First Interview(Part 3):The Ultimate Fiasco

[part 1 is here]

[part 2 is here]
So finally, after a load of mayhem there was a good news. Apparently they had played a prank by sparking rumors that they are going to include GD in the recruitment process. Now the eliminated GD phase was a bonus like finding secret levels in mario video game that helps you to hop dangerous levels like a frog.

The Interview was about to begin in half hour after the results of written test were declared. The time was provided for getting ready for Interview and for guys like me, to take a bath. I hate taking baths. Yeah, if there were any tablets which can be taken instead of taking a bath, I would love that. But unfortunately, the useless scientist tries to discover water on natural satellite moon instead of inventing bathing pills (maybe for the astronauts so that they could enjoy taking a bath at the moon). I have my reasons to hate baths. Despite of the fact it's time consuming, wasting valuable natures' resource: It makes my towel wet and stinky. Apparently waterproof towels have not been invented till now, another failure of useless scientists.

So, I skipped taking bath and washed my face with Rommie's Himalaya face wash, put my formal dress on, that sleazy plain shirt and lousy trouser, stinky socks with the leather shoes which was borrowed, And left for the interview. In the midways, I saw my esteemed friend coming back to the hostel with his folder in his hand, formal pink shirt, brown trousers, black leather shoes. And two and a half feet long blue colored object of my interest. The Tie. Eventually, he has failed to clear the written test. I couldn't help laughing at this ironic twist of fate. I borrowed the tie and left for the library where the interview was in progress. Merely I have reached there, I got the call to get inside.

The ambiance inside was rather spiritual. It resembled the environment of a cremation ground. The only difference was the noise of holy fire was replaced by the ceiling fans.


And through the transparent glasses I have seen in the library's reading section. All tables and chairs gone. No more bookshelves. There were four monsters lurking behind the tables in four corners of the grand hall with laptops on the table before them. On the farthest diagonally opposite corner there was a dark bald man with a huge belly. Suddenly I felt some fingers running over my shoulders. One of the organizers pointed his finger toward that dark man and said, "there". You are the next.

Me: good after soon sir!

The Interviewer apparently not looking at me was busy scribbling on some paper looking like electricity bill. that i guessed was the evaluation sheet.

Interviewer: ohh! sit down !please handover your CV!!

I pulled out one-page long CV out of folder that details the chronicles of my entire life in an entertaining fashion along with the integers to validate the fact that all the anecdotes mentioned in the CV are funny and not to be taken seriously.

After throwing a look at CV the Interviewer asked:

"whats your name?"

Aahaaan!!! Now that was the question I was most confident about! And it was my chance to shine and prove my worth as an able job-getter aspirant. All I needed was to come up with the impressive ascent on the syllable that appears thoughtful, useful, unique , sincere and would be fondly remembered.

Me: sir, my name is...

Interviewer: OK! Mr. Amit you have mentioned that your area of interest is Database.....

At that point I felt like to rip him him down and rip him apart into pieces. He interrupted me before I could tell him my name gain some confidence.

.......management System!Can you define it ?

Me: Yes sir!

after a silence of a second or two, he asked again: "Define it!" this time in demanding tone.

Me: ohh. sorry sir!! sir database management system is collection of information and software in which the information is centrally located and...

Interviewer: You are comfortable in which language ..?Me: English sir!

I babbled without thinking. the black man slowly moved his eyes up to find mine and looked at me the way predator looks the eyes of his prey. The predator knows that there is no chance for its prey and the prey eventually aware that there is no turning back for him either. A cold voice spoke in an extremely polite and sarcastic tone:

"I was talking about the programming language.... Mr."

Me: arrr.. sorry sir i have mistaken you! i am comfortable in sea and sea plus

Interviewer: really? are you sure?

Me: yesh .. sir!

Interviewer: but there are few applicant who have mentioned that they are knowledgeable about java and dot net too!

Me: they might have mentioned that sir! even i m "aware" about them. java was included in our curriculum. but I had never made projects using java or dot net. and I have not mastered that ART yet , so i haven't mentioned them in my profile. but you can ask me questions from java too and dot net too to explore my knowledge about it.

Interviewer: You have mentioned c and c++ in you resume. that means you have mastered that ART??

I stared back into his drunkard yellow eyes and told him:

"of course sir"

the interviewer ought for a moment or two and asked again

" i going to give you a program of to write a file handler! do you think you can execute it successfully?

Me: of course sir!

at this answer he smirked at me as he could read my mind that i wasn't sure and asked,

Interviewer: OK! i trust you. now tell me what is a null key?

now that was the question not related to any programming language. but the DBMS. so he playing game with me. the Interviewer bombarded me with his random question from all corners of engineering. he was rather trying to confuse me. But i don't know how I did managed.. but I held my nerves and rescued myself somehow.

Interviewer: now i m going to ask you a final question. a puzzle in fact.

Me: ok sir!

the Interviewer picked up my CV and drew a figure on back side, something symmetric to the figure we draw when playing Tic_tac_toe in lecture classes.

Interviewer : now suppose this is a square

"how the hell this is supposed to a square!!"

I bit my tongue when i was on the verge of poking that out.

Interviewer: and these are two adjacent sides x and y

Me: sir , if its is a square then all sides must me equal that clearly means x=y and...

I Interrupted him. again i said that without thinking. I froze dead.

The Interviewer spoke in an evil tone :

"Alwaaaaays Mr. Amit!! always listen to the question first".

For a moment my eyes met the Interviewer's. It had a gangster looks into his eyes it seemed to be saying "Game Over". Have you ever looked Into the eyes of Interviewer after cracking an annoying and unintentional joke which is not funny at all? You must try it someday. It is a very spiritual feeling. It's like looking into the eyes of chitragupt, the charted accountant of heaven who is evaluating your karma. You suddenly have this inexplicable urge to bow down and ask for forgiveness for trampling on earth. At that point I have realized that the Interviewers are true ruler of the universe. we are just pollutants and dirt.

Me: sorry sir!!

Interviewer: hmm If I increase both side by two times, what will be the incrementation in the area?

Me: 4 times sir!

Interviewer: are you sure?

"absolutely sure !!"

I said, revising my answer!

And at the next moment he got up, stabled my CV with performa and said " proceed upstairs to attend your HR Interview!"

And somehow I managed to clear HR interview too. That was also nothing less than a fiasco and i will surely write a blog on that someday. But as I look back the technical interview, I can help thinking , How terrible it was.

First interview(part 2): the written test saga

[part 1 is here]

As the doomsday wore on, the hair on our heads became more unkempt like dry grass . On the night before the salvation day I was busy in weeping with my precious Database management system: Korth... resting in my arms, PC ON!! Resume opened with MS word 2003 and I was really working hard to remove the little and galvanizing terms... Java. Net, etc... Around 4:30 am, I was almost done with my CV.. Successfully truncated the three full pages on CV into one..

I waked up exactly at 8:00 Am in the morning, exactly at the time the company was scheduled to arrive.. And at the moment the front wheel of the company's cab crosses the crosses the yellow line at college gate, I crossed the entry line of the bathroom. And when I have arrived at college, the presentation phase has already begun. I missed the presentation phase, but successfully used that time to take the printouts and xerox of documents.

When I got back to college, to the written test venue, there was a terrible news waiting for me. They said that they are going to include GD section to bridge the written test and the Interview.

GD?? what GD?? I have participated in two types of GD before! The first one was when all defaulter students of college used to convene at "pancham chai ki dukaan" and discussing the current "affairs" of college in loud noises to make sure that our discussion not gone unheard by the couples passing nearby. And despite of being noisy, loud and annoying, causing massive disturbance to couples, I have seen many times from the corner of my eyes, the dadies of college taking the rose out of the front pocket and giving it to mummas of our college.

And the second type of group discussion usually hosted at common room or canteen of college, whenever INDIA loose cricket match and every adjoining words coming out of mouth were synonymous with "@#$%^&".

But all remain sane, when DREAMS are on!! The environment at the written test venue was rather fascinating. The "soda buddies" were busy in mugging up their notes. There were three classes of people there actually.

The first class was the nerdy class guys. Discussing in chorus, the typical Mumma-boys technical things.

Nerd#1: hey, have you mentioned EJB and 3-tier distributed architecture in your CV?
Nerd#2: yeah of course! On Linux and Solaris platform. that's too!
Nerd#3: it took 37 mins to revise the whole thing!

The second class was the middle class of guys, who were the ordinary guys like me with no super power, Trying to adjust with the environment and pretends to be well prepared.

Ordinary guy#1: hey! The company is good. They got the television with Tata sky connection with their campus!
Ordinary guy#2: yeah.. Have you saw the match tomorrow on TV?? Dhoni was pathetic as ever.
Ordinary guy#3: yeah. I must have to watch the match because I have mentioned my hobby as playing cricket in the resume. Now he can't corner me on hobby thing. I have mugged up the entire summary and the scorecard!

The third class guys were my favorites and I always want to be like them. They were the rich guys from our college. I have never interacted with them much, because I have always afraid of them :-D.

Rich guy#1; hey look at my brand new pen. It tells the temperature and humidity in the atmosphere too. My NRI uncle gifted it to me on my last birthday.
Rich girl#2: last night DJ Hameed was good. He could take over the crown of Imraan Hashmi in future.
Rich guy#3: I am not interested in the Job. My dad will send me abroad after graduation. But I must think that I must have some backup job. Do they accept backdoor entries??

Surrounded by the three races of engineers, a little unpleasant noise like the mosquito's bhannnn bhannn drew my attention. I turned back to discover the source of noise and found three nerds behind me, the noise of 1st was certainly echoing from the mouth of rest of others.

"Hi". I asked
"What? "They asked in chorus
"Hmm! I was just asking that what hobby you have mentioned in your CV."

The nerd was surprisingly smiling at me and replied me delightfully,

"My hobby is poetry"

Now that was really disappointing. It was general misconception that nerds lack of personality development and multi disciplinary aspects of engineering.

"I have composed a fresh poem yesterday! Would you like to listen to it?

he asked with great enthusiasm in his eyes.

'Why not!Why not!" I asked with the pretense that I am rather interested.

He proceeded.

"And the protonTells the neutronThat we have lost.AN ELECTRON!!The neutron asked Are you sure?? And the proton replied Get on to thisI-M-POSITIVE"

I roared into laughter at that poem! The nerds were looking at me with shock and disbelief. They had never made anyone laughing so badly even when they tell jokes.. I said sorry! Your poem man.. Damn Damn innovative. And I rejoined the middle class guys again for sharing my experience of 169 Sec with nerds! They all begun to roar in laughter despite of the pressure was constantly mounting on us!

After few second we got the call to get inside! in the grand ITRC lab. The lab, which provides us the time pass in free periods and in boring lectures which we used to bunked. The system was loaded with company software, which was very horrible and ominous because previously, I have only used the systems in the lab for explicit exploitation of engineering by using the high speed DSL lines and huge bandwidth for canonized exploration of orkut.

The test had 4 phases. The first was reading comprehension.

1. Correct the grammatical errors in the highlighted portion of the following sentence:
Despite the growing concerns over the profound implications of rampant trade of IIT, Madan, who was inconceivable at economics, influenced by the aggressive call options in the technical world hedged his bets opposite to his interest, gleaned upon the latter.

I read the sentence over and again. What the hell did it mean? Influenced by the aggressive call options in the technical world hedged his bets opposite to his interest,gleaned upon the latter. ?????????!! Why doesn’t Madan just chooses economics? And that was the only error Madan has made.

Unfortunately, that option was not there in the answer choices, which made even less sense than the question. After what seemed like an eternity of torture, the exam was finally over and I was free again.

Now the test got over! I didn't want to think about that. I have felt like talking at home. I have just ruined all that. The cricket match yesterday have surely flunked me. I left for pancham chai ki dukaan to get my second breakfast. I took out my cell phone to dial a number. And the moment I unlocked the keypad. 12 missed calls.. What the hell?? 5 new messages!! The content of messages "hurry! Quick.. Come at once!!. I was running out of balance. So I have rushed back to college with reverse feet. Is there.. Is there any punishments for the students who have apparently abused the written test??

And at the moment I have arrived at the written test venue, I was listening only abuses from all over.. They dragged me right before the white board where our results were glued. Suddenly I felt like patting my own back. All exclamation grimace on my face have morphed into an evil grin. I smirked my left cheek in style and heaved a sigh a complacency....HMM!!

There was my name at the top spot. Along with the employer code.


[Part 3 to be uploaded soon]

First interview: an ordeal before

The engineering life is a lady, who runs herself into deep troubles too often and it takes us, the possessors of it ride to rescue her sporadically. We all have great knowledge about her, but not much intimacy with her. Half of the time before the arrival of the company, I used to daydream in the canteen, and even in the classroom, imagining the interviewer sitting before me, asking me questions and myself apparently telling him my witty jokes which both of us finds very amusing. Often I used to shaking head and outstretch my hand as well, to practice the body language thing that provide authenticity to my virtual interview. Unfortunately, grabbing the whole attention of people nearby by this brilliant gymnastic maneuver , made me heave a silent sigh too often due to annoyance.

After one such day, when I was going back to hostel thinking about what rifle I have to play with in counter strike today, a huge crowd over the hostel notice board drew my attention. By the time I got there, few nerds were heading back from there already with the triumphant smile on their faces murmuring something that sounds really happy! But I had a bad feeling going in. My sub conscience could sense that something was wrong as the nerd was happy. I rushed over to the notice board and found an email printout juxtaposed with formatted notice glued to the wall. The content of the email's printout radiating the exact date of company's visit in campus. Just after 3 days.. And the second notice which was coherently related to the first one was about:


THE MOCK TEST & INTERVIEW

??some fishy lines??
?some fishy lines??
??
Written test: 10 AM
??
Mock interview: 
??
??
Computer science: 3:00 PM onwards
??

So finally, the most awaiting moment of the entire engineering life has arrived. The date has been confirmed, on 13, just three days later. That means I have 3 days to decide what I have to say in my curriculum Vitae, editing the copied CVs on my computer along with name, formatting it and last but not least, preparing each tiny terms spotted on CV. The moment was like, a Dementor's kiss have been performed on me that sucked out all happiness from me. I have always known the company had to visit the campus. I have also known that companies do visit on such short notices. But if my preparations inaugurated before the announcement of the exact date, then I myself would not be called, me.

I dragged my heavy step towards my hostel's room to explore my roomies, the two nerds were busy in mugging their notes. Notes??? WTH!! I have never composed notes myself in any exams, but scribbled the books only, mostly photocopies, making annotations and cross things out in all directions, which I myself found very perplexing to decipher during revision.

"So, are you guy's done with preparation?" , I asked

My roommate turned around and looked at me with his nerdy eyes through the thick glasses and it was obvious for me to assume that i might be disturbing him. Hence proceeded to say sorry...

Nerd: "I am thinking about dropping this company"

What!! Evidently nerds are not very dying hard fan's of cracking jokes

Nerd: "Seriously!! Let them remove the cream layer and that will inflate our probably in next company.."

For the first time in life I realized that nerds also knows how to play games. After he completed his sentence, I felt like he just snatched the words from my mouth.Now, I can accompany him.. And that's why he is deluged into his notes?? At arrival of this thought, all presumptive plans of mine went down like a leading balloon.

Hooked by the moral dilemma, I switched on my PC to read the study materials, saved in the folder renamed to "crack this up". But at the moment the desktop icons got cached successfully, a little icon "deer hunter" on the rightmost corner drew my attention, and I clicked a double click in a single stroke of my forefinger to load the game. One thing I realized that on a normal day it is hard to clear even one level of PC Games, but the macabre sense of any delirium surely fetches the best player out of you. I cleared the rest of final five levels after a fragile effort of six hrs only. And along with the joy of triumph I fell off the bed at 5:00 Am and lost in my sweet dreams.

My nerdy rommies must have tried to wake me up at morning for attending the mock test but must have failed as ever. I got up at 12:30 pm abusing and insulting myself. I have missed the mock test. The whole batch was there preparing for the company... But I can still go for the interview... But suddenly my eyes catch the colorful magazine portion of "times of India". I rushed toward that quickly, to get the glimpses of Kiera knightly, Jessica Alba or even of Sharon stone. But what's that? There were no such photos, but something more than it. It was like loosing a silver coin and earning the grace marks in the final exams. On page 2 of the magazine, there was clearly printed along with tiny poster, in Bold "devnaagri" fonts and smaller "times new roman" fonts :

Jhankaar Cinema

Pirates of Caribbean: at the world's end

Now this is really a moment of relief when the inner guiding voices inside your head stops fighting and get agreed on a mutual consensus. In just 30 minutes, I left for Jhankaar cinema with an unapologetic abandon, laughing at the fools waiting for their mock interview something that could never help them, at least from my point of view.

Late at night, a friend called to find out how my mock interview had gone. I told him that it had gone. Without me.


[part 2 will be uploaded soon]