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The placement experience

Well I think the title pretty much summarizes what the goal of this post is.

The placement experience was a pretty tense period. In fact I haven’t been this tense since a long time. It was probably because I had an off campus process with Google and despite doing well things did not work out. More than anything I guess what the placement process teaches you is that Life is not fair and that sometimes luck matters more than ability.

I already knew the above having seen the placement up close last year as Overall Placement Coordinator but experiencing it myself was a totally different experience. The difference was much more than I had imagined it to be.

To be fair, I think I was well prepared for the placement process. I had decided that I want to get a technical job and so wouldn’t apply to the other firms. Being in computer science I could take that decision. Looking back perhaps Himanshu and me were the unlikeliest people to take this stance because we had been amongst the most involved in extra curricular activities on campus. Himanshu and Me and learnt more in the last semester than we had in our four years of studying CS and we enjoyed it as well. I was fairly proficient in programming(always been a bit of programmer coding things just for fun) and we had a fair idea of what the data structures were and so on so forth.

So my interviews began. The first one was with Intel, a job that wouldn’t affect me a lot either ways. Anyways the interview was over the moment he asked me about my interest. Himanshu wanted to get a job at Intel and he aced it. He also got in the most dramatic fashion possible, not having a job and then having a job.  His life always has Drama in abundance.

The next one was with Directi. This was an interview where I could explain how I got rejected. I just didn’t think it was fair. I was a bit slow to answer the questions but I did get all of them right at the end and would have thought that I might have another interview.

Microsoft was the most disappointing. I got everything wrong. It was as if someone switched my brain off during the interview.

I thought that I would get Adobe but messed up the interview as well. Despite doing as many questions as I possibly could every question seemed to be Googly or a Doosra with nothing that I was asked remotely resembling what I was prepared for. (Credit to the interviewers).

Then finally Oracle was on campus. This was a process that I was confident of clearing because they wanted to take a lot of people. The interviews for a change went well and I was really confident this time around. I could actually figure out how to solve the questions. Perhaps I will write a post detailing the questions that were asked.

The placement process was definitely one of the more tense periods (I haven’t had many I assure you) and a tremendous learning experience with four years of coursework learnt in a semester. Also perhaps for the first time I really experienced the fact that Life is unfair at times. Perhaps it evens out at the end. The fact that life is unfair at times means that you may be rewarded for doing less and not rewarded for more. Also the most important thing is not to think about the result. Nothing can freeze you more than thinking about the result (Easier said than done of course).

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Comments

Atul Mathur said…
So where did you make it?
December 10, 2009 at 8:43 PM
Kartik Kaipa said…
I got placed in Oracle.
January 6, 2010 at 3:07 AM
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