IIT placements – PLACED! – Part 3!

After a strenuous and exhausting week of first week of day zero and day one placement tries, IITs stepped into the second week of placements. The second week of placements began from December 8th and my son appeared for more tests. As usual he cleared many of the first round of tests and was shortlisted for interviews for more companies.

Some of the other companies that he was shortlisted for the second week of interviews were Achnet technologies, IFFCO, Contata, Nucleus software and Jungle software. Some of the companies were based in Bangalore and I was beyond all excited! 🙂

Second week of placements:

This week of placements needed more calmness and determination. We gave him all the moral, emotional and physical support that was needed at that time. In addition, since the HR round was his bottleneck, he decided to tackle that one too. He gathered all the commonly questions in the HR round and figured out the best way to answer them (he was a pro at those questions since he had attended so many interview questions by then (face palm!))

Some commonly asked questions were:

1. Where will you see yourself in 5 years time?
2. If you have such a high CGPA(his CGPA was 9.3! :)) – why have you not gone into research?
3. Why do you want to work in our company?

These questions needed delicate and careful answering. After the first week debacle he was more careful in answering questions and judged things a little better.

The graveyard sessions were finally done with in the second week of placements. Now, the interviews were conducted on normal earthly hours! 🙂 But still he had to do a written test between 3 and 4:00 a.m. in the morning. He was now used to this new schedule of getting placed.

There was another company whose interview went well and he thought he might be selected but unfortunately slipped yet again! 😦

PLACED!!

December 14th 2022 dawned and he had 2 interviews the same day and almost at the same time. One was online and one was offline. Slack channels were already created and he learned to juggle both of them simultaneously (they are all supposed to do it that way)

He cracked the interview that came first and it lasted only for 15 minutes! 🙂 So, where did he get placed finally? He got placed in IFFCO-TOKIO as Senior Executive !! 🙂 (spelling varies as IFFCO – Tokyo in some places too) IFFCO-TOKIO is a joint venture between an Indian fertilizer manufacturer and a Japanese insurance company.

Once he got the good news of his placement at 5:00 p.m. all other interviews that he was shortlisted for was closed and he was not required to appear for any more interviews after that.

My thoughts on the whole process:

1. The IIT placement process is an emotional roller coaster.
2. While studying and getting good grades might be one part of the process, cracking the interview is shifting to a different part of the process(“Shift left” in DevSecOps parlance :))
3. You have to get placed as quickly as possible else you will be physically and mentally drained.
4. Getting placed in a recession year is tough for the students, parents, faculty and everybody involved.
5. Competition is stiff is an understatement. Everybody is smart!!
6. You have to do a lot of homework before the placements. You have to read about the company, be strong with the technical concepts and do smooth HR talking as well.
7. You have to be confident and truthful. There will always be something that we don’t know and it is always wise to say “I don’t know”
8. There will be companies who might do the full stretch of 5 or 6 rounds and still go back without hiring anybody! (face palm!)
9. There are some companies who open placements exclusively for girls alone (yes – it is nice to see placements being open only for girls… now the parents of girls should be willing to send them anywhere they want ;))
10. From what I could see, very few companies came for placements for non-software roles
11. The IIT placement season runs from December to May the following year
12. Alumni students are also allowed to sit for placements
13. There are students who are passionate about their core subjects like Mechanical, Civil and Physics. Many might pursue higher studies in their core subjects and look for suitable opportunities after that.
14. It is absolutely important to network with peers and seniors during the entire placement process (a skill which my son sorely lacked!)
15. In a normal placement year, packages for most students start from 25 lakhs(we will not consider the very few who get the 1 crore package – they are a minority), but this year it might have dropped to 15 lakhs – 20 lakhs! 😦
16. In a recession year, if bigger giants do not visit the campus at all, the startups will hire only 1 or 2 students or none at all!!

Good luck to the Class of 2023! Never lose faith and keep at it!

Do give the first and second post in this series a read if you haven’t already!