Accentured !!

Accenture

Well as i said life is like a sine wave for an engineer..and it seemed my time had come
Accenture was on Campus on the 16th of May . By that time the Tiger Woods campaign had not started and many people didnt know about it. i had always been fascinated by the company for no reason whatsoever and anyways getting a decent job was all that was on my mind . well i attended the pre placement talk . this was the best ppt i had evr seen and was actually very impressed( though the cogni ppt still seemed better ) . The females who had come from the HR were really smart and the ppt was very interactive not. we ( all the guys) were falling head over heals for one of them and anyone who had been there would have known who it was .. she was a stunner to the core and i suppose that some guys who were not earlier considering accenture sat because of her( he he guys will be guys!!) towards the end of the ppt they were showing those Tiger Woods ads and everyone was so glued to those ads that we actually mentally missed some part of the ppt. well towards the end there was a quiz in which i won a cool zipper whose coordinates now are unknown courtsey ideal man a.k.a baba a.k.a humanity himself a.k.a sanskar a.k.a modi the great... well after the pt i decided that i was going to sit for the company ( no the hr females did not influence me).

Then we sat for the test and i was confident as i hadnt flunked any till now and the test was a sitter.
I seriously sometimes think that how desperate these software companies are to recruit people that the tests they take are like a walk in the park . The test was outsourced to a company called Meritrac . Since most of us had already taken cogni and IBM tests which were by the same company, so there werent any surprises. the results were out soon and an overwhelming no of people were selected .. The list was out and i had been placed in the last gd group. Had to report at 6 pm so had a lot of time in hand . Reached the guest house in time . The moment i reached there i was mobbed and it took me a while to understand why. For those of you who dont know me, i am one of the biggest BAKAR in my batch( bakar- the art of incessant talking) and people were trying to convince me that i shouldnt speak much as i would ruin their chances .Most failed to understand that if you speak more in a GD you have a higher chance of getting eliminated. I decided that my bakaer instincts shouldnt get the better of me and the GD began . as she was writing down our names i said " Utsav Mamoria"following is the conversation between me and the HR

HR: you know when we studied we had a book by mamoria
me: what was the name of the book ?
HR: i dont recall
me : was it personnel management?
HR : yes
me: maam he is my father
HR: oh thats great .. tell him that we passed exams because of him

clearly she was impresed and that set the tone of the day
we were asked to choose our GD topic and we had got the news outside that some groups were asked to choose their own topics
we had chosen " should non comp science engineers be in software " we had a mock GD outside and when the real time came we chose the same topic and the GD was n action replay of the one outside.. result 10 out of 13 shortlisted.

Then came the agonising wait for the interview. Somehow , i think god wills it , i have to wait hours before i get a chance
but the accenture one had a twist in it.. i waited and waited and waited..
a wait which the longest i ever waited and at about 2.00 am in the night we were informed that 17 of us would have our interviews at 8.00 am in the morning
i was like @!$!#@$ uff i went back to my room ( hostel 4 is so far:(( )
we were all apprehensive wether they would screw us as they had to take only 17 interviews and they were fresh after a nights sleep. But lady luck was on our side
The next day i reached there and again the wait started .. first was the HR and it was smooth i am a good fundebaaz and thus cleared it easily.MINDBEND again came to my rescue and i gave her reasons why i should be chosen right from team worker to crisis manager. Next to come was the technical interview, my bete noire..as i eneterd i was asked to sit and he opened my folder and started scaning it . He asked me to introduce my self and i told him that i write for the Times of India and he started redaing my article. he read it throuhly and was impressed. He asked me some puzzles and i solved them. He then told " when you come you should be through with C/C++ .net java sql ... " i didnt understand what he meant and then suddenly it hit me that i have been selected and which meant there were no technical questions yahoooooooo!!!!!
He said " You know i am a mechanical engineer myself and i regret that i came into this field so late. you get through with the languages and let us give the comp guys a run for their money"
I was elated and said yes!
I came out satisfied and within an hour the results were out. A whopping 74 selections , history in our college had been created. This was the largest number any company had taken from the insti in a given year
We were given offer letters and a great black t shirt with acccenture written on it. finally i had a great job and my dream of getting a job on campus was fulfilled.
Proud to be an Accenturite!

Testing times

Placements

the only actually testing time for any engineer ....cause once u get into engineering exams are not testing any more as you manage to get past them
campus placements bring out mixed feelings ...of nervousness, of apprehension and of course expectation
with a great session of mock placements from the final yearites..we were all raring to have a go at the companies
each of us battling our own problems ..each of us having a core competency and core deficiency :)
mine was definitely the terror of the TECHNICAL interview ..being a mechanical engineer and wanting to switch to software i asnt expected to be great at technical knowldge

I skipped TCS but the feedback from the others was an eyeopener .... all candidates had an hour long technical interview intheir respective fields which was too much by software compny standards ..so out of the fear of me flunking badly at interviwes i started brushing up my technical knowledge
which proved out to be a herculean task

then happened the cogni disaster ..which will come later
then the more personal IBM disaster
which had all the elements of a hindi masala movie
..uff if i could get hold of the HR/tech guy i would shoot him .reaching to the IBM interview was a surprise in itself a sthe company had strictly put a cutoff of 7.0 cgpa so initilly i was not eligible .but then the cutoff was dropped down to 6 and we were all elated and praising IBM .i sat at the test and the results were surprising ..i got through(ok that was not the surprising part ) but most fundoo janta of the college didnt .the screeinig process was hapazard and i doubt wether the papers had been evaluated at all.it seemed that people were randomly shortlisted

whatever that was.. i reached the interview and the wait began
finally i got the call and went in and what happened then was a complete disaster
he began asking me the general stuff and he asked me why i wanted to go in software ..i gave him the standard answers.but then suddenly he asked about the computer magazines i read ..to which i politely replied no .and then on hearing that he started talking like a man who had been possesed .he insited that i must go for a core job being a mechanical enginer despite the fact i making it clear at the start i was interseted in software..he didnt ask me any C questions and kept on stressing that i am not fit for software ..i came out with mixed feelings and the result was expected .i got kicked out
it was a very low point but like any engineer would tell you
life is a sine wave!!!

always happening

always happening

speed of time

the last 6 months have gone too fast ..blitzkreig... it all started in december with MINDBEND ..which became the sole purpose of my exsistence in the coming months..the agonizing procedure of collecting funds , dealing with the corporates ..those &^%#^%($ HR people glib talkers all ..and the relentless grind of doing rounds to their offices made me go mad.coupled with living almost alone in a huge campus of ours was the last thing i asked for ..so much to do so little time.. too cliched i know but thats the way life is ..isnt life too cliched ?? well it seems to all have paid off now
infighting in faculty .. all administrative hassles ..endless meetings having no sense ..it seemd that it was all a part of HIS divine plan .it has taught me so much ..being the convener of the most successful MINDBEND gives you immense satisfaction it has deevloped some qualities in me and has made me much more of a organised human being

the biggest teaching has been proffesionalism ..the art of working with people whom you arent comfortable with ..will help me immensly in life
seems i have to stop here ..i can writre about mindbend forever

more in the next one