My first participation in a campus recruitment programme

Finally something happened in my so called final year B.E education. A company finally arrived whose cut-offs and requisites matched my academic performance. And I was excited not because I started to dream that I would clear all the rounds and get recruited. I was just happy that I got a chance to attend at least one campus programme while I was still in my final year. And so, as you can guesstimate, this is not the usual “how successful am I in being an engineering student” kind of a post.

I’m not like your regular successful student and I’ll never be and I have stopped feeling all the lousy, shameful and downward feelings that one usually feels when repeatedly get hit by the rock-bottom.  No, I don’t belong to that category. I’m different in many ways and I don’t regret being clue-less and different but what I regret are the choices that this makes me to choose. I get easily distracted. My mind runs away with random thoughts and it would take me a lot of time to get back to reality. By then it would be too late. I hate late realizations and I always realize what I’m doing is wrong when it’s too late!! That’s me.

They say failure is the stepping stone to success and I’m just waiting for the day that this phrase turns true when it comes to my career. No surprises here if it doesn’t turn true. I dreamed a year to become a Doctor in my 11^th standard and 3 months to 12^th standard (for reasons unknown) I started dreaming to be an aerospace engineer/ a secret spy for my country!! When my 12^th was almost over, I got inspired to get into Biotechnology as it sounded like a promising career with many new opportunities. My parents even got me registered at a college that offered B.Sc course in Biotechnology. I even remember giving measurements for the college uniform. But suddenly I felt I wanted to pursue Biotechnology in Engineering and not a BTBM course that my parents had just paid the fees for. So went for the COMED-K round and unfortunately I didn’t get the seat for that course in Mysore. I wasn’t ready to go to any Bangalore Colleges. So as the last resort, my hay-wired mind came to a conclusion that may be I was meant to take up Computer Science. I still fathom why I ever took this course and especially what made me to select the worst college ever to pursue this horrible course.  The first thought that came to me after I took the course and came out of the COMED-K rounds was this: “Did I just make the biggest mistake of my life??” Too late to turn back and I just didn’t have the faith in me to decide anything else. So the following four years happened (and is still happening!) and sometimes regrets engulf me to the extent of getting a migraine and yet, I live with my choices every day.

Mid-P.S: Even though I hate my course, yet I’m into some fields like web-site designing and DBMS. But regrets and lack of interest at anything at times has lead me to gain only partial knowledge in these fields. Will I ever find what I’m looking for or do I even know what it is that I really want? I’ve left this to the “FATES”.

Again I’m side tracking even in my post. Ok, let me come back. So the prospectus of me, along with a few of my friends who are unfortunately in the same boat as me got a chance to go to a neighbouring engineering college to attend the whole process of campus interview. We were, excited and apprehensive and most importantly happy to avoid attending our regular classes as the chance to attend for campus would fetch us free attendance!

Two months left of engineering and we still hadn’t collected our original marks cards of 10^th, 12^th and other semesters. So there we were strutting about our college corridors with various documents at hand and acting like we were getting prepared for the biggest battle ground the next day. When we heard the name of the company that was calling us, the name sounded fancy and a bit familiar, so that was enough for us. I did a little googling and found that there are two companies with a similar name- one being an IT company and the other a technical service providing “BPO-ish” company. I had a vague feeling that this was a BPO. Why else would there be no cut-offs!  But the package sounded good.

There is this really irritating rumour at my college (I don’t know whether this is actually genuine or dumb-shit!) that if an engineering student ends up working for a BPO then that student will never get a chance to get into an IT company. Am I the only one who thinks this is completely and utterly false or am I wrong about this? Anyway, the rumour served its purpose. Most of the girls from my class didn’t attend. But still there were many candidates from other colleges on the day of the campus recruitment. I guess not everyone believes in silly rumours and stays back.

The lady from the company gave a nice presentation/ad about how nice their company is and how fast they provide services to their customers, how they handle bottleneck pressures and how well they make the employees feel at home by celebrating their birthdays and other festive holidays. So that meant they won’t provide any holidays for any festivals and they get to eat the cake in the middle of the day if it’s your birthday! (I rolled my eyes but my friends were all gaping at her like she would give them all a golden egg if they got selected!). 

This was followed by the first round: communication screening, where we were required to speak about a general topic for about a minute. And the students with best communication skill would be selected for the IQ test and then the HR round. They segregated all the students into groups of 30. Since the students from my college were more in number, they kept most of our names at the last. So for four hours we did nothing but wait for the other batches to finish. I hated the waiting part. Especially since the weather was really hot, the room was stuffy and just plain irritating. Many students who were waiting lost their patience and went home. I had half a mind to go but I rode my Dio on that horrible road to this college (which is situated in the middle of no-where) and so I wanted to stay and see would I really make the first round. And let me tell you, it was a challenge for me and my hair-brained mind to quit day-dreaming about me speaking fluently and wittily in the upcoming communication round because I always felt like if I dream or crave about something way too much, I would probably end up messing it to an irreparable extent. It has happened to me several times before and I refused to get into that dreamy loop again. I deliberately thought about other things, like movies that I hadn’t yet watched yet. I even tried to focus on creating another flash-55 but I was just not in a right place for it that day.

During the process of waiting, we did have a lot of fun playing silly games like dumb-charades where my friend would silently mime with her best effort and I had to guess which movie she was trying to tell me. She had kept some really difficult Kannada Movie name and it was a challenging task to figure it out but we lost track of time and ended up enjoying and forgot that we were in that college for campus interview. Me being from a girl’s college (yes, there is an engineering college only for ladies in my city, one of the top reasons why I hate it even more!) had almost forgotten what a co-ed atmosphere feels like. So it was good time-pass for me to observe my “surroundings”. I was amused to see most of my college friends acting way more girly than usual and giggling at nothing in particular. “Look at them, they are acting like they have woken up from Stone Age and have never seen so many guys before in their lives. How embarrassing! “I hissed to my friend in irritation. But unfortunately, even she had been bitten by the “stone age” bug and she responded to me with a ridiculous high-pitched laughter.

I don’t know what it is but being from a girl’s college, other college students especially the guys start to view us like we have hailed from the planet Venus or something. We seem to appear very different from the other college girls. I could feel most of their eyes following every movement that we made; comments were exchanged followed by ridiculous laughter even from the guys’ side.  Typical indeed! And then someone started the pen-cap whistle blowing competition. I think it was one of the guys who were sitting at the far end of the seminar hall, blew his whistle for time-pass. That was reciprocated by one of the girls from my college. And the guys (no doubt happy to be challenged by the girls from Venus!) replied back with two short whistles and which was in-turn reciprocated by the girls. All in all, by then the uneasy “I stare at you and you stare back at me and bend your head in embarrassment” barrier just broke down and every one of us ended up laughing in a friendly manner.

Alas, the fun had just started but it had to be put on hold as the lady from that company came in to announce the names of next set of candidates. It was my turn. Along with 30 other girls from my college, we headed to the discussion room. By this time (after a 4 hour wait) we were all well aware that the company had selected most of the candidates from the morning sessions and we were just being given a chance for waiting so much. Nonetheless, I took it as a challenge and entered the room to give my best shot. 

There were four topics on the board- favourite sport star, favourite pass-time activity, favourite possession and favourite movie. We were given the choice to pick any topic and speak about it for about a minute. I chose my favourite pass-time activity which is writing of course. Luckily I had internet access in my smart phone and noted down this short poem from my blog. The lady randomly started calling our names and pretty soon it was my turn. I told them what writing means to me and how from being just a pass-time activity it has pretty much turned into my passion over the years. I spoke a few words about my blog and ended my speech by reciting the poem. They all seemed every impressed and the lady said “wow, that was nice” as the others enthusiastically clapped for me. That did make my sprits soar. But unfortunately out of 35 students, they selected only 3 candidates for the next round and I wasn’t one of them. Still my spirits were way too high to get dampen. I reminded myself that I was here just to participate and to recheck my level of stage fright (I was glad I was still my bold, unflinching self and that the women’s college hadn’t softened my insides as I often feared it would happen!) . 

All in all, I went there to experience something different and indeed ended up having a good time at the end of the day. And as for the campus recruitment, well that was just one company, there will be more. If not on-campus, definitely off-campus. With all the negatives that I keep musing about my career in general, I’ve come to learn one thing in particular about me that will never change: If I love something and that something interests me, I will give my 100 percent to it.

P.S: I know there is no such thing as a mid-P.S ... I wanted to delete the two paragraphs at the beginning but that wouldn’t have given a complete picture of the on-goings of my mind during the face of self-evaluation. I’m amazed I ended this post with a touch of optimism at the end. Maybe I’m just in a good mood today!! :)