Having a few days left to join freescale, i went back to the day i was recruited for it.
Its a memorable day in my life. Having got up early i went to college before everyone else. (not even the janitors had come). It was said that we will have a Pre Placement Talk(PPT) on company prospects, what they do, and what they look for at 9am in the morning. But it got delayed. So i had lots of time to "chill out" in the campus. (really it was chilling outside ;) )
Worst thing was, I had to wear the "professional attire" all day long! It took totally 16hrs from morning till night 10pm to declare the fresh recruits!
Competition is growing fast these days. Initial screening was based on scores and 70% CGPA in B.E. There were 100's of them who wrote the written test, out of which 14 got through to the interview rounds. They gave a lot of importance to C, Data struct, OS, Networking, problem solving capabilities. And finally 3 of them got through interview rounds.
The written test took place after PPT till 1pm. The corrections of the written apti test papers took long. So Interviews started by evening 4pm. The most important and interesting of them all was technical interview round. It was testing my patience to sit in one place for hours. It's all worth the trouble if you succeed in the interview. Looking at the interviewees coming out saying that it went bad i was afraid but somewhere i consoled myself saying that i have less competition now.
There was only one room with panel interview, all others were handles single interviewers. Fortunately or unfortunately, the interviewee before me opted not to go for that room. I had to go to a panel of two interviewers who bambarded me with two different questions at the same time. One was asking about the OS, Networking and other technical stuff(normal tech round), while other was mainly into something like the stress testing(saying "no, its not like that... is it?" to everything that i tell). All the previous candidates who came out of the room had failed because of this difficult situation. He asked some questions like "where would you see urself in other 5 years to come?" and i replied with "Technical Lead!!" without knowing how long it takes to be one. Then came a sign of negative response from the other side that you cant be in other 5 years. I had to defend myself in words about my ability, strengths, projects that i worked on, my contributions. I couldn't believe that i talked so impressively but when i did their face reading it was clear. I took my own time in answering both the interviewer's questions but gave apt and precise response with illustrations, code snippets. I got positive feedback from them before i left out.
Then came the HR round of interview just in a few mins after tech round. It was very much like informal talk and guy was very cool! which made it easy for me. He asked me about the thing that gives you more happiness than any other thing in the world, even though i seemed crazy. I said that it was while writing poems that i feel the joy/pleasure. (It was in engineering that i started writing poems). I think he was touched by that! I was full of enthusiasm even at that time(maybe 9pm). I asked few questions like - "How will the day at freescale be?","Any training? How long?" to which he patiently responed back with "long memorised para"! :P
As i came out, I had a feeling that i was through and called back home that i will come back home once it is done. To my surprise, i was correct! I was speechless and had expressions on my face similar to that of the last scene where will smith gets a job in the movie - "The pursuit of happyness".(its a memorable one)
I will come back with a post on "first day at office" by next weekend.
C ya. later...
