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.