Chapter 14: Campus Placements

“If this is really the way you guys become engineers, how do you end up getting good jobs? Don’t the companies ask you in detail about your projects and your knowledge of the subjects that you studied for four years in college?” asked Veena angrily. She seemed to have recollected her struggle by not being able to become an engineer; her days at the pathology lab, collecting blood and stool samples!

“Just out of curiosity, how do you even get jobs if this is the way you study and submit assignments?” Chitragupta folded his hands and demanded an explanation as to how we engineers got placed in various companies.

“Campus placements,” said Aditya very matter-of-factly and offered to explain the whole thing in engineering colleges as a part of the thesis.

------------------------------------------

Campus placement in an engineering college, for those who do not know yet, is a system of advance booking of students by various companies! I am sure you must have paid a token amount for your car or house; this is just the same. In this case, the token amount is an offer letter stating your date of joining; it is a written promise by the company that once a student becomes an engineer, he/ she will be a salaried employee of the company that booked him/ her.

Have you ever wondered how this concept of campus placements started in the first place? There surely was no system of campus placements till the late ’80s. There are many theories that explain the concept and origin of campus placements. One such theory is explained below.

It all began at a drunken session between the CEO of a software company, Mr. Shah, and his delivery manager Mr. Patel as they were discussing strategies and pain points of their existing system of handling human resources.

Mr. Shah was gulping down the fifth peg of his vodka as he spoke out, “You know what Patel, I am finding it so damn difficult to get new projects from foreign clients. And you know why? Because they want to know the number of resources I can employ for their projects, which I can’t do till students graduate and apply to work at my company. I have to wait for them to clear the interviews and stuff, and then start looking out for new projects for them to work on. That is like going over the top for me!” He was drunk and mumbled like a lover who had lost all hope to convince his beloved’s father to agree for their marriage.

Mr. Patel was no less. He was in total agreement of his boss’s pain and said, “Yes, sir. Agreed! It is an overhead for the company.” He further continued, “Oh overhead reminds me, you were going to buy one more flat near Colaba, isn’t it? Did you make the down-payment yet?”

“Yes, Patel! I paid a lakh and booked the flat. The EMI, obviously, after I get the possession,” said Mr. Shah with pride that could barely be hidden behind vodka and a sly smile.

Suddenly Mr. Patel experienced the joy of a winning moment as a brilliant thought stuck the walls of his mind.

His lips cracked into a slight smile and he mumbled as if into space, “Sir, I was wondering if we could apply the same booking-the-flat-with-down-payment principle to the engineering students! I mean, instead of them waiting for the completion of their engineering and then applying to various companies, we could instead go to these engineering colleges and make them take an aptitude test and finalize the candidates after a final round of interview. In short, we could go to the campus and ‘book’ the good students even before they pass out by giving them an ‘Offer Letter’. We can thereby promise that they will join our company after they complete their course. That way we end up getting the best of them; I am sure the students would also like it.”

Mr. Shah’s eyes that had been drooping with the vodka effect till now, but listening to his comrade’s idea, lit up and sparkled. “Brilliant, maaraa laal!” Mr. Shah got up and kissed Mr. Patel’s forehead. Well, I am sure Mr. Shah lost his senses five pegs down!

“And…not only that, in this way, we can also convince our foreign clients that we have a Bench of software engineers, a pool of sorts, who will solely work for them! This is a win-win-win situation for the engineering students, the clients and, most importantly, us!” added Mr. Patel.

He had thought of the client angle very early, but he realised the effect of an added ‘and’ would earn his praise and appraisal!

“Arre maaraa dikraa,” said Mr. Shah with a twinkle in his eye. He wanted to give Mr. Patel another peck on the cheek, but was too lazy to get up. Oh, and he didn’t like kissing bearded cheeks, too. The twinkle in his eye represented more business for his company. He was visibly happy and his words were eager, “Let’s do one thing! Let’s fix up a meeting with the principal of the nearby engineering college. We can try and fool him, sorry, convince him that our company will start the concept of picking up students of seventh semester, right from the college campus! This way we will get the best of minds in college.”

Needless to say, as we know it today, the principal was fooled and Mr. Shah managed to book around hundred engineering students from all departments. Mr. Patel got married to the eldest daughter of Mr. Shah and is now the Chairman of that company.

You might also be curious as to what exactly happens in a campus placement in an engineering college. The companies that come to colleges for campus placements can be from core branches, i.e. Electrical, Mechanical or Civil; or the companies can be from IT or Computer Science, Electronics, Telecommunications, etc. Each company has its own criteria of selecting students. Some of the basic requirements for one to acquire a good placement are as follows:

Ø A score of 65 % and above in all semesters

Ø Aggregate 65 % in the first semesters

Ø A score of 70 % aggregate, with no KT

Ø Students with 60% aggregate only from electrical branch.

…and so on and so forth.

A week or so before the company is going to come to the college for campus selection, all the details of that company are displayed on the board at the TPO (Training Placement Office). Eligible students start preparing for the very first filter of the process which is an Aptitude Test. The most used book for Quantitative and Verbal and non-Verbal Reasoning aptitude tests is a book by R.S. Agarwal. It’s literally impossible to find an engineering student unaware of his name. His books are like the Bible for preparing for aptitude tests in India.

I am sure most people do not prepare for the aptitude test as much as they dig out various websites on the Internet for the kind of questions usually asked in the tests of various companies. Trust me, almost every kind of question that will ever be asked in the test can be found on the Internet these days. And since you’ve stayed in that college for almost three years, you will have some cousin, senior or sister working in the company that is going to come for the campus selection. So, try your networking skills right away! You will find that information through Facebook; try to connect to them, make small talk and ask for the kind of questions that will be asked in the test. If he/ she has enough time to respond to you, they are fond of you, or under obligation or fear of your parents, they will help you out; else, you will be given links to a number of websites that can be of help.

Although everyone prepares for these tests differently, there is a small, noticeable difference in the way a localite and a hostelite attends the campus selection process.

In case you are a localite (i.e. a non-hostelite), your routine on the morning of your first campus placement aptitude test will look something like this:

1)     Get up at 6.00 am and pray to God that you get selected in this company (which most of the times is a dream company).

2)     Go through the printout/ Xerox copy of the previous years’ test and solve the questions that you had marked as “Imp” again.

3)     Just as you are about to leave for college, your mother will give you a teaspoonful of curd + sugar as a marker of good omen, enabling you to clear the Apti and the interview! Scientists in Zambia are still working on the correlation between curd + sugar and probability of success in impending tasks.

4)     Reach the TPO (Training Placement Office) by 10.00 am and sit in the room number mentioned on the notice board.

5)     Make sure that you are well-dressed, i.e. you are wearing a tie, have black, polished shoes on, with a full-sleeved shirt and a pair of formal trousers. A perfume or deodorant spray must be used in generous quantities to save yourself from armpit odour.

6)     Give a mild smile to the HR (Human Resource) person, hoping she would take a note of your decent look and super charming smile.

In case you are a hostelite, your routine on the morning of your first campus aptitude test will look something like this:

1)     Get up at 7.30 am and snooze the alarm for another twenty minutes. At the end of those blessed twenty minutes, drag yourself to the bathroom and do the normal chores. Then have breakfast at 8.45 am, still in your T-shirt and Bermuda.

2)     Go through the printout/ Xerox of previous years’ test and solve the questions that you had marked as “Imp” again.

3)     Check out the rooms of fellow batch-mates for an extra pair of formal shoes, of your size or +/ - 1. In worst case scenarios, you would need to look out for a formal shirt or trouser, too!

4)     Just as you are about to leave for college, your roommate (who is not eligible for the campus interview because of a KT or less aggregate) will wish you, “Abe, M********, at least wear a fucking tie! Deo maar B*******.”

5)     Reach the TPO (Training Placement Office) at 10.15 am and wait for further instructions from the HR.

Around 10.15 am, the HR starts the pre-placement power point presentation, blowing their company’s own trumpet. The presentation would sum up their mission statement, vision statement, rate of growth, employee strength, worldwide offices, how happy employees like you can make a difference in that company, etc. Normally a senior from your college who happens to be working in that company will also accompany the HR and will share his experience of working there. Needless to say, he will show you a rosy picture of life there, which might not be true in some cases. He will skip out the pain-in-the-ass-boss, a horse’s-stable-like seating arrangement, no-tissues-in-the-toilet restroom, minimum-12-hour working days, weekends-in-the-office, etc.

The PPT is crafted with care by a graphic designer, putting a million rosy pictures into it, to ensure that you are enticed; and it fulfils the purpose.

The situation in the placement room is tense: ten vacancies, a hundred students – everyone desiring to be on the other side of the table.

“Any questions?” asks the extra sweet HR person for the final time. “Great! Then, first we will have an aptitude test and on the basis of that we will shortlist thirty students; and then, finally, ten candidates would be the lucky selected to-be company mates for us.” The sweetness dripping from the words would make you comfortable for a short while; this comfort disappears the moment the test papers are distributed.

Your first Apti starts at around 11.00 am. You take a deep breath and hope that this is your first and last Apti. You check out the instructions very carefully as you have heard of some scary papers in yester years trying to check whether you follow the instructions properly. Take the instance of a test where the first instruction asked the students to real all the questions before beginning to do them. In a test paper with 50 questions, question number 43 mentioned that all you needed to do was fill in your name in the answer sheet and keep your pencils down. I am so sure everyone failed!

After making sure that you are not falling in that kind of a pit, you start solving the questions with rapt attention. There will be questions such as:

1) A can do a work in 15 days and B in 20 days. If they work on it together for 4 days, then the fraction of the work that is left is:

 A. 1/4        B. 1/10        C. 7/15        D. 8/15

2) Three pipes A, B and C can fill a tank from empty to full in 30 minutes, 20 minutes, and 10 minutes, respectively. When the tank is empty, all the three pipes are opened. A, B and C discharge chemical solutions P, Q and R, respectively. What is the proportion of the solution R in the liquid in the tank after 3 minutes?

A. 5/11       B. 6/11        C. 7/11        D. 8/11

3) Complete the series: 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, ?.

A.12            B. 21           C. 25           D. 10

Sooner or later you will realise that a lot of questions in your test are similar to the ones that you have practiced from online forums. Sometimes you will even find the exact questions from yester years’ papers! No change in the litres filled in buckets A and B, no change in the time taken by A or B to complete some work and no change in the speed with which the satellite is revolving around the earth.

Your confidence boosting is directly proportional to such questions that you have already practised. It is mandatory to look up from your paper and pass a smile of confidence to your friend; if you find him smiling back at you, you’ll know he/ she is in the same boat.

At the end of stipulated time, the HR collects all papers, informing candidates that the list of selected people would be displayed in half an hour.

Everyone leaves the room, only to tally and discuss the paper. You will stumble upon some answers that you got, and some that you goofed up with. You wonder if you would be shortlisted for the interview. You recite “Ganpati Stotra,” “Gayatri Mantra,” “Hanuman Chalisa” or all the above, hoping that either of these gods will take you to the next round, not sure if these gods understood the difficulties of engineering.

After an anxious thirty minutes, the HR asks you all to assemble in the room and continues, “So dear all, we have shortlisted thirty candidates for the next round of interview. So here is the list…” They then begin calling out the names of selected candidates. The probability of your selection starts decreasing with every call; at every name being announced, you expect your name to be called next. If you’re among the lucky ones, your name might also be among the lucky few. When, finally after a terribly long time of waiting to hear your own name, the HR calls it out, you heave a sigh of relief!

The HR congratulates the selected candidates, asks them to come in for the interview in the order than the names have been announced in, and politely thanks the other un-selected candidates, wishing them the best in future.

The candidates who are not selected look at each other with evident camaraderie; and despise the selected ones for their luck supporting them. Every human being is very good at coming to conclusions that suit his line of thinking, just the way the ones that didn’t get shortlisted for the interview convince themselves by saying :

1)     What the heck! Anyway, this company was not that good. The HR looked so dull and uninterested; the company must be the same.

2)     The senior from our college who accompanied the HR didn’t seem interested in convincing us to join the company! They must have forced him to try; poor guy!

3)     If the HR is not hot, what the hell can we expect when we join the company! Chuck it!

4)     I have heard this company has lost three major clients in last six months. I am glad I didn’t get shortlisted!

The ones who get shortlisted become more and more anxious with every candidate getting interviewed. You look at every face coming out of the interview room and wonder what your fate is going to be like! You also talk to some of your fellow batch-mates who just got interviewed, and try to gauge how hot the water is! After a restless couple of hours, the HR finally calls your name and you knock on the door gently. “Come in”, says one of the two persons sitting inside. One is the HR and the other a Project Manager.

HR: So, Dipen . . . Tell us something about yourself.

You: Good morning sir and Ma’am. I am Dipen Ambalia. I stay in Mumbai. I am an electrical engineer. I am currently working on a project called “Mircoprocessor based Alternator Protection.” (The HR sees that you are nervous about that question because they know that you haven’t done anything significant in the last three years of engineering education. The only major achievement that you can boast of is having won the “Dare” of proposing to the most beautiful girl from the Computer Science department!)

HR shows a little more interest and asks you to explain about your final year project further.

You: (As you know that the HR is from a software company, she wouldn’t know the heck about electrical engineering. You put on your mask of confidence and start blurting out). Ma’am, instead of mechanical protection of Alternator in various industries, what we plan to do is use the precision of Microprocessor to protect the alternator. This is what my project is all about.

(You stop after having used all the permutation and combination of the words “Mircoprocessor based Alternator Protection”. The HR understands that she needs to move on to the next question.)

Project Manager: Why do you want to get into IT even when you are an electrical engineer? I mean, you are wasting the seat of an electrical engineer if you wish to join our company. Isn’t it?

You: Sir, I will give you a very frank answer. I don’t believe in mincing words. Sir, it was my dad’s dream that I work in an IT company. When he sees his fellow colleagues’ sons and daughters going to the US earning thousands of dollars, even he feels that his son should try to raise his family’s standard of living by earning thousands of dollars. He has spent all his life in giving me a good education. It’s now time for me to repay that debt by doing what he wants me to do and not by doing what I wish!

(The Project Manager looks at the HR, wondering if this is the best or the rarest of answers any engineering student has given yet!)

HR: (gets wicked) Okay, Dipen. How would you justify wasting a seat of an electrical engineer?

You: (gulps) Ma’am . . . (clears his throat, gulps again. You didn’t discuss this question with your friend because he had assured you, “They don’t go into finer details!” You look at the HR again with eyes saying, “What the heck did you ask, Ma’am!)

HR: Hmm . . . yes, continue.

You: Umm, twenty years down the line, when I have a lot of money after joining your organisation, I will make sure that I help ten electrical engineering students financially. That is how I can compensate my wasting this seat.

The HR and Project Manager smile at you and thank you for your time.

As you come out of the room, you heave a sigh of relief. A smile on your face means the chances of those waiting for the final decision are now 9/29!

After thirty more minutes, the final list is displayed on the notice board outside the Training Placement Officer’s cabin. You see your name at number 7 and shout your lungs out! The twenty odd students who didn’t get selected are back to square one. But now they at least have experience of taking an Apti and interview. They can use that experience for the next company’s campus selection process.

You’d go home and break the good news to your parents. Invariably your mother would get slightly filmy and tell you, “See, I told you na beta! That is the magic of curd and sugar. Jai Mata raani!”

If you go directly to your hostel, your room-mate will congratulate you with a string of heartfelt abuses! That’s when you know that you have done something great!

You, now a would-be-employee-in-a-few-months with a good-job-in-your-pocket look, strut around the college as if you don’t care about anything around you! You start spending more money on canteen food, buy a Blackberry, go for treks and change your Facebook profile picture every day! In short, you live your life king-size with the surety that you will start earning as soon as you become an engineer!