My Placement Story...

NOTE: THE AUTHOR INTENDS TO SHARE HIS EXPERIENCE IN THE PLACEMENTS AT HIS COLLEGE AND USES ELECTRICAL ENGG CONCEPTS/SOFTWARES FUNDAS. THIS IS SOLELY FOR INFORMATION PURPOSE, AND IS PURELY NON-COMMERCIAL, AND THE COPYRIGHTS FOR THE SAME RESTS WITH THE ORIGINAL AUTHORS…AND THEIR PLAGIARIZING INDIAN COUNTERPARTS. REPRODUCE THE SAME IN EXAMINATION PAPERS AT YOUR OWN RISK!

The 2010 Graduates across the country will be quite thorough with the word 'Recession'. I wonder how many of us could spell it correctly earlier, but quite sure the percentages have gone up by now! And when you observe closely passing out from a premier Engineering college helps. You get to see a many smiling faces on campus. And why not, Landing on a job from campus will make one confident for sure. It's even more special when you get multiple offers!

I am lucky to have Cognizant, Accenture and Saint-Gobain in my kitty. But I still believe, what makes the process memorable is not the final offer. The blunders you speak in GD-Interview, the frowns you generate, the occasional smiles…the bonding with complete strangers are one of the best experiences you could have. And as I am reminded more than once, Whatever happens...Happens for good, Missing out DELighTTIng and THOUGHT provoking offers somehow helps you to come out better!

Between, if you are reading this coz I chided you to by my bugging messages, I appreciate your interest :P And if you landed here through Google or others I have outsourced the advertising part of this blog,and you wanna prepare for placements. WoW today is your day… You are gonna get Golden Rules for the same!

Firstly, do your homework. Well. I always did my homework before a company came. That's what will make the placement officer proudJ But I realized sometimes I was just too shy to open my mouth at the CETAA hall. If you are reading this to help you in your placements, take these next lines seriously. ASKING (WHAT MATTERS) AT THE PPT HELPS! The Accenture offered a job then and there who could elucidate on some puzzling Accenture-related figures put up on screen!(Nxt time a stud comes in asking whats 1989 special, tell its scream out its when they had the name change!) Again knowing Deloitte is among BIG-4,and saying it out audibly loud. Voila good work! But make sure you don't claim you got 30 out of 40 correct in the written test!

Since you have studied 4 odd years of Engineering… YOU ARE EXPECTED TO SOUND LIKE YOU HAVE! Be thorough with your Project and Seminar details. Even IT companies like Accenture, IBM,CTS etc ask you technical questions. Especially when your GPA don't show you are a geek. But my GPAs do ;) In my Accenture Technical Interview, I was asked about my Profile then my Project; my funda-for-life, my acads, my co-curriculars an finally my GF! But I was Single then….!! I guess he was unsure how such a Romantic person[;)] wasn't ready to mingle… Then I had to impress him with my Goddess theory too(referred to Shivan Nair J). And finally I saw him writing MECHANICAL ENGINEERING STUDENT, GOOD MECHANICAL ENGINEERING KNOWLEDGE!! I am making out that IT companies look for confidence as you speak. But Tech companies are seriously different . My LnT panel was their VP for HR. My grandpa in pants and tie though he appeared. And he was really looking for Stuff! Or so I thought, until the results came out hehe! And what helped me at Saint-Gobain was that I had sat through 5 Interviews by that time. Most questions get repeated. Therefore a good way to prepare is by discussing with friends throughout the placement season. Sites like freshersworld.com got loads of people sharing their questions and experience; a random Google search would also help.

Resume comes in next. At the end of the day its all about selling yourself! Make it brief. 2 pages are enough unless of course you have won return tickets to Mars for working on one of those NASA Mars Probe, or managed an SPJIMR call to be preciseJ. And fill it with stuffs and fundas you are comfortable with! I dare not put my Industrial Visits in my resume, coz I knew I would sound gibberish. A person zero in acads, culturals, technicals manage a certificate or few now! And be proud of your smallest achievements, if you have represented your society at a Chess competition or organized a lunch at the club mention it. Tailor made Resumes are must, put in details what the company is looking for. Just check the 'Careers' link in their site, you will know the kind of freshers they are looking for. Tweak your Resume accordingly. You are not telling a Lie, as long as you are marketing yourself to be THE person the company has come all the way to your campus for!

Dressing/Certificates get them in order. Buy a file large enough to carry important documents validating your resume. Get rid of those 20 days-and -still-not-seen-water-Pants and get a good ironed stuff to dress you up for the kill. Carry a tie if possible. Some panelists just fancy additional fittings! Especially for the Off campus ones where the Hindi-speakin-Junta battle it out with you. 

And yes, try to gauge your Interview Panel! A few questions into your interview try to know what kind of a person s/he is. Honestly it comes with experience. My first interview was when I misjudged an Tech Interview to be an HR one! The pretty lady very frankly told me I am NOT the person they are looking for. And then I realized she was Outspoken too. 

Network well, and it does help. You can find out what the same company looked for in colleges around by talking to students there. Also if you got seniors there, disturb them!


And finally the golden rule is. Stay Confident. If you speak the occasional blunder, it might still sail you through. I had a portly jovial guy at the Saint-G Interview. As we started discussing tech, he asks me the difference between a AC Motor, and DC motor. Sir, AC motor supply is given to rotor, for DC in stator.
He nodded. But he corrected its not always like that.I remained silent. I knew i didn't give him enough Food for Thought. Sir, you expecting more? Well, I could go on, but would never know what exactly he was looking for. I blurted out, Sir Apart from the obvious fact that AC motor works on AC supply, and DC motor works on DC??!! He points to his HR mate, smiles and says... He is from HR, he can give such an answer.. you are an Engineer, you aren't supposed to give such answers!


But by then, I had done my best. And I was through. So at the end, do your best. If your times are great you will come out smiling, if not you have more reasons to re read this post!!

The Visit to the Hospital

You got change, Don’t you?!’ The conductor was screaming. Or so I felt-The bus was quite noisy by now. I took out a twenty rupee note from my pocket, and continued my desperate attempts with my phone. My roommate was sick, we knew it was Cosmo Hospital but had no clue about the room number. A random call to one of his classmates, and we knew Arj was in ‘508’. Fifth floor, Cosmo I said to myself. There was nothing interesting in the journey, except that my mind was wandering & my friends were kind enough not to tell me when the stop had arrived. The screaming conductor was also an alert man thankfully.

A look at the Cosmopolitan Hospital and I had butterflies in my stomach.

My liking for doctors was quite contrary to my indifference towards the ‘State-of-the-Art facility’ they practice at. As a

teenager, I adored the medicine profession maybe because my biology was weak! And being lucky enough not to visit beyond clinics and dispensaries that I certainly thought a smiling, respectable and charming doctor could be the girl of my life! And the fact that Medical College Trivandrum was so close to my college was a reason for my excitement.

Perhaps it was when I realized that a blood test can make me faint that I had to recheck my ideal match notion! I guess it’s like an Astronaut would never marry a person allergic to space dust! (If my analogy sounds stupid, blame the clock:))

Entering the crowded reception, I thought it was going to be a dull visit. People with receipts were moving here and there. Stretchers & Wheelchairs were all around. A man with a plastered limb was being moved out of the Casualty. I was getting nauseated. I rushed with my folks to the elevator. We pressed ‘5’, which was brightly lit then. Huge lift, I thought. A standard for any multi-specialty hospital I guessed.

The elevator opened to a rather dimly-lit corridor. We tracked down Room no 508, and finally some familiar faces was a relief. Arj had been recuperating from Dengue Fever. And I guess he found himself a very nice room. Quite spacious, it opened up to a nice view of the city. I stood there for a while, trying to make out the different routes around the place. As I looked around, the corridors wore a deserted look. I carefully avoided the medical details being volleyed around the room. I guess at least one of the guys joined me on my way out.

Seeing the nature of the hospital, it seemed the burgeoning profits from the hospital convinced the management to add two additional floors. It was Arj Jr who joined me out of the room, and he was pointing to me the Nurse Station. To his delight it was straight across the floor. I didn’t say anything to him. Boys will be Boys would have sufficed. I now felt I was past my interest and comfort to look out for girls!

I was checking around the place, and I realized that apart from the doors to the Nurse Station, you could easily see through the doors to several rooms. I casually scanned through them. Fifth floor…Fourth floor…and oops!..A girl in a blue outfit somehow caught my attention. She looked pretty. No! Stunning! I couldn’t help but believe she was looking towards my direction too. The Achha Bachha in me made me go back to Arj’s room. Nurses had arrived to give him fresh shots of platelets.

It was soon time to go. As we headed back to the elevator, some strange feeling engulfed me. A Déjà vu to be, I felt! The elevator doors opened and we joined about 12 people inside. The 25 people capacity elevator was operated by a thick-moustache man in uniform. He closed the doors of the elevator, and we continued our downwards journey. The speed gradually decreased. There were people to board from fourth floor.

There she was! More elegant and even more beautiful. She stood about an arm’s distance from me, her eyes transfixed to the floor. A close relative may be serious, I thought. Some people still look beautiful even though after they shed a few tears.
When the elevator reached the ground floor, I realized my friend was hinting about her all along! Sometimes your aural senses just don’t register. I simply smiled back at him.

Metamorphosis

Change is inevitable in life and lifestyles. We keep thinking of how we won’t buck the trend, get that burgundy streak or wear those faded denims at some point of time. Our obstinacy may bemuse ourselves, still at the end of the day there are two sides we end up at. We change and then shock/amuse those around us, or debate within ourselves of the state we are in, and stay in the same. Either way, we change. That’s because in both cases we don’t remain the individual we initially were.

Metamorphosis is inevitable.

Everyone in this world has an ego. I realized this late, well I realized this observing myself! We cling on to things we feel is ‘fundamentally fed into our genes’. I blame not the parents. The temperament & notions which we are prejudiced for is an essential feature of our kind. We defend it unreasonably, with very little introspection. The reason is these notions have been passed onto our parents, and we well may do the same!

We are told Smoking is bad, so is Drinking. The generation above us expects that to be taken by default. They might have made some mistake in this regard. That is another point I want to make. The notions I cited, its from the experience of generations above. But, won’t it be much better, if we get to experience it first hand?

Such an experience would put to rest most prejudices we built our lives on. There are issues which may be taken as last words, but I certainly believe there are many more we could debate on. With ourselves at least. That’s because as we evolve, our thoughts has to…too. And only by doing so, can we be truly free individuals.

Lights and Lightnings...

Creative urges, are as pressing as nature’s call.Must be true, I seldom get hold of a pen.

Its raining hard, occasional lightning & thunder add to the ‘feel’ outside.

At home, preparing for my sem ends. It’s been nearly 3 years that I have been learning…well taught.. ahem, referred about potentials, fields, resistances; machines, circuit breakers… Thumb rule, some hand rules and a bunch of theorems I have been told underlines everything I’ve to deal with. My school teachers set this trivia long back…I recall.

I think I enjoy what I study. Its funny u see, if the world finds better ways to transfer energy,than electricity, I might end up at the archives. Thats highly unlikely. Electricity will power civilizations for a long time ahead. And many more like me would battle the task of ensuring that during transmissions, minimum losses take place,protection is set up to tackle line faults, all machines run optimally..blah..blah..blah

Hey, and the lights have gone.(I really love the way we refer to electricity as ‘light’! Most of us do that right?! ) And a grin on my face.

I slide my sofa towards the terrace. At a safe distance of getting drenched, ‘Numb’ is playing in my head. Lightning strikes again..but this time, Benjamin Franklin flashes in my mind and his kite flying prowess.

Isn’t this Electricity too?! At least more intriguing than the stuffs my textbooks rave about. I switch of my phone.

My first blog...

Life is fun, and tiring... brings you happiness and tears... There are things you want to forget, things which cling on as memories...

In this journey called life, living every moment is all you should bother about...