now the only thing needed was the cable. Finally we made a crude arrangement and got the audio working, now the people from Wipro came and lo! they ddnt need any audio out. HOW NICE.

Now the presentation started and all went well till the slide with the salary details came up, i was quite shocked to see that for CIRCUIT branches the salary was 2.04 lakhs a year and for NON CIRCUIT(read mechanical) branches it was 1.74 lakhs a year. Now that was a not such a big issue then as i ddn't have much idea if i will get the job or not! The PPT was good, they told a lotta good things about the company and showed a lot of nice picture as well!

Now came the test! The test was of 1 hour duration and had 50 questions: 15 verbal, 15 Apti and 20 Tech. The tech part really sucked! all C++ n electronics, simply greek n latin to me. Still there were some sitters like "Wat's the name for the junk e-mail that we get??" now with my VAST experience in browsing i got the right answer as SPAM(i knw any kid wd know tht). Then there was NO NEGATIVE marking so i wrote all the questions, except 1. I did well in the verbal n apti part, but was a bit fearful abt the tech part. When i got out i heard people sayin they got 2..........3 right answers in tech, and from my count i had about 6 or 7. So i stood a good chance of gettin thru, and so i did. I got thru the test and then came the interviews.

My interview was scheduled to start at 4 PM, but i was the last person in my room, so it went on till god knws when. The last thing i will do then wd be look at my watch! By then, a good number of my classmates had cleared the tech interview and some had even got over with the HR interview. From my experiences in Stress interviews and Best manager contests that i used to frequent in my college years, i had a pretty good idea wat a HR interview will be like and knew the kind of responces that would get me the job, but then all this only if i clear the tech interview. Finally i got into the room, and was greeted with a bored figure, i too empathised with him, i can understand the plight of a person who is to go through the same routine for 10-15 times in a day. But there ended the boredom and i saw him firing questions at will and surprisingly i didn't do that great! i sucked at questions from mechanical, but i can't do anything if he asks me questions from papers that i passed with the bare minimum 40 marks! He just seemed to know those papers(i have got 3 of those so far in my BTech) and so he just asked questions one after the other. Finally he said "you don't know a thing"; i cdn't think of anything else at that time and i thought it was all gonna end then. But then he had a change of mind and asked me questions from some subjects that i know like the back of my hand, and i did better than the 1st round. Now he seemed pretty satisfied with the way i did and so he went onto ask me about some IT stuff, again i did badly and finally he got that worried look on his face. I got a beat or two off the track and still managed to look cheerful and showed interest in what all he was going to ask. He said "1 final question, tell me the algorithm to draw a line?" and i said a YES!! in my mind and felt like getting up and punchin the air as a sign of victory, but rather i found myslef takin my pen and scribbling what i had learned last semester in my CAD paper. The answer was what he expected, then he said "ok some more questions......". My mind was showing the letters "SCREWED" in multicolor across his forehead. I was thinking why does he want to play games with me again. Then he asked me about the basic features of a CAD software. I thought this chap passed out in 1995, at that time CAD was in the electives of the Kerala University Syllabus, so he wdn't know much. I told some features and then he asked me something i had never heard of! Then he tells me that he worked as the On-site engineer for a project that wipro did for AUTOCAD. How lucky for me, i thought i wd be rejected after this.

But then he said the lucky words " i am passing u onto the next level" I grabbed the form from his hands and ran down the stairs, only to meet my friends who had got there before me, some who were filling it and some who had done all that and now helping others to fill up the forms. After filling it up and pastin my photo(i always have a spare in my purse, HEE HEE)i went to the HR panel and gave my form. I was called in after 3-4 mins and had the interview with the same guy who took the PPT in the morning. He was sitting and offered me a chair. I sat and there i had 2 ppl on either side of me, one the guy whu was gonna do the interview and other this charming lady who was listening to my performance. If i had seen here somewher else, i wdn't be able to take my eyes off her, but here a job worth 15k salary was at stake, so i became the most DECENT guy in that room and answered the questions. They were one's which i was expecting; stuff like why my marks went down after i got into the college, or like what will be a mechanical engineer like me doing in a software firm like Wipro. I did pretty well, and it showed in the guys' face. I got out and was waiting outside, cracking PJ's among ourselves. Then at about 7:15 PM the list was announced, 1st the ppl frm EC, then those from Mechanical, i was just counting how many got and when i reached 8, i thought " oh god, dnt say tht i ddnt make it" and the 10th name was mine.

That's when i felt what one calls absolute euphoria. I was on the nth cloud of happiness!!

Reality hit me when the rain poured heavily as if nature was also cheering with us!

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aliya .....sharin ur emotions here...but my tech interview went a bit better...the guy asked me "why no mention of computers in ur resume?"and i was like i had only basic knowledge in C++,being a bio student in school,no questions frm computer languages! and mech stuff was description of engines tht any of us wld've spaaaaared! anyway hearty congrats to u!MEXX RUUUUUUUUUUUULZ

Anonymous said...

machu...i was also interviewed by da same guy who interviewed you....he always gave you THAT LOOK which gave the idea that you are not going to be selected...man i was too worried like you during the interview..but atlast when he gave me that form i was relieved!!!

Rohin said...

Good post man ...my tech interview was waaaaay better ... the guy and me simply chatted fer a while ... then he was like "would u mind if i asked u very masic questions from cpp??" i was like "no sir" .. he said" i dont ask very tough questions to mechanical engineers" .. and he asked me to rite a programme to print my name...and i did it almost correctly...only the data type i fergot to give as an array.
Then he was like " Im not a mechanical engineer and i know nothin in mechanical so even if u say sumthin rong i wont be able to understand ."..then he asks me "wats ure fav motor? " I say "AC inducton motor" .. (thats the only that i knew the workin of) ..he asks me to say how it works. .. i do and thats it :D

Anonymous said...

Congratulation!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unknown said...

congrats! <:-P

Anonymous said...

this person said what he felt....n thats how all of us would b thinkin n doin...tensd,thn 'll b showing our 33rd tooth!!!Aaah all de best in ur future!!

-: :Abhi: :- said...

Had trouble with this page the other day man!! Nywys tht was nice to share..Congrats! march forward.
(¯`v´¯)
`*.¸.*´
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(¸.•´ (¸.•´ .•´ ¸¸.•¨¯`•DOOOooDoooOOO• ¸¸.•¨¯`•
Abhi

gasmutai said...

Good...and yeah, Congrats :)

Amrita Sabat said...

wow. written straight 4m d heart! no wonder each & every emotion has been captured! we had had our interview on march 12th so it's been long mnths!
congrats 2 u & best of luck![:)]

Anonymous said...

hey this is me..
your description is really nice and while i was reading through i could actually reminiscent the whole thing... it was a real hectic day.. and thanks to you because you're the reason i got in to Wipro!!