Job Hunt Ends Today

Now, I can actually say, "My job hunt ends here". Maybe I could have said it a couple of weeks back but I just wanted to make sure.
When you are in the final year of the BE course you have an added burden of finding the right job. And that too when you are in the core course of ECE, the right job being a ECE-oriented job is even more hard to find. Sometime in July last year my job hunt started with an internship interview at LSI. I failed to clear it. This will be the first of my three tries at LSI.
My job hunt could have ended with my internship itself. Unfortunately(or fortunately ?), I couldn't get a clear offer from Lattice Semiconductor. A month and a half ago, I was holding an offer from Wipro(IT) and preparing for my last semester's finals. What amazes me is that I never thought I would take so much time to find a job. No one ever told it would be so difficult to find a job. I had fun in trying my luck at the best companies in India but it is a different feeling when you walk after you hear the words"you can leave for the day". My experience with job-hunting can be classified into the following cases, I think I have experienced pretty much all the possible cases.

• I was rejected after the written round.
• I was rejected after the technical round.
• I was rejected after the HR round.
• I was rejected after being offered the job. yeah, this is possible. they just blamed the bad economy for the mess.
• and then, the best part, I cleared all the rounds and I was offered the job. This happened thrice(without considering the previous case).

Anyway, I have decided to choose TI among the offers I had. From this job-hunting season I take away that you need to be ready and to be dynamic in planning, as well as, execution of the plan because no one can guarantee that anything will happen as expected. 

Talent takes you to the doorstep but only luck will help you to open the door

First Step into the Corporate World

4 years ago, I made a choice; for good or bad, I wanted to be an engineer. The engineer I dreamt was very different to what I am today or what I will end up being after 6 months. Each year my view of an engineer became clearer. It was neither a bad profession nor was it perfect. I made up my mind; I need to 'earn' a job before doing my higher studies. 

Well I needed someone to hire me first. I had the opportunity to give many interviews but I struck gold only my seventh time! I got an intern-ship at Lattice Semiconductors this past week. It is not exactly 'gold' at least a golden opportunity to showcase my talent (or whatever is left of it). My friend Varun too made it through and interns at the same place.

Today was the first day at 'office'. Majority of my life, 18 years out of 21, I have been a student going to a school (except for 2 years in PU) for being taught lessons/subjects. Suddenly, I realized this was going to be different I was no more a student. I didn’t go to a school; I went to an 'office'. It was something new to me, few of my friends too, had already been-there, done-that. It always baffled me. How will it be? Will you get pampered? Will you get punished? Will you get appreciated? Nothing of such sort happened to me on the first day. 

First day, I was late to 'office'. I had to report at 9am but thanks to Bengaluru's traffic, I reached there by 930am. It was still cool, only few had turned up at the workplace. I think they had a wonderful weekend. Next, I was briefed about the kind of work what I might be assigned. This was the highlight moment, when I politely refused to drink a cup of tea. Now the 'real' work for the day began, reading the datasheets of the company's products. I didn't even read the 8051 micro-controller datasheet properly for my course!

Next up, lunch at 1245, looks like they already know PESIT's timetable, good for me. It was a 'Special Day' for the 'team' as the interns were arriving, so we go out for lunch at Silsila restaurant - pretty decent, but needs to get more customers.

I was back to the most-interesting work, reading datasheets.  Between 2pm and 3pm I fell asleep twice. The last time I woke up was when the tea was served. This time I couldn’t stop but drink the tea. Caffeine removes drowsiness or something like that. I suspect my mentor, saw me taking a power nap, we started to chit-chat. As we finished our tea, he told me to get back to work.

At 530pm I was still staring at the monitor trying to understand digital electronic concepts. A look at the watch reminded me of my satellite work which stretched onto 7pm some days. This was when my mentor made his way out. After 15 minutes my friend and I left the ‘office’ to attack the roads of Bengaluru.

How was the first day? Not bad, I was pampered but also warned of punishment, if things didn’t go right. I think the next 3 months will be a good experience to go through the intern world of corporate before making the jump. It was not even a peek into the actual ‘work’ that is done, but at least got an idea of what people in tall buildings do in A/C rooms in front of their monitors.