A hunting we will go..

Picture this – You are standing in the middle of the most brutal battle ever fought. The enemy is a ….well…suit-clad ,smart, bald man in his mid 40’s. His weapons are more penetrating than the tip of a sharpened knife. They are questions which make your head spin! The baldy is hell bent on making you tap out with his volley of queries and make you leave the battle field, hurt and disgraced. Well, that is how a job interview goes ….BAD!.

One fine day, my friend Kris (An MS grad in NYC who was day dreaming about the “American Dream”) got a call. A very sweet voice said “Hi, my name is Kristen Davis and I am calling from ABB Associates”. “A-B-B”, screamed Kris. Quite obvious, given this was his dream company. “I have a job opening for a Software Developer Intern at ABB..blah..blah..blah”. Kris was quite thrilled (partly because he was already imagining about the Kristen gal!) since this was an excellent prospect for an MS grad, to get “experience” and rake in some moolah as well. All said and done, Kris agreed for an interview at ABB’s office in California. He started making plans for California (CA), made calls to all the folks he knew in various parts of CA and started dreaming about the photo he would take against HP and Gates buildings at Stanford University. The day arrived, and this dude boarded the flight to CA, tuned in to a song he had chosen for this “special” occasion (first trip to California!) which was “Hotel California”. One the day of the interview, ensuring that he looked spiffy, Kris called a cab (being a desi, he would never have called one…. but this was being reimbursed!). Kris arrived at ABB’s plush office, and was astounded by the architecture around, the glass design and also the hot blonde receptionist who noticed his ogling (man’s favorite pastime) and asked him “What can I do for you?”. Kris muttered the details and was escorted for the first of his 4 rounds of interviews that day.

Round One- A well dressed gentleman came into the room and shook hands with our friend. Confidence personified, Kris was all set to nail this one (after all, he had a GPA of 4+). The gentleman looked to be someone higher up as he introduced himself, “Hi, my name is Kenneth and I am the hiring manager for the Quality Assurance (QA) position which you applied for”. ‘What the hell?”, thought Kris as he was sure this was an interview for a Developer position. But, then he thought, “Let’s take this one as it comes”. The first round was quite pleasant with Kenneth doing all the talking and Kris listening with rapt attention.

Round Two- After a pleasant first round, in came a man who looked a bit like the villain in old Kungfu movies. A tall guy with a long beard who came in and introduced himself
as “Chang”. “I have been in Quality Ass. for a decade and this is what I do for a living”.
This guy gave Kris some goosebumps! Man, for a person who knew nothing about QA to be interviewed by someone with so much experience was nothing less than a duel between David and Goliath. The questions flew left,right and center. Terms like “bugs list”, “white box testing” and “black box testing”. For Kris, this was just like those german war movies his roomie watched which Kris did not understand one bit. “Pardon” and “Excuse Me” alongwith “Can you elaborate a bit?” were the only phrases he would use to respond to the questions which seemed to be making no sense to him.

Round Three- After the bloodbath in the previous round, Kris wanted to go to the restroom and relieve himself from all the tension. As he got up and walked towards the door,in came the next guy armed with a whole bunch of sheets and a laptop. Our friend wanted to ask permission to leave when a voice boomed “We are kinda running behind schedule, so can you fill up this questionnaire before leaving for a break?”. Alas! Kris slouched into the chair and began ploughing through the barrage of questions. Kris spoke “The code on each of these pages is written in a strange format can you please explain?”.
“Well, we use Java here and this is all Java stuff” came the reply from the bloke who was hooked onto the laptop. “J-A-V-A? My skill set includes C# and .NET technologies, that is what I was told over the phone would be asked!” Kris thought. The night mare of an interview continued….

For years together, people have written tomes about how-to-prepare-for-interviews, cracking em’ and how to impress the interviewers. Albeit, there are still distressed souls who do struggle with interviews. As per experts, the best way to start an interview is to take a deep breath and calm down before starting the process. All said and done, there is still an element of luck involved at times which can swing the decision either ways – you might be hired or might not be. All said and done, its an interesting game where the real foe is pressure and the only friend is confidence!