Ragged on campus during interview

Yes, I was ragged during a campus interview and the sad part was that I was the person conducting the interview, not being interviewed!

My company has started recruiting Engineering graduates from College campuses from September and this is the first time that people from the Project Delivery stream are interviewing the candidates. We have done it for non-Engineering students before, but this is the first time for Engineering students.

I was a panelist for conducting interviews at a leading private University on the southern outskirts of Chennai. The day began by 9 AM and the first person I interviewed had the same name as a leading off-spinner for India. This guy was fine but the next candidate who came in bowled a doosra!

The second guy came in with solid academic credentials; 90% plus in Class X and XII, followed by a CGPA of 8.5 till 6^th Semester in College. After the initial chit-chat was done, I asked him to write the syntax of a “For loop” in C. He wrote this:

For….statement

Start

End.

It was written in a hand-writing slightly better than what Doctors display on a prescription. I was a little stunned and wondered how come a guy can’t even write this simplest of syntax in C language. That’s when I observed his body language a little more closely and found that he seemed to have a very smug attitude, not talking much though his language skills were good.

I then followed it up with a question on Class and Objects in C. He said something vague. So I asked him to give me an example of a Class. His response was Class has teachers and students!

After a couple of other questions, I asked him about Network protocols. He asked me to elaborate and I told him I wanted him to talk about the different types of Networks and protocols that he knows. His response was the last straw – he said there are many networks like Facebook, WhatsApp etc.

If such responses had come from a guy with poor academic records, I would have let it aside thinking that it was Rahul Gandhi talking to me. Or if I had asked questions that needed some application of whatever was learnt, I would have assumed that the responses showed that guy is a mug-up-vomit entity. But this guy came with impeccable scores and then gave out ridiculous answers which only proved that he was ragging me!

Needless to say, I rejected him and then complained to the student counselor and asked them to not send across such candidates that are not interested in attending interviews.

Things were fine with most of the other candidates. The only other interesting incident was when a guy that I wasn't sure about shortlisting or rejecting, asked me a question that swung my vote in his favor. He asked if I was from HR and I said I was from Project delivery like all other panelists. He asked if all of us were doing interviews here, then who was doing the work!!!! I liked his thinking, though when he grows in the corporate world, he will realize that work gets done only when Managers aren't around.  

Who or what is an MBA?

For quite a long time in my life, I had this aspiration of wanting to hold an MBA degree. I really don’t know why I wanted to do an MBA course, but during my College days, I thought it was the best way for me to move out of the “technical” space. Also, I was generally interested in solving arithmetic and logic problems and felt that the MBA entrance exam would be one place where I could excel. As history has pointed out repeatedly, I don’t do well in exams. And despite my near Ghajini-like attempts at joining some MBA course or the other, I haven’t progressed anywhere.

But this post is not going to chronicle the numerous unsuccessful trysts with MBA that I have had over the years (ranging from entrance exams to joining long-distance courses). Rather, it is going to address something more important – why I don’t want one anymore.

The reason for this change can largely be attributed to my experiences in interviewing a bunch of MBA students who would be passing out this academic year. In few earlier posts, I have shared some interesting experiences I’ve had in interviewing fresh graduates and sometimes, even lateral employees. When I went into this MBA campus recruitment last week, I certainly didn’t expect anything interesting. I was a little off-target.

I asked a few candidates, what courses they studied as part of their electives. There were 2-3 who actually couldn’t list the 5 or 6 major topics that they study. At least 2 guys in Marketing said that Sales was a part of Marketing and 2 others felt otherwise.

There was one other girl who felt that she was quite old; the profile listed her at 26 years of age.

To one candidate, whose profile said that he was majoring in Operations Management, I posed a simple question.
Me: “Assume you have opened a petrol bunk. Can you tell me what all would you do to reduce the operating costs?”
MBA: “I will hire cheap labour”
Me (mind voice): “Maybe he is talking about salary costs. Ok, let me see if he says it directly.”
MBA: “You see, I am from Kerala. And in Kerala, if we employ the local Kerala people, they ask for higher salary. So, I will hire people from other states.”
Me (mind voice): “Whoa whoa whoa”
Me: “What else would you do?”
MBA: “I will install CFL bulbs everywhere.”
Me (mind voice): “Have I come across the joke where they ask how many MBAs are needed to change a light bulb?”
Me: “Ok, moving on…”
As a fresh MBA he was only expected to state where the costs are generally high and that he would focus on the high cost items to see what can be reduced. This guy directly went ahead into the solution and even there, came up with the option of hiring people from other states and switching to CFL bulbs!

Then there was a strikingly good-looking girl who came up to our panel. Her major was in Human Resources. I asked her why she joined an MBA course. Her response was: “Sir, my father works in (Govt. Company) and so we live in that colony. If you see, in my colony, everyone does only B.E/B.Tech. I wanted to be different and so, I decided to do B.Com and then took up this MBA course”.

We gave a simple puzzle to almost all the candidates. It was the standard “How would you get exactly 5L if you use a 3L and 4L jar?” I was actually surprised that the first 2 candidates couldn’t even think beyond “I will cut the jar in half” or “I will look and estimate”. But what surprised me even more was the fact that despite this question being “leaked” out, only the 7th/8th candidate could actually come up with a convoluted answer to the query.

While these responses may pale in comparison to some of the gems I have http://jawaman.blogspot.com/search/label/interview experienced earlier, they clearly showed me that an MBA degree is certainly not of any use, unless you apply your mind. Otherwise, it is just a set of alphabets that one adds at the end of their name. My parents have been asked by quite a few prospective in-laws “The groom doesn’t have even an MBA degree?” and I now understand what that “even” stands for!

A skill that most people tend to ignore

A couple of months back, there was a recruitment drive in my company and I was on the interview panel, along with some 20 others.

I must have interviewed at least 10 to 12 candidates that day and I think I selected some 6 or 7 for further discussions with HR.

Just last week, I saw one of the guys I'd selected, in the same floor where I am seated. I didn't recognize him at first, though I felt that his face was quite familiar. He too looked keenly at me and his body language displayed some amount of discomfiture. I somehow recollected that I had interviewed him and so checked with him about it. He confirmed my statement, I wished him luck and went my way.

This morning, a lady (calling her a lady since she's married) walked into my cubicle and again, it was familiar face. I remembered that she too was one of the candidates I had interviewed. She said she joined last week and after seeing me on the floor, wanted to inform me about joining here. The best part, was that she said she even saw me at the Ampa SkyWalk mall (must have been on the day I watched Paiyya).

When someone you select in an interview joins the company, it does give you a great sense of satisfaction. But, between these two folks, I am obviously happier with what this lady did. She remembered who interviewed her, remembered their name and more importantly, when she saw that guy on the same floor, had the decency to walk up to that person's cubicle and inform that she had joined the company.

The other guy, either didn't remember me or didn't know if he had to meet me after joining or felt that wherever he was it was because he deserved it or somehow felt that there was no need for any such kind of socialising in an office. These are not things that one is taught anywhere and at some level, these are the small things that probably differentiate, or rather elevate, professionals who would otherwise be equals in technology, process, reasoning skills etc. I hope he learns that tip and uses it effectively in his career here.

We are coming back... baby....

It’s been quite a long time since I blogged about interviews. The reason is simple. My company had put a freeze on hiring for the past 15 months or so.

Now that the economy has supposedly improved, the freeze has been thawed (sic) and the formal recruitment process has started off. I salivated at the prospect of being on the panel for the simple reason that they give some fodder for my blog.

I didn’t get to interview many people and had to be satisfied with just 3. And out of these 3, only 2 interviews were even worthy enough to be blogged. And even they made the cut only because
(a) I haven’t blogged much about interviews recently due to the reasons mentioned earlier
(b) I haven’t blogged much about anything in the recent past

The first candidate was no good for this blog. But the second guy was. I will however start with the last guy. The last candidate I interviewed was unfortunately slotted around lunch time. And as it happens in all such interviews, there was a delay in starting the discussion on time and we actually started only around 12:30 PM. It was a fairly reasonable interview, with the guy meeting most of our expectations. Towards the end, I asked him the usual “Do you have any questions for us?” question. Usually people respond with some real simple question like “Do you have automation projects?” or “Do you have banking domain projects?” or a very terse “Nothing right now”. But this guy went one step ahead with the last option. He said “Nothing, I am hungry” with a big grin!

Now, to the second guy. He has around 4-5 years of experience out of which, 2 years have been in the realm of product testing in the mobile telephony arena. I asked him to talk about that project. He told me that he was primarily involved in testing the security feature in few high-end phones, whereby one can login to an application over the web and issue commands to lock the handset. So I asked him to tell me potential error points that can happen in this end-to-end workflow. The guy responded with issues that were related to application settings on the handset alone!

Then, I asked him to tell me how this communication from the web server to the mobile phone happens. His response – “Through WAP”. I then asked him to tell me how a web server that is connected to a hard-wired network (I even pointed to a computer in the interview room) communicates to the mobile phone. All I wanted to hear from him was about transmissions and receptions from servers to satellites or mobile towers, but he seemed to be on a different wavelength.

He said – “That’s through WAP technology” with a tone soaked in pride. He went on to say that it was only through “WAP technology” that SMS from one phone reached the other. Not wanting to hear anymore such gyaan, I went to another area altogether.

He said that he’d reviewed test cases written by his team. I asked him how he did that. First he gave me some of the standard answers like he’d check the layout, do a spell check etc. and would then look to see if all requirements have been covered. I asked him how he managed to review the work of some 5-6 of his team members from offshore while he was at onsite. His answer was that he had 2 reliable people in his team at offshore who would ensure all of that and he would simply collate the artifacts and submit to customer!

Slightly exasperated, I asked him as to what he’d do if he joins my company and his “reliable” team members don't. His response was that he’d first go through requirements and then check the test cases to see if they are all fine. And he then said that after a month or two, he’d identify a reliable person who would do all this for him! My friends felt that he was being too truthful and I don't disagree. But an interview is basically a forum where one’s ability to lie and ability to articulate theoretical concepts such that they sound practical, are the only things that help in selecting a candidate. So on that count (and also because he didn’t clear questions asked by another panelist on the technical front), I had no choice but to reject him.

Eagerly waiting for the next lot!

A quick visit to Bangalore

I went to Bangalore on a one-day official visit, yesterday. Actually, it was for a lunch meeting with our unit head as part of the package for "winning" the MVP award in Q3 for the Recruitment initiative.

Even though it was only a lunch meeting, we (3 of us from Chennai) still had to report there in the BLR office on time. We took a Jet Airways flight at 6 AM and returned by a Jet Lite flight that reached Chennai at 10 PM. A quick note on Jet Lite - I have experienced quite a few bad landings, but this one beats the shit out of everything else.

As I anticipated, the lunch meeting turned out to be quite pointless - an exercise in futility. If there were junior folks, they would have probably enjoyed being in the presence of Unit heads et al. As someone who has had direct interactions with him on a couple of occasions, I lost that attraction. I am also not impressed by one of the persons in the next rung, so my expectations out of the meeting was quite low already.

And what transpired during the meeting was a classic case of people talking in the air, with the sole purpose of exhibiting their talking skills. Unfortunately, the food that was served was quite bad and all in all, I would rate this luncheon meeting as one of my low points for the year.

The only good thing was that while in Bangalore, I got to meet a couple of people with whom I've been speaking over the phone for a year-year-and-a-half. Otherwise, I would have been happier if I had been given gift vouchers for even half the amount it cost them to fly us to Bangalore for that lunch!

Tirupati travelogue 9-Feb-08 to 10-Feb-08: Part 5

I woke up early on Sunday to give me enough time to get ready and also to pack up my stuff to check out of my room. We had decided that since all of us were going to be away for the day in the college, we wouldn’t need to retain so many rooms. We left only 2 rooms so that we could at least keep our baggage and also allow the elders to rest during the day.

We were joined by another colleague of ours, who had come late on Saturday evening. After completing our check out formalities and finishing our breakfast, we boarded the Qualis to go to the College. We reached there in around 30-40 minutes. The campus was quite big and looked very green with lots of big trees around and beautiful landscaping done in front of each building.

We were informed that only 99 people had been identified for the interview. Since the panel was now 8 members strong (we got 2 more from other places), our calculations showed that we would wrap up the session by noon.

However, we could complete only around 1 PM and then we rushed back to the Hotel. En route, we made plans to go to Kalahasthi since we had some time on our hand. We reached the hotel, regrouped everyone and for lunch, we decided to go to another Bhimas hotel near the railway station. The restaurant in that hotel was apparently more famous.

We had a good lunch there and by the time we completed the lunch, it was 3.30 PM. Now, things were getting a bit close for the return home. My supporter and I preferred making the trip to Kalahasthi by cab, but no one would have it that way. But the main thing was that neither of us broached the topic since we knew for sure that it would be shot down like the Scud missile in the ’91 Gulf War. Since it was going to be only a bus journey, I opted out of the Kalahasthi visit and decided to join the parties returning home directly.

We went to the bus stand and were informed by the transport corporations that no tickets were available for any of their services till 8.30 PM. In effect, it meant that we had to just board any of the local services to Chennai. There were even suggestions that we just get on to any bus that is headed towards any of the places on any of the routes to Chennai and then hop on to any other bus from that place towards Chennai!

We all came back to the hotel and checked out of all the rooms. The party headed to Kalahasthi went their way and the rest of us went back to the bus stand. We were able to get a “route bus” that was directly headed to Chennai. Since it had just come in to the bus stand, we were able to get better seats. By better seats, I only mean seats that were not at the back of the bus.

But by no other yardstick, could the seats be described as being comfortable. They were cramped for 2 normal sized adults to sit. The unfortunate design aspect was that, even for the seats away from the door, there was a handle at the edge of the seat. This in effect meant that the person in the aisle seat, wouldn’t have been able to swing himself and make use of the aisle. Hats off to the APSRTC bird heads for coming up with this design!

[To b concluded in Part 6]

Its an interview panelist's turn this time

Yesterday, I had gone to office to conduct interviews for recruiting experienced folk. There were people from 2 other departments as well and the whole thing was being coordinated by some 4-5 HR folks.

At one point, my panel got the profile of a candidate whose experience was completely in the Performance Testing arena. Both of us panelists were not qualified enough to evaluate her on that skill set, but we decided to go ahead with the other generic aspects of testing. We found her to be not fit enough on that count.

But, we felt that since she had nearly 5 years of experience in Performance Testing, we should have her evaluated by someone from that field. So, I went to the war room where the HR folks were arranging things and told one of the executives about the situation. While I was talking to that HRE, my peripheral vision registered the presence of a guy.

I knew only a couple of the executives and looking at the crowd in the room, I couldn't segregate the HR executives from the Project Managers from so many departments. So, I didn't know who this entity was. But he turned out to be one brilliantico and the proof can be had from the conversation log, reproduced here to the best of my ability:

Me : [To HRE]: This girl has worked only on Performance Testing and both of us panelists cannot ask her questions.
HRE : [Grasping what I was telling her]
Specimen : Then ask her questions in Performance Testing
Me : [Shocked and gave him the best of my glares]
HRE : No, this is for (my department name)
Specimen : Oh. Then you ask her questions on tools no.
Me : [Talking with clenched teeth to HRE, completely ignoring the specimen] I cannot select/reject this candidate; I need a second round of interview to be conducted by someone with a Performance Testing background.

Thankfully, the Specimen didn't take any further part in my conversation with the HRE. My initial impression was that the Specimen was some support staff for the HRE, because his remark was so callous that I didn't expect a Project Manager to make such a statement.

I found out a little while later that he was also a panelist representing another department. God bless the souls who work for him and also those who had the misfortune of being interviewed by him.

Off to Tirupati

I am going to Tirupati this weekend. There is a campus recruitment initiative in one of the colleges there, on Sunday. This college is apparently owned by popular Telugu actor Mohan Babu.

One of my colleagues is using his influence to get special darshan tickets at The Temple. So, we are all leaving tomorrow morning from Chennai and will return on Sunday night.

Hope I get a better darshan than the one I had last time.

In all, there are going to be 11 people in the tour party - 6 panelists and an assortment of parents and siblings of some of these panelists.

Interviews - some more pearls of wisdom

Poor Albert Einstein would have turned a lot in his grave yesterday. Reason: statements made by 2 girls in my interviews.

Please note that both of these girls are B.Sc Physics majors.

Here is the conversation:

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# 01
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Me: What is the Theory of Relativity?
She: I don't exactly remember.
Me: Do you know Albert Einstein?
She: Yes.
Me: Isn't he credited with Theory of Relativity?
She: Ah, yes.
Me: But, you don't know the Theory of Relativity?
She: I am not fully sure, but I think it has to do with, like with vehicles moving in the same direction then their relative velocity will be faster. And if they are moving opposite each other, then it will be slower. Its the relative velocity.
Me: Ok......


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# 02
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Me: Do you know the Theory of Relativity?
She: I don't know sir.
Me: Do you Albert Einstein?
She: I think she was famous scientist sir.
Me: (in mild shock) Do you know any important or famous theories of Albert Einstein? (I purposefully didn't use a pronoun so that she wouldn't identify the gender).
She: I think she only invented the Mass Theory sir.
Me: Mass Theory? What is it?
She: It is atomic weight by weight, but I am not too sure.


I am seriously worried with the education system in this part of the country - probably it is the same everywhere in the country. If a Physics graduate does not know what the Theory of Relativity is and does not know who Albert Einstein is, then where is this country headed?

Interviews - my second time with freshers

Barely 2 weeks after I interviewed a bunch of freshers on the 7th of this month, last Saturday (Dec 22nd) I got another opportunity to interview freshers from a few colleges in Madurai.

Compared to the people who showed up at Avadi, I definitely feel that this lot was much better. This is mainly because not even one of the 17 kids I interviewed said "I can able". The quality of English was definitely bad, but again, compared to Avadi, it was better.

Anyways, here's a collection of some of the interesting statements heard during the interview sessions: (I hope Ramadurai also blogs about his experiences)

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# 01
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While winding up an interview, I asked the candidate if she had any questions for me. She immediately asked me why interviews were being conducted by us? She asked if it wouldn't be easier to conduct multiple Group Discussions rather than waste time and effort conducting individual interviews.
I was really stumped by this question. I gave off some gyan answer, but her question definitely validated my selection!

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# 02
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On a similar note, another kid asked if I was here for the money or for fame. If only his communication skills were better.....

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# 03
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Q: Who is Pratibha Patil?
A: He is the... uhhhh... mmm.... He is the Republic Minister of India.
Q: (with the best straight face I could muster) Ok, anything else?
A: He is the good Congress person. He do lots of good in politics. He is the good with states and ....uhhh ... mmmm ... what I can say... states and districts. He is the very good Congress.
A: Ok, moving on...

I mean to say, I am no fan of Ms.Patil and in fact loathe the fact that she is the President of this country. But then, it was really disappointing to note that a citizen of this country doesn't even know the name of his President. In fact he didn't even know the name of the post. And worse, he didn't even know the gender of that person. Is there a way or law by which such people can be arrested?

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# 04
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Asked the same question to the next candidate.
Q: Who is Pratibha Patil?
A: She is the Prime Minister of India.

Hello.... I didn't ask who is Sonia Gandhi. I asked who is Pratibha Patil!!!!

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# 05
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Name of a candidate was *Pandian.
Q: Which kings or dynasty ruled Madurai?
A: I don't know saar
Q: You don't know *Pandian, its there in your name itself.
A: Oh, Pandian king saar.
Q: What was the logo/emblem on the Pandya king's flag?
A: I don't know saar.

He was probably frustrated with my questions or didn't want the job.

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# 06
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Q: What is the legend behind Potraamarai Kullam?
A: That sir, its from the Thiruvilayaadam Puraanam.
Q: Ok, so whats the story?
A: There will be a Pandian king saar. He will get doubt and so ask to write poem saar. One poet cant write poem saar. So God comes and gives poem. He takes to king saar. But all king's minister, poet will find fault saar. So God will angry saar. Then he will dismiss Nakkeerar saar. This will happen in that kullam saar. That's the story.

He basically narrated the famous Dharumi episode from the Thiruvilayadal movie. While I too didn't know much about the legacy of that kullam, where is the link between the story he narrated and the presence of a golden lotus in that pond (etymology of the pond's name explained)?


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# 07
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Q: What are your hobbies?
A: Reading books, listening music

This was a standard answer from almost everyone. When I asked them what books they read, 4 out of 5 would respond that they read technical books to improve their knowledge. Basically, reading books listed in your curriculum is a hobby!!!

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# 08
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Q: What are your hobbies?
A: Gardening, reading books..
Q: Gardening? Do you have a garden at home? What sort of plants do you grow?
A: In Madurai we wont have like garden saar. There will be fields and I will do planting of crops, harvesting etc saar.
Q: Oh, so you mean more of agriculture is it?
A: Yes saar
Q: What kind of crops do you grow now?
A; It is like... uhh... mmm.. like paddy rice saar..

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# 09
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Q: What are your hobbies?
A: Listening music, reading books...
Q: What type of books do you read?
A: Comedy or humorous books saar
Q: Ok. Who is your favorite author?
A: Shakespeare saar.
Q: Cool. Which book of his you like the most?

Note: for the last 2 questions, I was not looking at him directly and was flipping through his resume, test sheet, application form etc.

A: Dragon Lord saar

That was a bolt from the blue. I almost dropped the papers I was holding and somehow managed to ask him:

Q: Dragon Lord?
A: Yes saar
Q: By Shakespeare?
A: Yes saar
Q: Can you tell me the story?
A: There will be a king saar. He will go to fight the dragon saar. After the fight saar, the king life will be with dragon. Then all the peoples will go and fight the dragon saan. The dragon will die and the king will come saar.

I don't even want to do a Google to find out if that great bard did indeed write fairy tales.

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# 10
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This was not part of the fresher interview on Saturday, but a telephonic one that I conducted on Friday. The candidate's resume said he had some 2.5 years of experience. I had another panelist with me and I started the interview introducing ourselves and the guy cut us off midway and gave his name.
Us: Lets start the discussion with a brief introduction about yourself and what you are looking for at ?
Him: Bangalore or Pune.
Us: No, we meant what your expectation is at (my company)?
Him: Testing job.
It was clear that we were heading nowhere with this guy.

Us: Ok, can you please tell us about yourself?
Him: Ok sir. I am ......
He went ahead and gave his family background. Nothing about his education or previous experience.

Us: Can you tell us about your current project?
He went on and on at full speed about the project. I interrupted him and asked him:

Us: What is the database structure used in your project?
Him: There will be many columns sir. One for Serial Number, one for Test case id, one for Test case description, one for actual result sir, one for expected result and one for defect id.
Us: You have told me what a test case template is. I wanted to know what is the database structure used in your project.
Him: RDBMS sir.
Us: What? Which database. Oracle or MS-SQL or MS-Access?
Him: SQL sir.
Us: Which version?
Him: 9i sir.

At this point, I asked my co-panelist to continue the discussion and I stepped out to catch hold of my friend, who is also the recruitment anchor for my unit at Chennai. He heard this candidate speak for a minute and immediately asked us to close out the interview. But just before we closed out we wanted to find out if he had spoken to someone else earlier in the day.

The background was that there was another unit also conducting interviews that same day. Sometimes it so happens that the other unit guys might find a profile not meeting their requirements and might refer it to other units - on that day, it was us. Here's what transpired....

Us: Have you attended any interview before this at (my company)?
Him: Yes sir
Us: When?
Him: Today
Us: Whom did you speak to?
Him: Interview sir
Us: Ok, did you speak to the HR or did someone interview you?
Him: Today only interview sir.
Us: No no, before we started this interview, did anyone from (my company) speak to you today?
Him: No sir. Only face to face interview call.
We were quite exasperated by then and closed out the discussion.

Interviews - my first time with freshers

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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# 01:
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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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# 02:
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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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# 03:
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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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# 04:
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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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# 05:
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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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# 06:
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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.

Why I am useful to some of my friends

Some of my friends at work have been encouraging me to select a good looking girl in the office and get married to her.

While they have always been suggesting this, ever since this Guru peyarchi thingy happened 2 weeks backs, some of them are going over-board. Raj suggested that I start visiting the local temples. He even suggested the popular time slots that could yield good results. Ganesh suggested that I simply put the "katti pudi vaidhiyam" to good use.

Yesterday, my unit had a small celebration in the office. The event witnessed decent attendance and there were lots many new faces. Some good ones too. :)

For the entire duration of the event, Raj, Ganesh and even Ramadurai, seemed to be very keen on goading me to select one particular girl. I reminded them repeatedly about the vast age difference between the girl and me, which in effect would only lead to disappointment if at all I proceed. But to no avail. They kept on selling this idea to me for nearly an hour.

But the coup de grace of all this was what happened at work today. I had gone to office for as an interview panelist. Towards the end of the day, another friend of mine started telling me to "proceed" with the HR girl who was coordinating the whole interview arrangement!

I have started getting a feeling that probably all these guys are proceeding with their "sight seeing" and just using me as a valid excuse, in case someone suspects their motive!

The Aunt of all interviews

Well, in July, I had the Mother of all interviews. Had one today that is quite a close competitor to that one.

As usual, one totally cooked up resume came up for interview. Two of us were interviewing him - one in person and me on the phone.

Some 5 minutes into the interview, my co-panelist asked the guy what software he'd used for defect tracking. Normally people respond with one of the fancy tools available in the market or quite often the answer is that only MS Excel was used.

This guy belonged to the latter category. He said, "Sir I have used excel".

Then....

Me: Ok , can you tell us in detail about your defect tracker?
Him: Sir, its an excel file.
Me: Ok.
Him: It has more than 55000 rows.
Him (continues): There will be 255 columns.
Him (still): And when you open the file, there will be 3 worksheets by default!!!

So basically, this guy just told us what excel is. I think its quite safe to assume that after so many years in the industry, even a person with my limited intellectual prowess knows what an excel file is.

When this guy said this, I quicky hit the mute button and started laughing. People outside the meeting room would have wondered what happened to me, but I didnt care.

Thankfully, my co-panelist understood why there was no response from me and somehow wound up the intrvw after another 5 minutes.

The mother of all interviews

On Thursday, I interviewed someone for a contracting position in my project. I was going through the routine and didn't find his communication to be good. His process knowledge wasn't that great either. I anyway had to evaluate his technical ability as well. Looking through his resume, I found that he had listed Oracle and SQL Server. Since my project involves quite a good amount of querying, I decided to evaluate him on that.
I have done my best to recollect the exact conversation the two of us had, but you will anyway get the idea....
me: So ..., you have mentioned Oracle and SQL Server in your resume
him: Yeah.....I know Oracle and SQL
me: Great. So how comfortable are you in it?
him: Yeah... I know Oracle and SQL
me: Ok, so you are okay with SQL Queries?
him: Yeah.. I have written queries in my previous project.
me: Good. So where would you rate yourself with respect to SQL Queries?
him: I am not getting the question
me: Where would you rate yourself on SQL Queries?
him: I don't understand your question
me: You said you know Oracle and SQL..
him: Yeah I know Oracle and SQL
me: Yes, and you also said you have written queries in your previous project
him: Yeah, I have written queries
me: So, I am asking you to rate yourself with respect to SQL Queries
him: I still don't get your question
[Note: The line is very clear. No disturbance. I have a very loud voice.]
me: Can you please rate yourself on SQL Queries? On a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the highest?
him:
me: Hello..
him: Yes, I cant understand your question
me: I am just asking you to do a self-rating of your capability with respect to SQL Query
him: I don't know
me: Just give a rank to yourself. Like grades..
him: Sorry, I don't know the answer to the question
me: You said you know Oracle and SQL. You said you have used SQL Queries. So I just want to find out where you would rate or rank or grade yourself, on a scale of 1 to 5?
him: I cant understand your question
me: "xyz"(his name), I am only asking you to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 5. If you rate yourself as 5/5 it means you have exceptional knowledge. If its 4/5 it means that you are above average. So on and so forth. Now, will you please rate yourself on SQL Queries?
him: I don't know the answer. Can we skip this question?

At about this time, I was planning on shouting at him or breaking the phone. Both of which, would have been detrimental to my career.
However, since I was representing my Company, I still had to finish the conversation on proper terms and so my response was "If I ask you questions on SQL Queries, will you be able to answer them?". He replied in the affirmative. But it was a different deal that he couldn't get past the basic ones itself.

Needless to add, I didn't select the candidate. And even more importantly, I didn't even say the formal "Nice talking to you".