I was as always loitering on the internet when Pai came online. I told him dude i wanna post something in my blog, i got no ideas. He waited for a minute and gave me this idea.
One of my best experiences in a pool campus placements.
The frenzy began the day i got email saying there would be placements @ SJBIT. I called up Pai. We had a long conversation about what are the requirements, how the recruitment process would go on, so on so forth. So we finally decided to go and register for it. So it was decided i would meet him @ 10 near Vijayanagara bus stop.
On monday i got up @ 6 (it was midnight in my mind
). Got ready by 9 and messaged Pai that i had left my place and i would him @ 10 near Vijayanagara bus stop. But as the whole world (probably) knows Bengaluru traffic is not your friend on any given day. I had to change our RV point to Manuvana Coffee Day (WE DID NOT DRINK ANY THING THERE
). I kept messaging him about my where abouts till i finally threw myself out of the bus at Magadi Road. My choices of bus routes left me fuming when i reached @ the RV point. Pai as usual was looking calm. The dude started up his RTR 160 (??). Then started off a sort of painful journey till Rajarajeshwari Gate. From there it was pretty smooth drive till SJBIT. Its my practice to do namaskara to Goddess Rajarajeshwari, it started off the day i joined RNSIT. I asked him to go in front of the temple for blessings. Pai was totally confused as to whether he wanted to park and go inside or it was a drive by. I just told him it was like a pit stop and we needed to scramble to SJBIT. He knew 1 route to college and i knew another. I left it for him to choose, he chose the latter. The road to our college (RNSIT) is seriously better now. We finally ended up in SJBIT @ around 12. (Pai correct me if i am wrong).
We were surprised to see no crowd inside the college. We thought the registrations were over. But we took a chance, went inside the admin building asked for the registrations, we were directed to the first floor. We were made to wait in an adjoining room. Most of our RNSIT fellas might remember this placement assistant Umesh Sir had. Yeah… now he’s assisting Mr. Gurcharan Singh in SJBIT. We were asked to submit our resumes and other details. We were given a serial number, its i-will-tell-you-but-i-will-have-to-kill-you kinda confidential
. This number had to used by us during the course of the placement rounds. After registering i remembered to apply for PDC. I met Charan and wished him for his GRE score and future endeavours. I took the PDC form and was on my way home. I DROVE PAI’S APACHE RTR 160 (??) TILL RAJARAJESHWARI GATE. YIPPEE FINALLY I DROVE A MOTORBIKE
Since I am a “VETERAN” of 10 interviews i had an idea of what to study. I had 4 days in my hand and an abundant studying to do. It is best described by this image of Pai.
He himself is placed in TCS. Since they have’nt called him yet, he wanted a shot @ Accenture. I talked to a friend of mine, Raj, @ AFB to know what kind of questions i might be asked @ this interview. He gave me a short description of what kind of questions, they ranged from very simple C to pretty nasty OS questions on the technical side. On the non-technical side he wasn’t very sure, he just told me to answer based on the questions. Raj is one of the best technical minds i’ve met from the industry. 7 years in Infosys and superb tech knowledge coupled with an awesomely good attitude, he’s a real nice guy to talk to. Thus i completed my Monday.
My tuesday to thursday was no better. Getting up early, gobbling up almost all the text books @ my arms length, sleeping late, talking to Pai about updating and printing my resume. It was nothing very nice. To add to this fuss i had my french test to attend to. Well as i expected i just bombed it. BOOOOOOOOOM!!! And ont wednesday luck was on my side, i got a direct bus home after french class
. Phew!!!
Thus, we come to the D-Day. Pai calls me @ 6 in the morning to tell me i had to meet him @ SJBIT @ 7.30. Come on dude that was atrocity you knew it
. Anyways i promptly reached at 8 and searched for Pai. He had my resume. If i could’nt find him, it was the end of my chance at Accenture. Finally found him at the helm of a beeline. We were sent into Room 206 for written exam. To our great surprise and to Pai’s bad luck Meritrac was conducting the written exam. Till now i HAVE NEVER passed their written round. It started off at 8.50 precisely, after we had filled our particulars and registration numbers. 55 questions and a essay to be completed in 60 minutes. CET was much better than this. As always i had fun doing english and logic part, but the quant part sent me up in flames. To add fuel to the fire, the essay topic was “Education System in India”. I took out all my anger on it. Criticised our education system to max extent possible in around 100+ words. After we had given our papers we were asked to leave for the day. Pai and me were left gaping at each others faces after we discussed the paper. We really needed to unwind, so landed up @ Coffee Day near our coll. Sat there sipped coffee and talked about what we should study if we got through. Finally after 1 hour we decided to break for the day. I took the route in front of Goddess Rajarajeshwari, to seek her blessings. At around 8 in the evening i received a message, and an e-mail which said “You have cleared the written round. Tomorrow report to SJBIT at 8 with following documents.
1. Copies of marks cards.
2. Copy of Government issued ID card. PAN card mandatory.
3. 3 passport size photographs.”
Immediately i got a message from Pai saying he too got through. Then the whole what should i study started. I stuck to my technical side and studied Java.
On Saturday i reached SJBIT perfectly at 8 A.M. Pai had just come out of the parking lot. I purposefully went straight for him and honked loudly for him to look up at me. He had worn his lucky shirt (got him into TCS) on his mother’s request. After i had parked we went in search of a place to empty our tanks
. Finally we found the empty-your-tank area and emptied our tanks. Man thats really a relieft
. Then met Abhist, Arun (working @ Meritrac) and Hegde. Then we sat in their auditorium where our names would be put into groups of 15 for GD. Pai and me ended up in the same group. Topic of GD “Bangalore – IT Hub or Garden City”. GD = Organized Fish Market in this case. By the time i had raised my hand to make a point some other person would be shouting. Finally the GD co-ordinator from Accenture gave me a chance to talk. I just blurted what i had been thinking and also accused the government
That got Pai, 11 others and me into next round. After this we were made to fill out some form, sorry i dunno its name. Pai told me its called employment form. (Getting placed in a company has its advantages
. )
After this i was put into HR. Surprise Surprise!!. HR person asked me about myself, my family (he started noting my parents and sisters name and their occupation), my idol (i refuse to have any idols
), global n indian CEO and their revenue, i dint know any of those. I told him i had gone through their site and their core values like integrity, customer values, unyielding ethics etc. He asked me whether i would willing to work in any domain, anywhere in india and ready to sign a bond. I agreed to all of them and also told him i prefer java but i am fine with any other area. He asked me whether i was taking any courses currently. I told him about my Niit Java course (core java, jsp, servlets and ejb). When i told him about ejb, he noted it down. EJB and ethical values might have caught his attention and he put me through to the technical round.
I waited for my turn in the technical round. While waiting i met Venkatesh (RNSIT) and Ajay and Manoj (PU friends). Venky seemed very calm and not very excited to get to technical round. Come on he is the MAN why should he be worried
. Ajay, Pai and me talked for some time, exchanged numbers (ok don’t go to Section 377
, we are old friends trying to catch up
). Then it was my turn, i just gave my bag to Pai and went into the room. A big class room cream in colour consisting for lots of benches for students to sleep on during the classes (what are benches used for anyways ???). A very senior person of the Accenture technical panel crew asked me to take the seat. Sir and me were the only person in the room, and the clock to my nervous break had started ticking Tick Tock Tick Tock!! He is charming person with a calm demeanour. One smile from his face calmed me down to a certain extent. For starters that’s a relief (meaning you won’t be subjected to utter humiliation after which you start pitying yourself
).
He started off with a simple question “Puneeth, which branch are you from ??”. I replied “Computer Science, Sir”.
Sir (smiling) : “Computer Science, I like it. Now, tell me about yourself”.
Me: Technically or Non-technically.
Sir: Which ever you wish to.
Me: OK. Born in 1988, I travelled a lot since my father is in Central Government job. Finally settled in Bengaluru. My favourite subject Mathematics especially Calculus and Trigonometry. And i have interest in cryptography mainly encryption and hashing algorithms. I want to create my own hash algorithm. I just want to do it.
Sir: Good, what is the difference between System Software and Application Software.
Me: Sir, system sofware is mainly based on OS and application sofware is client specific and it sometimes inculcates system software into it.
Sir: Ok. Do you know what is SOA ?
Me: Service Oriented Architecture ? No sir, but one my friends had told me its mainly about distributing jobs to different people. It’s like if you are asked to do a project by a client, you distribute parts of the project to some third-party developers. I’ll learn what it is. (Grinning!!)
Sir: Yes you will learn (said it with lots of affirmation in his voice). (Looks at my marks sheets). You seem to not like Logic Design.
Me: It’s pretty confusing subject sir, but i’m pretty good at boolean algebra.
Sir: Also, you scored less in data structures.
Me: Well sir, i knew i had done well but i dont know what went wrong. Next time wrote and score pretty well.
Sir: 61, that’s good.
Me: Thank you sir, after that exam i was admitted to the hospital. He he.
Sir: Ok tell me about shell programming.
Me: Unix Shell Programming ?? (This is where i dig my own grave. Classes are provided with/without request
)
Sir: Oh good you know that, tell me about it.
Me: Ok. it is mainly an interface between user and kernel and hardware. (I was doing all kinds of gestures and drawings in air with my hands, and he observed it.)
Sir: You seem to remember the structure, please draw it.
Me: Ah!! ok sir. (I drew some figure, forgot where the shell is situated and my grave got deeper and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge).
Sir: Arey, Shell kaha hain ??
Me: Ok. Now i am confused.
Sir: Ok. Tell me any new technologies you know about. Don’t tell me java and .net, some other you know about.
Me: Python is coming along in a big way.
Sir: Not in programming, in the software side.
Me: ……..
Sir: Ok for example billing, banking etc.
Me: Oh ok. ICICI banking software, the IBM project i worked on. All those the busizness appplicatoins.
Sir: Ok. Now you are in a team and you team has been given a project to complete. Your friend and you have conflicting ideas. How will solve this issue ?
Me: I’ll talk about the pros and cons of both the ideas and then let the team decide. Just now i mentioned about my IBM project sir. There my main role was to take of database security. I was asked to implement a security algorithm which would not consume time. The fastest algorithm that flashed to me was MD5. It does not require any keys for encryption and decryption. I applied it showed it to the company. Before the project was successfully deployed i had to start of my college project, so don’t what they did. (Grinning).
Sir: Ok. Puneeth thank you for time.
Me: Its not my time sir, its yours. Thank you for this oppurtunity.
I came out with my chin touching my throat. I looked at Pai and just shook my head in disgust and took my bag. By then Arun had returned with my sheet. He shook his and my worst fears were confirmed. I walked towards him to re-assure myself of the situation. He gave me big smile and said “Maga you got through, wait for the HR lady to talk to you. Yavaga treatu ??” I just hugged my and almost danced in ecstasy.
Then came the wait for the HR lady. In the meantime i talked to Venky about his job and what he was doing. He said he was working on device drivers and told me about open source technologies like CVS, Mercurial etc. I got a call from Pai and he was not placed
. I told him chill out you still got TCS. After that i went into a room with some other selected candidates. Around 20 of us were in that room. The HR lady came in and called the final list of students who were selected. Manoj and 12 including me were selected. Manoj asked about CTC and she told us about the package of 2.76 lakhs and an extra of 27000 would be added later. During her talk i got a message of Pai. He wanted to go home. I asked to wait until talk was finished about background check, CTC and training. We were to be put anywhere across India for training and the confirmation e-mail would come 2 weeks before the joining date.
After she congratulated us, we left. Manoj, Pai and his friend and me talked for couple of minutes. A guy asked from the parking lot asked us if his GD had started. Pai asked what was his reporting time. The dude said it was 2. Pai said it hasn’t started yet, wait in the auditorium gesturing towards it.
We left and Manoj went to a xerox shop. He had to submit a couple of documents to Accenture on that day. Pai and me took the ring road to our place. Both of wanted to eat, and asked if he wanted to stop at Coffee Day. He said dude i want to hog. That was a go signal for me. We went to New Shanti Sagar in Malleshwaram. We ordered for South Indian thali, and the reply we got was “No thali after 3 PM”. Well we ordered jeera rice, set dosa, 2 nuts ice-cream and 1/2 hot-sweet mushroom soup. We ate in a mixed order. Simultaneously talking to parents, messaging friends and looking @ 2 gals in the next table
.
After that we took leave of each other.
As of now I’m waiting for confirmation e-mail.
Hope you enjoyed this looooooooong description.
Thanks for your help Pai.