How I Got My First Job

Once again my memories travelled back to the past, to our college days, S7 going on and it was placement time. Companies coming to take those whom they think are efficient(may not be the case always). Every now and then our placement cell announces that some company is coming to some of the colleges and we all will be going to the college where the campus recruitment is conducted.

One day the campus placement cell announced that a company Ernst&Young is visiting Baselious college for campus recruitment. I havent heard of such a company till then and any how we decided to go there and attend one more test. In the morning there was a short presentation about the company and then only we understood that it was one of the most reputed firms in the auditing field and is having a shared service centre at technopark. After the presentation there was an aptitude test and after that they said that after lunch we will be divided into groups and each one of us will have to speak on a topic for 5 minutes and the topic will be have to be picked from lot. On hearing this I was not at all interested in staying back any longer as i never ever liked to have a public speech and also my communicative skills are not the best. So I thought of going for the film Classmates which was running house full at that time.

I put across this idea to many but all of them rejected that idea saying that it is one of the craziest of the ideas having come this far for the purpose of attending the test, they wanted to stay there. I was not at all happy with their attitude as i wanted to runaway from the scene somehow and get out of the trouble of making a public speech. My last resort was the one of my friends who was my neighbour and also my classmate, and as he is crazy about films i thought of persuading him and taking him with me for the film. But he too broke my heart with a NO. He also told me that we have come this far, so now just attend that too and we can go for film some other day and i was like a man stranded in a desert without knowing how to get out of there. So after everyone disagreeing to my good proposal i had no choices left other than to attend the session which is the next hurdle to a job.

We all went to the rooms to participate in the presentation session. We were divided into groups of 15 and soon the public speech started. I got a relatively easy topic to speak on 'Television - a knowledge box or a nonsense box'. After the public speech we left for our homes and on our way one of my friends informed that 6 from our college has been shortlisted to attend the interview the next day at Technopark. I was one among those shortlisted along with Hidesh, the one who made me stay there, and some others. The next day we were there at the office in Technopark waiting for our turn to attend the interview. I didnt have to wait much before they called me. The interview was over very quickly, i think within 10-15 minutes, a simple one. A small self introduction, then few questions from what all things i have mentioned in my resume, a brief description of our mini project, seminar that i took on my college and a few questions based on the descriptions that i gave them. I was pretty confident in giving them the answers as i was pretty sure that they wont be having much knowledge in electronics department. Then came the real test, i was asked to write a C++ program to sort an array of numbers, it might sound very simple for a computer science student, but it wasnt all that easy for me. I took the pen and started with a "#include" statement thinking of how to write, then suddenly one of the interviewers told to my relief that there is no need to write the syntax, you just give us the logic. I was pretty happy hearing this and explained the logic to them, they seemed very happy and told me that you can leave for now and we will be informing you the result within a week.

Weeks passed by and I didn't get any update from the firm, and i almost forgot it and one night before a university exam one of my friends called me and told me that i was selected, but to my disgust the one who held me back from skipping the public speech was not there in that list.

Once there in E&Y, we had an english training course, and in that we were asked to speak about some of the incidents in our life and i narratted this incident and once my speech was over my trainer shook her head and said it was one of the craziest way of thinking.