Blue Blip

Campus Rumpus July 6, 2006

Alright, it has been quite sometime since my last post. I was busy visiting lot of engineering colleges and universities to recruit young bloods (a.k.a., campus recruitment) for my employer. I thought I will write on this topic today. 

Campus recruitment is always a different experience – the kind of environment, the people (students) you meet, the hospitality you get and the whole recruitment process. My gray cells always take me back to my college days every time I step into a campus! The effect is amplified more because I am in a real college seeing everything you would expect inside a college!  

The most interesting part is the actual interview process (that’s what I do in the campus recruitment process) – you get to meet student folks from different disciplines, some of which you only heard of! More importantly, you ask questions only in his/her field of study as candidates are not expected to have software/computer exposure in their academics (except Computer Science students, of course) – you pose only chemistry related questions to a chemical engineering student, nothing more nothing less! And as a campus panelist I am expected to meet candidates from any discipline and I usually follow the rule. Don’t ask me how! Nevertheless, the main goal is to gauge the candidate’s aptitude and attitude (generally in 20-30 minutes) and judege his/her fitness to the organization. 

Amidst the back-to-back interview sessions I am assigned to, I always take a few minutes of break after every three or four sessions and go out to get some fresh air. This energizes me for the next bunch of sessions. Whenever I break out of the panel room, I never fail to notice these typical scenes: candidates waiting impatiently for the final results, discussing how they performed in the interview with peers, few of those waiting to be grilled flipping through books. Their face will tell you the peak of anxiety they are in!

At the end of the show as the names of selects are read out, the situation changes up-side-down. Peers hugging selected ones, congratulatory hand-shakes from every corner, fixing a date and time for a big bash and the celebrations begin! Is it not great to be offered a job even before one gets out of the college? 

Every time I step out of a campus, I always remember how much I was excited when I heard my name being read out by someone from the select list! Life goes on.