My Interview Blues

I dont know how many more companies I have to interview with, to get a job I want soon. An ardent cricket fan in me, refuses to ignore the parallels between Team India and me. "Lacking the final punch" as many point out.

In most cases, the first round is a campus one-on-one interview or a telephone inerview. Though I have never really struggled in any of em except one in which a weirdo asked me to derive "Taylors Series", the responses have been quite varied..

I have got a chinese guy telling me "U lack Soft skills". Common.. some1 who clears as many first rounds as I have cleared, that must sound like a PJ. Infact thats the only thing Im secure of these days!!!

And there was one helluva interview.. This guy asked me to solve a simple quadratic equation. Its fair to say My eyes lit up on seeing such a sitter. But more often than not you can rattle good batsmen by bowling full tosses, the easiest of balls to face. I ignored the -ve sign in the equation and solved it in a second. Disaster spelt all over it. At the end, when I asked him who will be your ideal candidate, he retorted quickly by saying "Guyz who can multiply". Knowing that I have to do some damage control.. I told him "We, programmers always let the computer do it". Nonetheless, It was a shame.

And in another, I and one guy were talking all kinda non-sense for 1.5 hours when the actual time for the interview was only 30 mins. He even asked me to join him for a beer. The next week I see a firm "NO" in my Inbox. Dont know what he was thinking.

There was one lady who told me that their salary range is 35k when I was looking at close to 70k. The interview lasted only seconds after that.

And there is a whole lotta companies which tell you on ur face that "We dont sponsor International Students"

Barring these exceptions, I entered into most of the second round interviews.

It gets even more ridiculous now..

First the competition is enormous.. The very fact that U have toppers from Columbia, NYU, Princeton, Cornell, CMU, MIT, SUNYSB, Rutgers together in a room is in itself very intimidating.

Second, In all probability you are one of the 2-3 non CS students sitting there. And you have to compete against people who breath in through scanf() and breath out thru printf(). Im sitting there as an exception to be caught.

Typically the second rounds involve a combination of any of these.. Panel Discussion, Group Interview, Team Exercise, IQ test, Tech Interviews with anywhere between 1-10 people and HR Interviews.

So the problem is where should the punch land. God Knows!!!

Even here, I have had some peculiar ones.. There was one interview which lasted a mere couple of minutes.

Hi, H r u?
Good.. How abt u?
Im good. So u r from Inida right?
Yeah.. From a place called chennai in SI.
So do u require sponsorship.
Yeah I do.
Oh.. I apologize. The issues are enormous, so our company has a policy of not hiring International students.
Aaaargh..
I left wondering why the first interviewer never asked me that question.

There was another.. All Interviewers were Indians. A chance for them to be impolite and still get away with it. And dont they grab their chance very well. Their motive was to show I know more than u do. After a point, I got really really sick of the tone and their looks and I asked the interviewers to write a piece of code which wud compile in C but not in C++. They blinked more than I did all day and U know what the result wud have been. I walked out with a sense of pride but not a job.

And in another one too, they were all Indians. So any diplomatic reply only evoked laughs from them. I dont blame them since they know what Im saying is a well described lie. But what else can I say? I cant tell him that Comp Arch is my favorite class because I get to see this HOT HOT babe in short skirts sitting next to me.

And ofcourse there were others in which I thought I did really well only to get spat on ur face a week or two later. And there were others in which I wasnt very competitive because of the depth of knowledge that they were expecting us to possess.

I dont know when I would get to meet the right set of people with the right set of questions. This is soon becoming a horrible experience. Oh no.. I thought thrice before writing that since there is a remote possibility that some1 gets to read my blog and not give me a job because I wasnt mentally strong enuf to even last a few job interviews without complaining.

The Versatlilty in me, boosts me that there are a thousand other Hardware Engg Jobs, ASIC Design Jobs, Networking Jobs and Computer Vision Jobs in which I havent seriously ventured into exploring the oppurtunities. But the same versatility is bothering me to make me wonder whether I have become a Jack of All trades? I dont know when will this new found pessimism suppress my ever enthusistic personality.

I have seen my bro sitting at home without job for a couple of months after graduation. Though I havent seen a single day yet, but the very possibility of it makes me shiver like crazy.


~ A suddenly insecure Indian Grad Student wondering whats in store for him after the arrivel of yet another reject mail even after doing the interview so very well.

PS : I know this lacks the usual humor and fun. But I dont think I would be able to write anything funny in the mood I am.