After having been shortlisted for 7 companies, my son was busy preparing for the impending interviews. He knew the interviews would be tough and there would be multiple rounds for most companies. He was decently technically sound and had gone through multiple sources of information preparing for the same.
There was one trouble though… he knew the interviews would be coming up but he had no idea when they will be scheduled. He was also extremely uncomfortable with the fact, that he might have to sit up all night for the interviews. That thought was more disturbing than doing the interview itself! 🙂
The companies themselves did a mix of online and offline interviews(pandemic effect) Slack channels were created for all the companies that he was shortlisted and waitlisted for and there was a huge list of them on his phone!
November 30th, 2022: It was Day Zero for placements at all IITs (This fact was known to all IITians except for my son and he realized it only after a while! (face palm!)) Many companies had come for Day Zero placements and he was pleasantly surprised to see that he was shortlisted for a Day Zero(SquarePoint) company as well!
Online interviews were scheduled to begin at 11:30 p.m. and we were all excited for him. He was dressed in a suit and looked dapper! 🙂 As the night wore on, the graveyard shift progressed slowly and at a snail’s pace. My son had never sat up that long and the night was hanging wearily on him. He was finally called for interview at 4:00 a.m. in the morning. He did the interview but was up against all odds and circuit branch students held the key and SquarePoint unfortunately fell away.
December 1st, 2022: He was immediately called for Oracle offline interview at 6:00 a.m. on December 1st. There was hardly any gap between the graveyard shift and morning shift of the next morning. He did the Oracle interview well as well but was unfortunately not selected again.
The pain of the interview process is that even though you finish your interview, you might have to actually wait for another 3-4 hours till the results are declared! In the mean time, other interviews might be slotted as well. So, it is quite a tiring and never ending battle till we get selected.
We wait and we wait and we wait, either for the results to be declared or wait for the next interview 😦 We figured that each interview goes for a minimum of 6 hrs and the entire 6 hrs is only stress and anxiety!
December 1st, 2022, 11:30 p.m. – After spending an anxious day, there was another graveyard session on December 1st, 2022 at 11:30 p.m. Sprinklr had 5 rounds of interview and he cleared three of them.
By now, he was clearly tired and exhausted and knew the effects of IIT competition.
MathWorks and Inito came close and he was almost selected for either but fell through at the managerial and HR round! 😦 It feels so painful, when you clear the technical rounds decently well, but fall short on the HR rounds.
By the time, Tata AIG and Deloitte came, there was little to no enthusiasm or energy for him.
Pulling through graveyard sessions needs tremendous mental and physical strength. You have to be resilient and pull up quickly if all does not go well. You have to be able to adjust your eating, sleeping habits and at the same time, prepare for the interviews well. Those interviews dig deep into Java, C, C++ and system design concepts and you have to be extremely good in competitive programming. In addition, you have to mouth your words carefully through the HR rounds.
Truth:
When you have 6 or 7 interviews lined up on consecutive days in the first week of placements when graveyard shifts are the norm, the trick is that we have to crack the interview as soon as possible. If the interviews, stretch and pull, you will be pulled into a black hole of tiredness and exhaustion.
Week 2 – December 10 – December 14:
He decided to appear for more tests and try to finish off the placement process this semester, rather than pull it into the next semester(though I was bugging him to take a break and come home) Banks, insurance companies and other companies were continuously coming and there was no dearth of them. The only catch was that, many were startups and they might hire only one person or none at all after the entire interview process! (face palm!)
So, what happened in the second week? Come for the next post in the series! 🙂
DO READ MY E-BOOK ‘MISSION – IIT – R’ ABOUT MY SON’S ENTIRE IIT-R JOURNEY FROM THIS LINK!!
Sanjeevani!! 