My First Job Interview

Cognizant is the first company to come to our college this placement season, for mass recruitment. The news of it's arrival created a wave of joy and tumult in the mass of final year students. It was expected to recruit a large number of students from our college. Everyone was looking forward to get recruited by it because the company has an excellent reputation and it cares about its employees. An the cherry on the cake was the promise that Cognizant made. They were going to break their last record of recruiting the largest number of graduates from a single institution.

The day started at 6 in the morning for us. We were asked to reach the auditorium by 7 am. The recruitment team of the company had set up camp there. The auditorium was occupied by our students, all dressed in formal attire and looking suave and professional. The ambiance was rather unique. Instead of the normal ruckus that such a mass makes, there was a buzz in the air. People were discussing strategies, technical concepts and revising their topics of choice. Soon, the procedure for profiling of the students were initiated. One after another, we went and submitted our resumes for the procedure. Once this was done, we were asked to proceed to another hall where we were to wait for being called to the interviews. It was a long wait for me, of about two hours. In the meantime, I located a few of my friends and engaged myself in conversation to distract my mind from conjuring up hypothetical situations that were laced with the worst case scenarios. Otherwise, I was quite calm and expected myself to deftly take control of the impending events.

After a long wait of two hours,I was finally up for the technical interview. I told myself

"You got this. Interviews have never been a hurdle for you."

*Artistic Imitation.
Not to be confused with me!

I proceeded to the hall, quite calm and confident, though it would be wrong to deny that my heart was beating faster than it normally does. I walked up to the panel where a man of about 40 years of age was sitting. He greeted me, as did I, and asked me to sit down. Then started my interview.


Interviewer:- Mr. Das, tell me about yourself.

I immediately maneuvered to tactfully manipulate him and captivate his interest. I knew that going at length about my personality at a technical interview isn't going to be any good so I was brief about my traits and virtues. Consecutively, I elaborated precisely on my experience and works. I was observing his body language so I could tell he was a bit impressed. The questions that followed were easy to answer because I already knew my works like the back of my hand.


Interviewer:- How can an electrical engineer contribute to an IT industry?

Me:- Electrical engineering and computer science is meshed in today's world. In fact, foreign institutions even have departments that are called "EECS" (Electrical engineering and Computer Sciences). IT doesn't stand too far from computer science. An electrical engineer is thus as capable in handling software as he is in handling hardware.

Interviewer:- Can you base that on any personal experience?

Me:- I have enjoyed fabricating electronic circuits and watch them work their magic. However, the more complex a task a circuit has to execute, the more difficult it is to fabricate. I therefore decided to use a micro-controller to perform the same tasks. It was hassle free, with less wires, less electronic components and smaller size. I programmed the logic and uploaded them into the chip and my works turned out to be successes.

Then he asked me a bunch of questions from electrical engineering and programming in C language. It was convenient that I knew programming, strictly speaking, on the grounds that I had experience in writing sketches for my Arduino UNO. It allowed me to be elusive yet send him the message that I am good at programming, which he couldn't verify all that well because he didn't know about Arduino sketches. I hence excused myself from elaborating on C programming.

2nd Sept 2014