I was just going through the 'Sent Mail' in my gmail mailbox and I suddently found an email that I had sent to my College Magazine Board two years back. It was the last article that I had scripted along with my friend Ankit. I was under impression that it was the best thing I could write. Though I was never satisfied with my entries to the mag board, they were all published, but this one just couldnt make it. I certainly dont want this story to die in my 'Sent Mail', let the most exciting story of mine and Ankit's life unfold for you...
Leaving a mark…
Damodar Prabhu & Ankit Kashyap
8th Sem, Information Science and Engineering,
S.J. College of Engineering, Mysore15-April-2006
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Being a student of SJCE has been an experience which most of us will cherish for the rest of our lives. And writing the last article for the college magazine is always an emotional experience, hence we decided to write an article which basically involved both us. So we were basically thinking what is that we can write which can depict our exploits and sum up all our experience being a JCite. Ankit instantaneously said-“Why not share our experience being placement secretary?” I liked his idea as this has been a very special role played by us and sometimes we feel real proud of some of our exploits which benefited our batch-mates and ultimately the college.
The early daysSo things basically started in the month of February, 2005. It was wonderful, with spring blossoming at its best. We had just finished writing our fifth semester exams and we had also coordinated for some companies which had come for our seniors some time before the semester exams. So, we were fresh and upbeat and geared up to start with our new found responsibility. The first thing we resolved was that we would not approach our seniors until something was really urgent and will never bother them. We had that drive within our selves do things on our own and avoid any form of ‘spoon-feeding’.
The first thing we did was to meet our placement officer and asked him what innovative things he was looking forward from all the placement secretaries of our batch. “Can you arrange for online test this time?” –he asked with a broad smile. This was something really out of blue for us, but I have a strange way of catering to requests. I always impetuously say “Surely, Sir!” Well, I don’t know whether this is my strength or weakness but I deliver the goods whenever I give a positive nod. When we came out of his chamber Ankit had a skeptical look on his face, as neither of us was familiar with web programming! Since, now I had already done the damage we had to somehow arrange for it. The first thing I told Ankit-“Dude, why worry lets put some of our juniors into this”. But, somehow he didn’t like the idea as we had decided not to bother our seniors, so let’s not bother our juniors as well. Hence, let’s do it!
The first thing we thought of doing was to develop a road-map to how we can achieve record placements. We decided that we have to target for 500 jobs as 447 was the previous record set by our seniors. As the name of the Placement Cell is officially ‘Department of Placement and Training’ we decided to build the road-map such that we have one section of Placement Secretaries working on the Placement activities like inviting companies to the college, which involves making trips to Bangalore and the other group will focus on all the Training activities like conducting the placement tests, mock interviews, GDs etc.
Thus, soon after the road-map was ready, we made a presentation to the placement officer and he readily subscribed to our idea and also added that such a road-map was never developed by any of our seniors. We were upbeat with such a comment. So we proposed this idea to our peer Placement Secretaries. We found that most of them except handful of us wanted to be part of the company interaction activities. They professed that they have ‘excellent’ communication skills. So we decided to be a part of training activities despite of possessing decent communication skills. After all, we had promised our placement officer for arranging the online tests, so it would be more appropriate to stay away from the lime-light of company interaction and interact with our batch-mates and help them polish their skills. Later, we also received enormous appreciation and moral strength from Principal Sir.
The Online Test SuccessSo, even after more than a fortnight of our promise to the placement officer, the online test was more in an imbroglio state. Those days I was working on a content management project with some people from a reputed US University. One of them happened to be a NASA Fellow and President of an Entrepreneurship organization. That organization hosted their based on a content management system called Plone. I had learnt to work on Plone as it was required for my project. One afternoon while I was browsing, I found that there existed online test software which can be integrated with Plone. Meanwhile, I also had a personal Plone based website hosted by a French Agency. So, I sent a request to that agency to upload the online test software in my account. That software was an open-source product and the agency was actually not required to shell any money for uploading that software. But, much to my disappointment my request was turned down by that Agency. When I narrated this incidence to that NASA Fellow, he immediately permitted me to conduct online tests on the organization website as it was also based on Plone.
Yippee! We somehow were now able to solve the online test imbroglio. So the next few days were spent on integrating the software into their website and more importantly testing it such that it did not affect their resources. Once all the tests were successfully we informed the Placement Officer and he was thrilled to learn the developments. So, in the next few days when the entire national and the local media took note of these developments in the form of interaction between SJCE and US organization we become sort of overnight figures in the campus. We started receiving calls, sms, e-mails from our friends and relatives congratulating us. But, now the real job was remaining to be accomplished. We were required to procure systems to connect to the internet and conduct the online test. The media publicity actual had made our job easier as Principal Sir personally took interest in helping us get all the resources and the Computer Science Department generously made available around 35-40 systems to conduct online test. So when we opened the registration for the test, we were in for a major surprise. Over 800 students from both pre-final year UG and the PG students had applied. Now, many of our Placement Secretaries joined us in our endeavours in conducting these tests. The system administrator graciously provided us the entire network bandwidth to conduct these tests and thus they went real smooth.
Activities and Initiatives So, one accomplishment was achieved. The other novel programme which we imitated was ‘Company Case Study’. This was actually Ankit’s brain-child and hence he volunteered to present the first case-study. He took up a Top Fortune 500 company as his topic and gathered all the information related to everything from the revenue to the company culture to the placement practices. I remember seeing him run from one hostel to another getting the feedback about their experiences. This programme was unique as we not only got the seniors to speak but also Ankit gave a beautiful presentation on the company background. Most of such programmes in the college get seniors to speak about their experience only for 5 to 10 minutes but here things were different as Ankit made a detailed presentation. Meanwhile, June was fast approaching and we along with consultation from the Placement Officer, fellow Placement Secys and friends chalked out the first few slots for the companies. Our main goal was to ensure that maximum numbers of students get placed. Meanwhile, one team had already been to Bangalore sometime back to invite companies for conducting campus placements. But, now most of the people who had aggressively shown interest in interacting with the companies started backing off, maybe they realized that such an activity will not provide them a back-door entry into getting jobs and handful of us who were focusing on the training activities were now required to bear the onus of company interaction as well.
Cracking the deal…We meanwhile started the job of regularly checking the placement mails and provide reply to them promptly such that not a single company request to visit SJCE was ignored and we could accommodate each of them. We decided to provide the ‘Day 1’ slot to one of India’s largest software consultancy. So, whenever we used to receive calls from them either I or Ankit used to speak to the Human Resource (HR) team, as our Placement Officer had assigned us this duty. The first challenge that came our way was when the ‘Day 1’ company clearly declared that would not allow any student with a backlog to appear for their placement test. This was not good news to anyone of us as many of our batch-mates despite a healthy aggregate had suffered an arrear thanks to the erratic correction by the university. Moreover, the plight of students with a backlog and aggregate around 60% was unimaginable as very few companies were open to them and they had hopes of clearing only the first few ‘mass recruiting’ companies. Our Placement Officer duly conveyed this feeling to the company, but still they were adamant to change their newly devised policy.
At this juncture we found that it is virtually impossible to realize the 500 jobs target and things would have been worse if other companies started to follow such a policy. To add to our miseries, many people with back-log had already started to register to all the companies and some of them went to extent of entering fake percentages. We would say that it is not possible to submit fake percentages and grab job as the Placement Cell scrutinizes each and everyone’s score and such people just invite trouble for themselves. So, one of my senior whom I consider my mentor and had also served as a Placement Secy suggested me to employ the pending re-valuation result as a tool to convince the company HR. The next 5 days were spent to convince the HR and the HR every time used to take the pretext of ‘company policy’ to turn down my proposal. And I still remember that evening, probably it was June 2 when I received the call from the HR of that company and he told-“All right Damodar, Lets have people with as much as two back-logs appear for our test. But we want the best!” This was wonderful news to all of us and as much as 30% percent of the people selected finally by that company had actually suffered back-logs. Most of people selected with back-logs cleared them by the time re-val results were announced.
Another memorable incidence was when a Chennai headquartered company visited SJCE probably on the ‘Day 4’ slot. The whole problem erupted when the company officials started the process of correcting the answer sheets of the candidates. Few of the MTech students who belonged to the Network and Internet Engineering (NIE) branch had filled the College name as NIE instead of filling it in the column allocated for the course/branch. This created a huge confusion among the HR team and they came to an impression that students from NIE had attended the test, which they were not supposed to. That day our Placement Officer was on leave and he had appointed me as ‘leader’ of the co-ordination team. So, the Chief HR immediately threatened that his team will pack their bags and never return to SJCE if such a discrepancy had actually occurred. So, now we were back in action convincing the HR what the actual thing was and he finally obliged to our request when we produced couple of students from MTech NIE of our college. And at the end of the day, they recruited around 32 students! We sometimes feel that if we had not timely intervened into the situation then those 32 guys would not have got job that day. So, at the end of fifth day of our new placement season around 213 students were already placed! So, it was for the first time we felt that the 500 mark was achievable.
Another memorable experience was when the world’s top processor company visited SJCE. The irony was that they were looking for students with good software skills. The biggest irony was that they were not considering students from our branch to write the test as they believed that it’s against their ‘company policy’. So, we were back in action, trying to convince him that our classmates well deserved an opportunity to appear for their test. Again, the ‘company policy’ turned out to be a major villain. Finally, the D-Day came when that company team visited our campus and still the orders from them was “No, you are allowed to write us!” The silver lining came in the form of a HR who was a former JCite and we anticipated that he’s one who can help us. So, when we apprised about the situation, he immediately gave a ring to a senior member of the company management and after he kept the phone, he said-“Tell your friends, you guys can write us!” Some the next 10 minutes was spent sending mass sms to all our class-mates. We did not care whether we are sending messages to our friends or to a person in the class with whom our comfort level was not that good. It was sort of miracle that the entire class (who were eligible) assembled in the auditorium in a record time of 20 minutes! And we heaved a sigh of satisfaction at the end of the day when one lucky person from our class made it to the final short-list.
Closing Time…Thus the process of coordinating for companies and inviting companies continued for the next 6 months. We also strongly professed the need for providing internship opportunity to our students by off-shoring projects to the college campus and a 500 million USD rising Indian company liked this proposal and eventually after few months they offered internship opportunities to our batch-mates. Thus after the best of the Fortune 500 companies visited our campus and around 416 jobs were offered we decided to step down and start focusing on our final year project. So, we decided to continue the legacy of Senior Placement Secretaries selecting their juniors to substitute them with the permission of our Placement officer. There were also proposal in favour of conducting elections for the post of Placement Secy, but eventually it was turned down by our Placement Officer as he believed that would invite unnecessary politics.
So, we decided to have a presentation depicting the role and responsibilities of being a Placement Secretary and also our experiences. We also invited other Placement Secretaries from our batch to share their experiences. We received a very good response and as many as more than 80 candidates registered for the post. And finally the interview was conducted for all the candidates and around 30 of them were selected whom we apprehended but do a sincere job. The 500th job was finally bagged by a JCite from our batch in the early week of April, 2006.
Summing up the entire experience we would say we realized the importance of ideas and their subsequent implementation. Most important, we learnt the true essence of team work and the credit for the record placements goes to the entire 30 odd Placement Secretaries. We take this opportunity to thank our Placement Officer for trusting us and giving us the ‘cushion’ to do things smoothly and swiftly. We are grateful to the college management especially our beloved Principal Sir.
Now when we have just one more month to go, having offer letter from Top Fortune 500 companies and virtually tried all activities in the campus its time for us leave a mark in the sands of time. And one day on the top of Chamundi hills staring at the Mysore city we contemplated what’s remaining to be done. And I thoughtfully said-“Maybe, walking on the ramp this Jayciana!” And Ankit just gave the same skeptical expression which he had when I promised to deliver the online test. And we smiled with the same attitude of-“let’s do it!”
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