Manish’s Scribble Board

Placement season has nearly ended and many people got their jobs (obviously). One thing which everyone will remember is the unusual reasons company HR’s give when they want to reject someone. I have seen and heard many people being rejected in front of me, only to give a thought what the company recruiters really require actually.

Cisco recruiters said

We wanted people who have hands on experience on real working technology and who can take up challenges. When you people get holidays, do some projects/internship after each semester break right after first year.

Means after each break, we wont go home instead get ourselves tortured in a corporation? Would any first year student get an internship? Would any company offer him? If you are so excited, why wont you provide to some students here?

Yahoo recruiters said

You are not upto the mark!

How is you mark rated? Upside down? Worser the performance, higher you get up on their scale?

Microsoft recruiters said

You were giving too much smile and showing formality. This is not a professional approach.

Next time when I enter your chamber for an interview, will greet you as “Good Afternoon a**hole“

I landed on Manipal on 28th last month and since then just running pillar to pillar. In these last two weeks I didnt leave a single stone unturned to get a job but alas!

As I reached Manipal on 28th morning around 11:30, had a bath and rushed for Sungard exam, but didnt expect much in such a hassle. As usual rejected. Next aim was Cisco which was on 30th. It was very much shocking to see how people madly sat for this company and only 27 got shorlisted for interviews including me. The interviews were worst and all kinds of hardware and weird questions were asked (maybe to reject me). When result were announced I was sure not to be in the list.

Next was Juniper on 1st last week. The written paper went quite well except that I didnt get much time for apti section where I didnt attempt more than 4-5 questions correctly, rest all were guesses. This was one of the exams where I expected much and papers went perfect, still not chance of hope.

The biggest one of all - Yahoo came on 4th of this week. I cleared the written round which contained 20 questions plus one subjective question. Next milestone was a coding round in lab. This was the place where I performed the worst when it comes to output but best when it came to algoritm used. This round cleared and we were advanced to 1st technical interview on the same night. When my chance came, the interview lasted some 40 minutes where I was drilled on UNIX for some 25-30 minutes. Now we 6 people advanced to final round next day. The 2nd technical interview was more than an hour in span where the guy asked me lots of questions but less of PHP,MySQL,UNIX and those stuffs. He liked puzzles, book questions and theory. I tried my best to cope up with such bookish knowledge and succeeded to some extent. At that time my expectations were quite high. Result were declared after an hour and the only word which came to my mind was “Which is the next company”. I have faced 5 rejections in 10 days, its a record in itself

So Folks! Interview results are out! Kicked out in the first round itself, though am not surprised ( had performed badly). Well leave it, no point discussing the same thing. I was told that am “Not Upto the Mark” as per Microsoft standards.

I was supposed to give a demo at 2PM today in Conference Room about my work which I did for the last two months. The presentation was for around forty minutes out of which I presented for around half an hour and last ten minutes were left discussing about the various design issues. I had made a small power point presentation to make the show a bit lively hoping that it can add interest. I had thought of many things which I would be telling only to find my mentor picking up the questions and answering them.

When I came back to my machine, I tried writing a funky but proper “Last Day at Work” mail. This is what I had written.

Hi everybody,

I would like to inform all that today is my last day of work at MSIDC. I was working as an intern in this group.

I would like to thank each and every person for the love and affection which they have shown during all the eight weeks which made my stay a really memorable one. I am very excited to return back to college with a tag of being a MS Intern. This really counts.

I would like to wish all of you best of luck for your future and would surely love to be in contact even after this internship.

Briefly describing myself: Am a student at Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal , Karanataka. Well what more to say of academics? I have decent grades and good reputation, but what I felt was that grades don’t matter in life (personal experiences).

My personal e-mail ID is manishsinha27 {at} gmail  {dot} com .

Regards,

Manish Sinha

My mentor called me up in his chamber to brief about the review and say some parting words As he thinks my strength is that am Committed and Hard Working. These two words gave me a great shock! I never came to office before 12:30-1:00 in the afternoon and never reported him on time after completion of work. Another strength was that I “never crashed in the work which has been assigned and somehow finished it howsoever unusual it ought to be”. This I can agree to some extent, though its the thing which made me work patiently for last two months.

Now coming to weakness… “I don’t have communication skills!”. Okay! “I don’t test my code for all test cases and half of the time its not running even though the algorithm is quite good”.

I would be leaving for college tomorrow night. Its actualy a break journey from Hyderabad to Banaglore and from there to Mangalore. There is also a 10 hrs gap between both the trains, which time is quite difficult to pass. Going back to college, I would be sitting for most of the companies including Sungard which is coming on 28th-Monday, Cisco on 30th-Wednesday, Yahoo on 4th-Monday, Toshiba on 7th-Thursday and Philips Innovation on 11th-Monday. No! I have no intention to take all, this list is only for those which I have registered.

See you in Manipal soon. Now wish me a Happy Journey!

This is my second last day of work at MSIDC where I spent the last two months working on a verification tool. I have nothing much to say except that I really enjoyed the holidays except the last week which was really too hectic. We went for all types of trips possible, movie outings and shopping. At present we are only 2 left at our flat out of five at one time. After my return to Manipal, it will be Aditya alone in the flat. Saumitra will join back on Sunday afternoon ( He had went home for 5 days).

Today I had my first interview, it was really a horrible experience, the woest interview of my life !! How on earth was I unable to explain difference between stack and heap, example of deadlocks and a question where I was asked to find the order or complexity of the algo which I had written. The only question which went smoothly was “Difference between Process and Thread”. Result still pending!

Next week in college, I have to sit in Sungard on Monday and in Cisco on Wednesday! The preperations is as usual crap with just 3 hours of preparations. Yahoo is scheduled to come on 4th with  a mind-blowing requirement– Perl ,Unix and Unix Shell Scripting knowledge in addition of general expected knowledge. Once Anomit told me that Yahoo openly look for Unix Geeks. Tough time ahead!

Just thought of updating the blog as am still waiting for the result. More later when am back to Manipal.

I just want to finish this up in as short as possible. Here is the list of possible companies that are expected to visit the campus for placements during year 2008-2009.

It includes the so called “Mass Recruiters” (MRC) and “Dream Companies”. Though MRC’s are clear to arrive after semester exams, the dream companies will come next semester till the end, We are expected to give names of two companies in which we intend to appear as our Dream Jobs Choosing these two are a great headache as we dont know which company will arrive when and which of them will become open? Lots of tension and confusion is prevailing all around. I am too in a deep fix what to do? Which company? EMC² or Cisco or Microsoft or Yahoo or Freescale or Deloitt? The list is too long and time is less. The worst part is that no one is cooperating. I understand that all of us want a job, but still there is something called humanity. Just imagine someone (not me) who is not able to figure out what to fill in and doest have any idea? What will he do?

Hope, I make up my mind before Monday which is the last date for submission. I have already submitted the academic biodata form yesterday.

And yeah, TCS is coming on 2nd May, not completely sure, but heard. Maybe its true!