Syntel's Campus drive at Oriental Institute, Bhopal

This one took place before the Campus at RCET Bhilai but I wasn't regular at blogging at that time.

Anyway, it merits a post as this was my first outstation(apart from Pune which was really just another local trip) campus drive.

The journey was nothing out of the ordinary but Abhishek(Gupta) and I were surprised on two occassions:
1. The domestic terminal in mumbai, which both of us were visiting for the first time after it was renovated, is much better than the international terminal.
2. and, there were so many people travelling to Bhopal by air :)

By the time we reached Bhopal it was quite dark, two students and the placement officer had come to receive us. The ride to the hotel was quite enjoyable. Abhishek quite enjoyed the XXL feel of the Tata Safari DICOR and immediately struck a conversation about the merits and demerits of Safari and whether it is worth buying. Manish(Raibhandare) and Anil(Kaul) were enjoying the feel of Ford Fiesta in the meanwhile, which wasn't bad as we later found out but feels cramped when you pit it against the Safari.

After a brief rest, we were taken to the outskirts of bhopal to a club/resort for dinner. All this while, we couldn't miss the fact that the roads in bhopal were much better than in any average city. Probably being the capital has it's advantages after all.

The morning after saw the arrival of Rajesh Patil to join the interview panel. Instead of reporting at 9 o'clock we reached the college at 10 or so and saw the college gate blocked by a restless student who was not being allowed to sit for the written test as he(and his college-mates) hadn't brought their admit cards. It took some effort from the security guards and student volunteers to get him out of our way.

Everyone was well-prepared and there was no trouble in getting the test done with well over 2000 students appearing for it. In fact we were told that a few days ago the Satyam Campus had seen over 9000 students appearing.

The participation of students was a welcome change. Everywhere else, I've seen the faculty and the management running the show but here it was different story. Even the arrangement for food was in the charge of a bunch of students.... and well, the food was great!!!

The test results were not so great though, barely a 100 students cleared the written test and after a lot of pondering we decided to interview 130 students.

The interviews were a nightmare. Apart from one female who was from MCA, none were comfortable with programming. And I'm talkng about programs like checking if a number is prime and generating some odd/even numbers.

In the end, only about 45 students made it through and the happiness(or was it relief that we saw) was evident on the faces of the selected students.

Syntel was the 9th company to come for campus round and it was more than visible in the quality of students that appeared for the interview.

When we were leaving we got to know that Infosys was to conduct their campus the next day and I could feel nothing but pity for the interviewers.

There was a cake cutting ceremony by the students and they made the conference room reverberate with their cheers and claps.

Unfortunately, there was no time to enjoy as our flight was at 8 in the evening and it was already 6 o'clock. We were rushed to the airport, though we did stop at a sweets shop(where the cars were nearly confiscated for being parked in a no-parking zone).

The return flight was the first time I flew and ATR aircraft. Nothing apeared different apart from the constant whirrring sound of the propellers that I could hear. After another uneventful flight we were back to the hustle and bustle of Mumbai ready for another day in office.