Delighted to be Deloitted

The 1st non-tech company

As I had got to know from all my seniors and other friends also, Deloitte is a very well reputed company for the consultancy services.
Till date all the companies having given a reporting time of say 8 a.m. haven't arrived before 10. But we all were in a state of shock when we saw all the Deloitte officials walking into the audi VERY smartly at exact 6:00 pm - the time they had promised us. You won't believe we were absolutely spellbound at the way they all were dressed - All formal with black coats on - and just kept staring at them for about 20-30 seconds. But that did prove that these people were hell lot serious about everything.

They started with a presentation. The initiation was like all other ppts, the intro to the company. It was then drifted to an introduction of all the 15-20 officials who had flown down to Delhi(boring). I guess I listened to about only 2-3 intros which were all delivered by very enthusiastic guys. THERE WERE a couple of them who had terrible communication skills - unko bhi suna, because we had to maro comments na

On top of that me and another friend of mine - MS - were playing foot fight (Can you believe that! ) and there was a company official standing right beside our row - whom we had obviously not noticed - and we were on the 3rd seat from him. (And yeah I hadn't started the fight, he had. So am not guilty ). I think he noticed us more than a couple of times but didn't say anything (obviously! ) but we had started feeling weird once we noticed him standing there. And used to fight only when it got dark for the movie presentation. Smart na
After some time a girl called Simmy (from Deloitte) came towards our row and suddenly bent towards my friend SA and all 3 of us froze . We thought she had come to scold us for not paying attention during the ppt . But she had come to ask us about the Girl's Hostel (GH) deadline. So relieved we were (phew!). Then thankfully, the presentation got over soon. Looking at the seriousness displayed by the officials I had realised that I won't be able to make it to Deloitte for sure.

The next day, I woke up at 5 to arrive college by 7:45 am. as the reporting time was 8:00. And once again unexpectedly () they all arrived at exactly 8:00 am! The test was easy but 40 questions in 45 minutes is tough. I attempted around 18-20 questions. Although they had mentioned no -ve marking, I still did not मारो any fluke. Tried at the end but gave up and was able to mark only 4-5 (though i guess that was good because I got to know later on that they WERE doing -ve marking internally). Cleared the written (very surprisingly because I knew people had attempted like 30-32 questions also! )

Next, we were directed towards the connecting block where the interview-cum-case study was supposed to take place. I was just running to people saying, "यार please कुछ बतादो, मैंने कल कुछ नही सुना ". There were 9 people selected from IT for SPS (Security and Privacy Services - that was the profile name) out of total 32 and out of 50 selected in TI (Technical Integration) with only one from IT . Anyways we were directed towards the CAD lab. I was scheduled LAST of all. I didn't know whether to be happy about it or not. Anyhow I waited for my turn as all my friends went one by one for their case study interviews. Some time later I got to know that the case study being offered is the same (one advantage of going towards the end ) - so I gave a thought to it and came up with a different solution to it. My friends told me that they are asking a lot of networking (). So I was advised by a friend of mine (PG) to go to the hostel and get the book and study Networking. So I ran to the hostel, to my savior friend SA. She was on phone with her father, so I grabbed the book from the shelf and started studying the various important topics (as my turn was scheduled another 2 hours forth). She came and I asked her if I could take the book along to the lab as it had gotten late and my turn would be expected in a little while. She wanted to study herself but not even once did she hesitate in saying yes (love you SA). Then I realised that though I had removed the books from my bag but I still had them in my car. I told her the case study as well, and we both together came down to another very nice solution .

Came running down to the lab and got relieved when I realised that there were still about 3 people before I had to go for my interview. Started studying and then came the topic for which I needed somebody's help, and AS came to my rescue . She made me revise all the important topics that were left (Love you AS). Then I revised my projects and just then I was shifted to the other panel as it was getting very late and they had to conduct another round of tech and HR interview. So as I went there I was asked about my perception of the case study - told them what I had made out because there was much more to the case study than what people had told me . Told them what I could. I was thoroughly grilled on the case study. After that came the turn of my projects. They asked me all of them one by one - that was probably the best part of my entire interview. Explained all of them in detail . Till now there were 2 people, then the 3rd guy also came in and he asked me to make queue and dequeue in the most optimal way. I made it with linked lists. He was pretty impressed with that. By mistake I interchanged the 'back' and 'front' pointers that we use. When asked I made up for it by saying "It's just a notation sir". That saved me, and probably created an impression also . All this while I was having a hard trying trying to hide my anxiety and nervousness . I just couldn't afford letting my lips curl the downward way as I could see through the corner of my eye that one of the interviewer was constantly staring at me and was observing all my reactions very closely. At last they allowed me to leave. As I was getting up(all relieved), one of them raised the question - "अरे इससे MBA वाला सवाल तो पूछा ही नही". And I was like " There I go!". Then came the बाप of all questions "What are your plans about MBA?"

Me : Sir, I don't want to do an MBA
They : Arey aise thodi hota hai. Kuch to karoge
Me : No sir, am not interested in higher studies as of now. If the job requires me to do something, I will.
blah blah blah... (Basically in logon ne meri bahut maari )
They : Ok you may go now.
(A word of advice here : However much nervous you are, shake hands with them very firmly. Don't crush their hands, but yeah it should be firm. Creates a lot of impact and shows your confidence)

Since I was one of the last ones to be interviewed, around 10 minutes after I returned to the CAD lab we were all driven out of the lab as they were to discuss the interview till now and shortlist the people. You wont believe after such an interview I was totally not expecting to clear to the next round bcoz I knew there were much better people than me who had had a very good interview as well. But you should expect the unexpected.

So then, because the GH closes by 8:30 and it was already 7:45 that time, they decided to hold the 2nd tech interview and the HR interview for the girls first. So I was sent for the HR, and 2 girls were sent to the 2 opposite (to the ones they had gone earlier) tech panels. The HR bandi (AL) was veryyyyyy sweet . Never felt uncomfortable with her. Infact she was so frank that in between the interview she didn't hesitate before saying, "Don't sell yourself, just tell me the facts".

It lasted about 15 minutes then I was met by this fellow outside the lab (S, don't know the surname). He asked me if I had any Questions. Though I had read a lot of questions that one could ask after the interview, none struck me that time . So I asked him a very general question (ek baar ko to main bhool gayi thi ki main kya poochne wali thi, thankfully mujhe time pe yaad aa gaya, warna uske saamne katta ho jata). Then he led me to the other tech panel (yes he was in the 1st panel that had interviewed me). There they first asked me about my projects, specifically Two-pass assembler and the project with AIIMS (basically they wanted to know the basic idea and your thinking process, they don't want exact technical details). Then they asked me a question wherein there was a string with every para change replaced by a '\' and we had to print that string with '\' replaced with newline so that it looks like a para. The extra condition was that there could be a '\n' somewhere in between the string. Said something and was wondering about something else (though I had realised that I could not figure out any other solution ) when luckily one of the panelists switched to another question. Could answer that with full confidence and was happily sent off.

Came out and S again started asking everyone the question he had asked me, i.e., If we had any questions for him. Some people asked some questions. (Bahut boring tha but we had no choice as we had decided to stay back for the results as the GH deadline had been extended to 11 pm ).

Then the interviews got over around 10:30 pm and we all went and sat inside the CAD lab waiting for the results while the panelists were in the lab adjacent to the CAD lab.

Then AL came out around 11 and was shocked to see us all waiting. So she said they'll announce the results and was about to announce the results when she again created suspense by running back inside the other room with a sheet of paper. And all of us were left waiting again. This time they all came out after that it went on like this:
AL : Congratulations ... blah blah... We have shortlisted 6 people.
Me n AR : (Look at each other) Yaar hamara to nhi hona
AL : Congrats to all the rest as well. So the shortlisted candidates are.....................................
.........................................................................................................................................................................
Isha Agarwal (followed by rest of the names - jo ki maine nhi sune bcoz i was like )
Me :
Me :
Then AS and JK congratulated me and I came back to life then realising that AL was calling forward all the selected candidates. Then she gave us the Deloitte T-shirts and cards and gave us the further instructions.

I was still unable to believe that THIS had happened to me. And then after walking out of the lab I was happily jumping up and down with joy as if someone had attached springs to my shoes

And so here I was conquered Deloitte - The 1st non-tech company to visit our campus

Oh yes there is more to follow... I went back to the hostel, reached about 11:20 pm and fortunately-unfortunately hadn't brought an extra pair of clothes with me and my dear friend SA also didn't have a spare set of clothes for me to wear. So here the lovely Deloitte T-Shirt came in handy and finally I inaugurated the T-Shirt also