campus

Seniors always said that campus job fair would be the most hectic days of our IIT life. I did not realize why they made a big fuss about it, until I went through all that myself. And now I am a believer.

Each day is divided into 2 slots, first being 8AM to 4PM, and second 6PM to 4AM. Yes, you read that right, four in the morning. During initial days of the fair, each slot can house 10+ companies. Recruiters have to conduct written tests and all their rounds of interviews during that period. Of course, there will be clashes. You may be interested in getting into a good number of companies recruiting in the same slot, and you will have to run around like crazy to appear for some test in Elects. building, some interview in some classroom in main building and again some test/interview in H10 and so on. This continues till either the company says you do not need to come for another round of interview (which could mean either 'you are in' or 'now we know you enough to not consider you'), or you faint. That is, of course, if you get through the written test.

Believe me, doing all this after sleeping for approximately 4 hours is no fun. Regular food is out of question. I saw people faint and say completely arbit things in the interviews while they wanted to say something else. Try facing moderately tough algorithmic questions after waking up at 2AM midnight, and you will live a moment of a job aspirant at IITB.

As far as I am concerned, I owe a sincere thanks to Girija, Harshada, Ashish and Kailas who helped me all the way through my interview process. Had Girija not called me up regarding the interview, I know for sure that I would have missed it. I felt reassured knowing that Ashish was around, who would happily help me with some algorithmic problem I might jumble up in at the last moment.

Finally I made it into the evil corporation software giant, and started helping others out.