Last week, I was involved in a campus recruitment initiative for my company. The venue was a leading educational institute near Avadi.
While my experiences in interviews is well known to you (refresh your memory with this link and this one too), this was my first time interviewing freshers in this company.
Outside of the extremely bumpy 20 km ride, on a stretch of earth where vehicles were driven, it was quite an interesting day. I must have interviewed some 16-17 candidates and ended up selecting 4 or 5.
For my line of work in this industry, what matters more than one's technical skills are the communication skills - verbal and written. Folks in my department don't write things that only a computer can understand. What we deliver are pretty much text based documents and spreadsheets that spell out very clearly, the conditions to test software, the requirements to test, how to test etc.
This clearly warrants a decent knowledge of the English language. We obviously do not require someone born in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England. But that doesn't mean that I can take on board someone who cant speak for a minute in English or write an email of 60 words.
The kids who showed up for the interview were from Chennai's border districts. These candidates came from strikingly different backgrounds - one person's father was a welder, another was the son of a carpenter, another was a coolie etc. But one cant let sympathy take precedence over our professional demands and we have no choice but to look at interviews in a logical manner.
Anyways, I wanted to bring up few interesting events (in no specific order) that transpired during the interviews:
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This girl mentioned that her hobby was numismatics. So I asked her where the coins in India were minted. She didn't know the answer!
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One guy said that his hobby was gardening. I asked him what all he did as part of gardening. He said he maintains plants and also a lawn.
me: so what all do you do as part of gardening?
him: i maintain plants, flowers and also a lawn.
me: oh, so u have a lawn? what kind of lawn.
him: its grass
me:uh-hmmm, i meant what kind of grass?
him:(in the most matter of fact tone one can have) green grass!
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Everyone had been asked to write a dummy email complaining about the bad quality of food.
One person said that the caterers were rude.
Another complained that the servers were not smiling.
Another mentioned that the food was tasty but not healthy.
The best one was of course the girl who mentioned that everything was awesome and it had no sarcastic overtones.
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I asked one girl to write some small piece of code on a sheet of paper and her response was "I want to write here?"
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One girl came in with significant Body Odor. In a closed space of 60 sq.ft, it was almost asphyxiating.
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Everyone said that this was their dream company to work for and that everyone says so. I usually tell these people that there are equally good competitors and so why not join them. Out here, I even told some of the kids that what would you do if a competitor also gave them an offer.
Everyone gave the standard "dream company" line and I was actually quite fed up. One girl went ahead and said that ours was a very cultured company. I asked her how she knew and she said that she had seen some of the folks from my company and they were all very cultured, unlike our competition.
But on a serous note, the best response came from the last girl I interviewed. She clearly said that she would have to evaluate both offers and see which came first. I said that assume they are both equal and you get them together or with barely 5 mns gap. She said that she would have to see which company would be more comfortable for her to work in. Comfortable in terms of accessibility, distance etc. Considering her very true answer I selected her.
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One girl said that she like cricket and so I asked her about her fav cricketer. It was Sachin. I asked her about Ponting and asked her to speak for a minute about why Ponting was inferior. She got nervous, fidgety and kept grinning. Finally she asked if she could talk about Sachin and then rattled off for a minute about his personal life, few stats etc. An obvious "mugged-up" case.
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Diplomatic skills. That was one of the points mentioned by a girl on her resume. I asked her to narrate an incident where she used her diplomatic skills. She said that she would be able to solve any problem. I said that I wanted a specific instance where she used her diplomatic skills to solve a problem. She said that whatever task was assigned to her, she would solve it. I asked her where the diplomatic skill was used in that? She replied that she would be able to work on any technical problem and complete her tasks diplomatically. I asked her whether she was equating diplomatic skills to technical knowledge and she finally said that she didn't know!
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One guy spoke with the fakest of American accents possible. I got irritated up front. And worse, he was probably the worst of the candidates I interviewed. He didn't know anything about anything mentioned in his resume. Technical was big zilch. I gave him a puzzle to solve (the one where you have to get 4 lts of water using a 5 ltr and a 3 ltr can); he looked at it for a minute and then said that he didn't know the answer. He didn't make a genuine attempt to solve it.
While winding up the discussion, I asked him if he'd been outside India and he replied in the negative. I took the liberty of telling him to lose that accent since it came across as being very weird for someone who hasn't visited that place.
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One girl commented at the end of the interview that I asked good questions!
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Almost all of them came in with good body language. But the slightest bit of unease in the discussion caused them all to lower their guard and all of them invariably got nervous and fidgety.
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One person said that his hobby was painting. After asking about the types of painting he did - like pencil sketches or oil painting etc - I asked him which was the toughest subject he had to paint. The guy was literally lost and didn't know what the subject in a painting was. I explained that to him and then he said that humans were the toughest.
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This happened to another panelist as well, but basically the candidate asked me what he needs to do to become a HR person!
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And on the lines of the one I had last year, I asked one girl to rate herself on a scale of 1-5 on C++ and she asked if I wanted her to write some program!
All in all, it was quite tiring and all of us panelists got together often to discuss each candidate and this was our only source of entertainment for the day. You can refer to Ramadurai's blog for more details.
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