Rant: Blogger offers really limited functionality when creating posts in Opera. This is really sad. I see no reason why it does this, when even the most heavy weight of net applications, Gmail, runs completely fine on Opera.
The Run to Atos Origin: Well, it is placement season in college, and (contrary to the way things were earlier) companies visit campuses for recruitment in the penultimate year. Doing so gives them the freedom, perhaps, of knowing approximately, the amount by which their payroll will expand in the immediate future, and secure for themselves, what they feel, are the bright minds of tomorrow.
My college, due to the industry perception, name and fame, and quite likely, the work of the alumni and the TPO, had (and continues to have) a cartload of companies coming in for campus placements. To name a few: TCS, Infosys, Amdocs, Seimens, L&T, Reliance, Accenture (more on this later), Atos Origin, IFlex, Cognizant, Hexaware, BlueStar Infotech, L&T Infotech, Tata Infotech, Geometric (this list is not exhaustive) and possibly HP, IBM, Wipro, Oracle…
I was quite in a soup, deciding whether to apply for core Electrical companies or IT… The basic problem is, though I am pursuing an Electrical Engineering degree formally, I have equal, if not more, knowledge of IT (and Computers, and allied fields). And I was never very good with Electrical components. Give me a systems viewpoint over discrete stuff, and I will shine. That explains quite naturally why I fare better when it comes to Communication Systems, Microprocessors, and now possibly, OOAD. Therefore it was a tough decision to make. And IT won. Because, at some point or the other, there is sufficient blurring of the lines between IT and Electrical, and I believe that someday, I shall be able to apply my formal education in developing IT systems. They call this a techno-functional perspective. I was not guaranteed this in any of the core Electrical companies.
Even before the start of the recruitment process, I was pretty sure of clearing Seimens. That is because, I had already faced the aptitude and the interview, in my early third year, for their scholarship programme. I was unsuccessful at that time, partly because of my ignorance, and partly because they had asked me stuff I had never formally studied, and unlike stuff in computers, never pursued independetly.
And I was also sure of not appearing for TCS and Infosys, because as companies they do not appeal to me. Sure, they are two of the largest recruiters in the Indian scene, and by turnover also, two of the largest in India. That they recruit so many engineers each year was itself a turn off for me. I love exclusivity, and they do not offer it. Moreover, their selection procedure does not involve any technical interview, and the whole process is more of a farce. Why no just give offer letters to all the toppers, and be done with it? They select close to 50% of the total strength of the eligible candidates of the college… I detest this. Moreover, the profile of the company suggests that they are more into outsourcing jobs, rather than complete systems developement. And of course, they pay less. TCS and Infosys were therefore ruled out.
As was Reliance, for it’s unethical functioning, and internal politics, stories of which I heard from quite a lot of people. L&T was out too, for I really did not want to work in core. Seimens remained a choice till the end, especially since it was a really good company, and that I had to directly appear for the interview, as a walk in. But in the end, it was sidelined too, due to the finalization of me not taking any core jobs. Amdocs was the highest paying recruiter at 3.8 lpa till the point whatever companies had delcared their paypackets. I was however, being from Electrical, not allowed to appear for its selection process.
In a descending order, my preferences for the companies were: HP, Accenture, Atos Origin.
HP was moved to the dream company scheme, whereby everyone who had been previously selected, and therefore not allowed to appear for further interviews, will be allowed again for the so-called dream company. It’s scheduled date was consequently postponed.
Accenture. Wednesday, 29th June, 2005. I assembled in the college, at the scheduled time of 0900 hours with my résumé, photographs, certificates and examination results, wearing decent clothes, shoes and the likes. They had their pre-placement talks, and everything seemed to be going pretty well. I really was pretty confident. They had the aptitude test soon.
The apti had two sections, the regular quant, verbal and analytical; and the technical. And they apparently had sectional cut offs. The basic apti was pretty much crackable, what took the cake was the technical apti. It consisted of 30 questions from C, and C++. And those were some pretty good questions, I must say. Really enjoyed solving them. Templates, Inherticance, basic operator precendances, compiler directives, virtual functions, data structures, classes missing default constructors, almost everything that could have been asked was there. I was quite astonished at the level of the questions, and it was pretty damn challenging.
The company then asked us to go and have out lunch, and come back in about half an hour for the results. Apparently they were waiting for some of their HR people to arrive… We decided to snack.
About 45 minutes later, we spotted our TPC hunting for a taxi… Wondering who had been selected, we sent a classmate to enquire. He returned with a rather unsettled look on his face. Reported that Accenture had decided not to hire anybody from the college, since the number of students appearing for the aptitude was very less… I was shocked, and wanted to verify this news first hand. The taxi was for those people, who were now waiting to leave for the airport.
We rushed to the college TPO office. And the story was verified. After quite a lot of hullaballoo, we came to know that they indeed had decided to not recruit anybody from the 28 people who appeared for the test. They however had corrected our papers, and produced a list of 14 people who made it to the next round. Imagine my excitement and frustration, when I found my name on top of this list on the first number. Quite some discussion with the TPO occured, where he expressed his inability to take any action… Which was quite unsettling… A lot of us felt rather disappointed at the extreme high handedness and unprofessionalism with which a company of Accenture’s stature had responded to us, who also were not of any lower strata. Many of the applicants, like me, were in fact high up in the class list, and moreoever, had not appeared for the earlier companies, eagerly waiting for Accenture. I surely felt the pinch.
It was only later, that we came to know that Accenture had sent ten people from Bangalore for our recruitment, and they were promised that there would be atleast 50 students who will appear for their selection procedure. It was obviously, a failure on our college’s part to ensure communication with the concerned people at Accenture… And their decision to not recruit was therefore, perhaps, justified. Of course, it was not in our favour…
Therfore, by fate or otherwise, I was destined to appear for Atos Origin.
The actual interview I shall now postpone for a later post…
