With Odd Sem comes the recruitment season- Recruitment for Final year- Placements and Club Recruitment for the Second years. For Final years it much more important and significant but thats the not the case with second years. Coming to the Club recruitment in our college- People have mixed response for these recruitment. Some say its all fixed and not fair, where as some (Very, Very few) say its fair and transparent. I will not waste my time writing about the other clubs. I will be writing about Web Enthusiast’s Club- The club where i got into after getting rejected 🙁 from all the clubs last year 😉
Coming to this year’s Web Club recruitments- I couldn’t attend the first round interviews as i had to attend the Sun CA Induction programme in Bangalore. I was eagerly waiting for the Recruitment to begin- This would give us a chance to know about the second years. We had the first round b4 any other club had organised- This got us a good response. People were shortlisted based on the enthu, technical knowledge and other abilities. Some 40 odd were shortlisted for second round interviews, which were scheduled after a week from first round.
Many second years were of the belief that even Web Club is like other clubs where in the selection is not based on talent rather its based on influence- “jugad”. But we had made it very clear to our existing club members that the selection will be purely based on Interests, Enthusiasm, and teachnical skills. We scheduled the Second round interviews on August 5 and 6. My main area of interest is Java and there were many who knew Java and my work was to test their interest and understanding in the langauge- For this i had prepared some questions- Some common concepts which i feel one should be aware.
On the first day i couldn’t find ppl who came for interviews interested in Java. But then i spent the whole of the evening in the Main Building seeing how the questions were asked. Final years of our club were blasting the candidates with questions. There were few really good candidates on the first day and were selected.
Second day had loads of things for me- The day i cannot forget for some reason 😉 It started with one Junior from IT, whom i heard was very good at Java- And it was upto me how i would test him on Java. To accompany me was my Senior who i assumed was also good. We asked him series of questions both on Core Java and Servlets. He was able to answer most of them. And then later on i had very few who were upto the standards. And those who told that they were good at Hardware or Windows Troubleshooting were tested badly by my friends- Both of whom were really good at the subject. Candidates who claimed were familiar with Adobe Photoshop were also not spared.
I was anxiously waiting for one candidate whom i had spoken long back- She had called me up enquiring about the Sun Club- Which i have just started at my college. She had told me that she’s familiar with Java and Servlets to some extent. But she did not know that i was part of Web Club. And like she got thru the first round interviews and she could not make it to the interview on the first day. So her interview was scheduled on Second day- time??? No one knew. I had spent almost the whole day waiting. And at about 3:30 she turned up for the event. I had spoken to her but had never seen her before. This actually had made me very curious. Her interview was taken together by my Senior and myself. I asked her questions on Java and my senior on Programming. She was good with concepts and was able to answer the questions. But my senior asked her to code x^y, Fibonacci Series and Swapping of numbers. Though she managed to code them out, there were some flaws in the program. For x^y she had written program for x^2y and so on. And immediately my Senior’s verdict was- Not Selected. I wanted to take her into club at least based on HR and tried asking her some HR questions ;). But then i somehow finished her interview and after that i went back to room. I was only waiting for her interview, so after that i went back to play 🙂
Now came the crucial time- We had to finalize the list the next day. Some 6 of us gathered at the Special Stage and started screening out ppl based on skills and interest. When her turn came- I was the one who was questioned- How’s she- Skills? Enthu? I told that she’s ok in Java and not good in coding. And someone added that her Enthu was ok. So as to confirm her selection we called her for a Third Round interview. In the third round interview- She was asked only Java Questions- Interviewed by Two final years and myself. And she was impressive in the interview and got into “Web Enthusiasts Club”
The interview process was rather fair and transparent. We checked ppl for their Enthusiasm and then came their skills. It was really great recruitment process 🙂