The Placement Season

On 25th Feb 2019, I remember I got a call from the TPO of one of the renowned technical colleges in Rajkot to invite us for their campus recruitment drive. We were the regular recruiters for their placement drives and so there was not much to think of in accepting the invitation. All the pre-placement processes were done and we were a confirmed company visiting for the placement in the mid week of March 2019.

Many of us have already passed through the anxiety of getting placed in one of the finest and our desired company through the campus placements. It becomes the talk of the town in every corner of the college campus once the placement seasons starts. The excitement, nervousness and getting success in these drive is an experience in itself. It is a matter of pride for the students to get the offer letter on the campus premises itself.?

I had face both, an aspiring student trying to get placed and organizing placement drives to hunt for the best fresh talent from the campus drives. Being an HR manager at Emipro I had been a part of placements drives for many years.?

So, as per the schedule, we were all set for the season's first placement drive. Usually, we used to take 2 technical mid level employees for technical assessment and 1 senior person to handle any contingent matter alongwith an HR representative for basic HR assessment every year. That year,?I, my senior and two technical employees with 4 years of experience but who were completely new for taking an interview were going to visit the campus. Same excitement, anxiety and nervousness I could feel in those two employees who were going for the first time as I used to feel as a student.

On the day of the drive, we were asked to reach office premises sharp at 8 AM and were informed by my senior that we will leave the premise by 8:10 AM with whosoever available out of the 4 persons. I am still thinking, was that time mentioned keeping me(award winning late comer) in the mind? Because we were supposed to reach the college between 9:30-10:00 AM and the distance from our office to the college was hardly 20 kms. Anyways, the fear of my senior dragged me to the office before time and I was there at 8:01 AM. But as somebody has rightly said,?"Our plans work only on the will of almighty!".

Reaching at the office I saw one of the employee who was going to join us and also was going to drive the office car with my senior is struggling to get the car out of the parking even when there was nothing behind the car. I thought only I am the savior and will reverse the car in a minute. But once I sat on the driving seat I saw that the the gear is differently place and pushing it to a reverse mode needs some alien expertise. So I put down my hands and joined the struggle. My senior, who is a muscle person took the decision to push the car to take it out of the parking lot all alone as rest of except the one on driving seat were ladies. Along with being a physically strong person as he is extra punctual, lost his patience and decided that he will step down in the traffic and will push the car if needed but will not waste a minute there anymore. While the scene was very funny and I was busy stopping outburst of my laugh, an idea strike my mind. I searched it on YouTube by which we got a visual help and ta-da, we were set to go! Through out our way to the destination I was laughing madly and rest of the two except my senior were stopping it out of his fear!??

After all this exercise in the early morning we finally reached the campus and were warmly welcomed by the college representatives. The first and foremost step of the campus drive is a pre-placement talk which was delivered by me followed by technical written test. Out of our sheer shock, none out of 60-65 students who appeared for the?technical test cleared the minimum criteria of marks. The first question that triggered my mind was, whether our criteria is over estimated. But these were the same questions we used?for the past years and have got some very good candidates from that drives. After a short discussion with?few of our known faculties from the college we took a decision to downgrade our criteria and process few of the candidates further for personal technical interview. Somewhere, this was an alarm for us that now the fresh talents are getting scarce so we have to make some initiatives to get the best in future out of the limited resource.?

After a long day, we got only one candidate who seemed to be fit for our company. This candidate also had an interesting story. When she entered the room where we were taking the interview, I and my senior both shared a gaze as we found her face very identical with one of our current employee then. Further in our conversation we came to know that she is the first cousin of our employee and I and my senior was like,?See I told you, her face is so familiar!

Towards the end of the day, we were tired but happy that we atleast got one really good candidate. Every placement drive teaches us something and also gives a bunch of memories. This was one such day which will always make me laugh whenever I will think of it!?

Signing off as of now, see you soon with some more interesting memories!