3 down,1 to go !

Feels good to finally finish 3/4th of my graduation. Quite some time passed before my previous post,which means have a few things to write about. Just a few days after my last post, a company called ThoughtWorks had come for recruitment to our campus and was alloted dream staus. Incase any of you are wondering about what having a 'dream status' means for a company, it simply means that students who have already bagged a job can also sit for the recruitment process as it has an attractive pay package. Pay package definitely seemed higher when the company quoted 5.08 Lakhs INR,but then this was given as the CTC figure, or the Cost-To-Company figure,which is generally a lot higher than what will eventually be the take home component. Nevertheless, we expected and assumed to be atleast higher than what TCS (Tata Consultancy Services -i.e the company which I got selected in) had to offer. A list of eligible candidates was taken out by the college based on some very complex criteria,i.e the already recruited students needed a higher cut-off than the still-to-be-placed students. Whatever it was,my name was there on the list and that's what mattered the most to me. Their recruitment process was a different experience altogether - starting with the written test which included flowchart based calculation, was virtually unique and different from most Indian IT companies. Didn't have much difficulty in clearing the paper. Was among the 89 people who made through to the coding round out of the 450 who appeared for the written. The coding round was relatively easy than expected. Two questions were given and we were required to solve any one of them according to our choice. I chose one of them and remembering the point they mentioned in the pre-placement talk about their company looking for good object-oriented programming skills. So, filled my program with all object-oriented concepts that I could think of. Though I must admit that my programming skills was very out of touch. Luckily,that didn't stop me from making it to the list of 19 people who cleared the round. Then comes the technical interview round, where we were grilled on all concepts learned till date and a little more. Was the first to be interviewed. I had a feeling that my interview went fine, if not really well. After they had interviewed all the 19 people, they called me again, which gave me a feeling that I had got past the first round. But I guess I was a little mistaken. Probably, they were a little confused about whether to consider me for the next phase or not and thereby wanted a re-confirmation. The re-confirmation came in the process of a 35-40 minute grilling interview session, which I couldn't do well in,given the fact I was absolutely unprepared for such hardcore technical stuff. After my supposedly 2nd round of interview, a list of 6 names was taken out where I was excluded. Didn't really feel bad as the ones in the list were definitely a niche above me. Wished the others and left for the hostel. Came to know later that the 6 were not allowed to rest in peace and were further grilled and only 2 managed to get through the complete process. The best incentive I was looking for in joining this company was the Mac or the Dell I would get to choose as soon as I join. But then,it became clear- the Mac would have to wait and probably come from my own pocket later.

Gosh, just one event took up so much space ! Reading more crap will not be appreciated I guess, for the time being. Promise to get back shortly.

Gracias