Introduction
“Rati Sir, what I was thinking that now as I have been placed at this company, I will gain experience there at least for a year and two. There I will work hard and in between if they promote or send me to onsite like you that will be also good. Only after a year or two, I will appear for my dream job interviews at big companies like Googlee.
What you think, give us some tips Sir? You are our senior, if we will get guidance from you, our career will be set like you”. Ajay asks Rati who is a year senior to him and is placed in a Fin-tech company in the first drive of campus placement last year and the company is sending him the UK onsite on a one-year assignment.
“Yes Ajay, you are right. You shall work for a year and two in parallel and keep focusing on your core papers. Once you are ready for these companies let us know and be in touch. In 1–2 years many of our friends will be in such companies and we will also get you there by referral. You will only need to clear a few rounds of interviews. And, our college name is enough to get ahead of first rounds. Your career was set when you got admission in this Babulal Institute of Information technology. And luckily if you get a project in the FinTech domain, who knows I might get you with me to the UK too.
Now all doubts of Ajay were clear after getting assurance from Rati. He was not very much happy with the 3.25 lack package at this company and had high doubts regarding his future.
“We are connected on Facebook, but shall I send you a connection request on LinkedIn? Even if you delete your Facebook account ever, we will be in touch on LinkedIn.”. Ajay asks Rati. “Yes sure, send me the connection request I will accept once I reach my room.” Rati leaves for his room. He was here in the city on two days vacation for his convocations and juniors like Ajay did not want to miss any opportunity to be in good books of seniors like Rati Sinha (Obviously for referrals and career guidance or an opportunity to the UK, who knows).
Days At Office
Ajay’s training completed in a month and he was allocated a legacy UI project. Like most of his teammates, he was also working on monotonous works. His manager had committed higher management to reduce team size and move a few of the resources to other projects by bringing automation into use.
Now during office time, Ajay was mostly occupied with daily works and after all hectic days at the office, Ajay was working on automation skills as part of the self-development program assigned by his manager. Ajay was thinking to submit one POC(proof of concept) for this automation so that during his yearly review he will show this as part of innovation which was a new buzzword in his company recently.
This way two years went by. Ajay was given average performance rating each time manager’s concern was that although Ajay was giving a lot of effort into work, there was very little visibility in actual differences he was making to the project. Everyone in the team was doing similar work and if a resource like Ajay gets the best performance rating what will team members like Sahil will get.
Sahil was the model employee for Ajay’s team. The only thing he was good at was to reply client’s mail with information as I am looking into it and then taking the help of team members on a one to one basis to respond to the client’s mail. As he was in the project for the last 7 years and very close to the Manager, no one dared to report these things to the manager.
Center of Attraction
In between all these chaos, Ajay found a girl in the new team to which his teammates were moved. She was the only tester in the new project. Few times she joined them on lunch and there he had a little bit of interaction with her. Today was Friday and Ajay being all alone in the room. His roommate went out with his friends for a movie and Ajay did not want to be the odd man in their group, so he made a reason for not joining them that he had to attend some important meetings today.
He started searching for Sakshi on Facebook. But he cannot find any Sakshi matching the face of the girl from his office. So, Ajay then searched her on LinkedIn and there she is. Now that the weekend was there but Ajay had no intention to wait for Monday for talking to Sakshi. But the main problem is Sakshi had a huge contact list of friends from companies like “Googlee”.
Ajay felt under-confident to send a request. So first, his only hope was to have a good LinkedIn profile. All things were good, but he had nothing to show in extracurricular activities. But he mentioned, “Actively involved in extracurricular activities at Saakha during school days” (the parent wing of govt. party).
He had also listened to Sakshi being pro-government during lunchtimes and then he added 40 plus some skills, almost all skills he had heard off and followed current Prime Minister and his Cabinet Members to impress Sakshi. Now that the profile was ready Ajay sends a request to Sakshi. Ajay sent a request by 11 PM. His roommate came after night show by 2 AM but She had not accepted his request yet. Finally, 2 days went by and Sakshi accepted his request on Monday just before lunch from office.
The Preparation
Few months went by and now Ajay was having frequent chit chat with Sakshi. In between Ajay notices one job opening at Googlee with somewhat similar technologies he was working on. When he visited the job opening on the Company page, he found that Rati is now working with Googlee. Although after college other than liking Rati profile pictures on Facebook and some from his UK trips, he never contacted him, now he had to. Ajay had an idea. He called Rati who was in his city itself now and after asking about his trips to the UK, about the car he recently booked, he asked if Rati could refer her friend Sakshi to Googlee.
When Rati asked why Ajay did not want to apply for this job? How can Ajay ask for a referral as in between he never tried to reach Rati not even for congratulating him when he got placed at Googlee. Anyways, Ajay told me that his manager had processed his profile for a position onsite. The truth was Sahil recently went to the UK for a one year plus assignment and the rest of the teammates including Ajay was not even asked if they were interested in this position or not. Rati asked Ajay to share the resume of Sakshi which Ajay promised to share as soon as he receives the updated profile.
One week went by and now Ajay had to get him referred. So, after a lot of thinking, he called Rati. After some initial chit chat, Rati asks for Sakshi’s profile on which Ajay tells that Sakshi has got chickenpox and she will not be able to appear in the interview till the time she is cured. Ajay tells Rati that his visa process has been called off as the client has declined the SOW. And he asks Rati that as he is now not traveling will it be possible for Rati to refer him for that position which Rati nods to do.
Now Ajay had to update his résumé, so he decided to fake it on his resume and added some exciting project opportunities his team members were involved in the new project. For core skills, he decided to brush up from the GeeksforGeeks site. His resume got shortlisted and the interview was scheduled for the 20th of December.
Today was the 5th of December and the only catch was that on 23rd he had a demo of automation proof of concept to be given to the client and this was in his self-development plan this year too. He had developed a sample project on this POC and has given to the test team for business use case validation before giving a demo to the client.
Ajay decides that he will have very little work at the office as he will only support testers in their testing and will brush up the skills in these fifteen days. From different candidate’s experiences on GeeksforGeeks Ajay identified three to four core subjects he needed to work on for the interview. Ajay brings the books of all four core papers from Almira, gets rids of the dust from the last 2.5 years, and puts on the table. So, he starts studying for one or two-hour in the morning, then he visited a few important topics from GeeksforGeeks from office.
A senior tester of the POC project Amit had some hidden problems with Ajay. The reason being Sakshi. As Sakshi was also the tester in another team and Amit found Ajay having tea in the cafeteria during morning time with Sakshi a few times. As per Amit Ajay shall be interested in a girl from his profile only not from other profiles.
Seven days went by and Ajay was finding it challenging to study whole core papers from books tough. Now he remembered the discussion he had with Rati Sir a few years back when he had come for convocation. At that time, he had said that he will get Ajay to Googlee only by referral and some basic interviews. And even if some interview happens then Babulal Institute of Information Technology (their college name) shall be enough to easily convince the selectors that he can work on whatever role assigned as he is from such reputed college.
Ajay calls Rati who was busy in some outage as the new year was approaching and that needed to be fixed for a full load before 31st. So, Ajay did not get much chance to share his challenges and hopes with Rati. The only advice he got is to read to all questions that were available on the Geeksforgeeks site for Googlee. When Ajay visited GeeksforGeeks there were 500 questions available on that site for reference to googlee.
Ajay somehow sorted 300 questions that he had to go through that were asked to many candidates. 7 days were left so Ajay sets a target for 6 days as 50 questions per day and one day for revision. Now he was confident to crack the interview. During office time he was visiting GeeksforGeeks and tester Amit saw him looking at googlee questions. He sensed that Ajay was looking for a job change at googlee and Sakshi always wanted someone working there or settled abroad as her life partner. So, he got jealous and started raising defects that were nontrivial as severe and Ajay had to put the effort into looking at those issues more now.
5 more days went by and now only three days were left. Ajay had only gone through 100 questions. So, he decides to have leave, the next day. The next day Ajay sends a mail to the manager mentioning that he has severe water flow in his house and some plumbing work is going through his flat, so he cannot come office. Although he was living in PG, he had told his managers that he was staying with his friends in a flat in the metro area to avail of some tax benefits.
Before Interview
By 10 PM while visiting GeeksforGeeks Ajay sees mail from Amit. “Server Crashed, Critical issue raised”. Amit had already got to know from Sakshi that Ajay was planning leave today. Ajay while sending Sakshi a good morning message on LinkedIn mentions that he will not be coming office today. And yesterday while coming from tea Amit heard Ajay telling someone that “Yes I will be available on 20th December AT 10 AM”.
Amit was quite sure that it was Ajay’s interview which now he cannot let happen as he did not want Sakshi to see any future with Ajay. Also, Amit recently got to know from his manager that the management has considered Amit for a position in the UK in the next quarter. Since Amit had helped the director a lot while the director was purchasing his home, so Amit shared a good relationship with him. All these raised hopes in the mind of Amit for Sakshi.
Ajay had no option left but to come office. As he was not in the lead position, he was not given a laptop and vpn connections for work from home. Ajay somehow manages to get office by noon. And starts looking at the crash. Hours went by but he was not able to identify the reason for the crash. All his decision to complete 300 questions were shattered.
Till 6 PM Ajay was not able to identify the reason for the crash and this was one of the critical business cases that needed to pass before the demo. In between Amit came few times at Ajay seat and asks how his preparation and all going on and if he is planning for a switch. Also, he joked about Sakshi too.
Ajay sensed that Amit has intentionally done something wrong and he starts verifying test suit of Amit and after an hour of dig up in his suit Ajay finds that in test suit Amit was passing a complete garbage value in the test suit which is not possible from User Interface. When the discussion happened, Amit was firm that until the issue is fixed, he will not pass the business case. But after the involvement of Management, they decided to pass the test case with possible values from User Interface and fix the issue after the demo is done. After all meetings, Ajay reached PG by 10 PM and was exhausted so slept after having dinner.
The next day on the 19th, he had to reach office as Amit had raised concern that he had some critical business cases left for the test, so he needs prompt support whenever required. The whole day went by like this and Amit completes his test cases after having mail chains and confirmations on behavior from Ajay and other architects involved.
Sakshi also got to know that Ajay POC testing is done. So, in the evening for the first time, she asks Ajay for dinner tonight as her sister went to hometown and she did not want to have home-cooked food. But reason was that after consistent good morning and good night messages on LinkedIn she also got feelings for Ajay.
Ajay had till now only completed 100 questions that were far less than 500 available on GeeksforGeeks. He was not sure if the questions will be asked from the same list or not. So, he was losing all hope, on other hand, Sakshi’s sister will come tomorrow so it will be difficult for such a dinner date and he says yes for dinner to Sakshi. He decides to have a night sit out for the whole night and complete 300 questions by 10 am before the interview.
For the first time, Ajay was with Sakshi at the restaurant for dinner and the music and lights were overwhelming for him. Two hours went by and Ajay did not notice. Now he had to leave as he had to appear for the interview. So, they left the restaurant and Ajay drops Sakshi to her flat. On the way to his PG, he finds the Wine Shop on the corner. He was happy as his POC was finished today and he just had a date with Sakshi, so he wanted to celebrate. He takes two bottles of beer with him along with some nutcrackers.
When he reaches the PG, his roommate as usual was out with his friends, so Ajay finishes the two bottles alone meanwhile he was looking the pic of Sakshi on LinkedIn. She had updated her pic with the pic Ajay took at the restaurant. It was 11 PM and Ajay starts his study on the laptop by going through GeeksforGeeks.
The Interview Day
9.45 AM Ajay roommate asks him to have breakfast as it was to end. Ajay wakes up in shock, when he slept last night he did not remember. When he looks at the page, he had for marking the finished questions he was still on the 120th. Meanwhile, he gets a call from the HR of Googlee.
He did not receive the call from HR for the first time as the headache from last night’s hangout was severe, also he was not prepared for the interview. More than other things he was scared of failure. What would he tell Rati Sir if he does not qualify as he had good hopes from him? Ajay was always the favorite junior of Rati.
When the second time call comes Ajay tells the HR that he has met an accident and is severely injured. His arms fractured so he wont be able to appear for the interview next few months. Although the HR was quite surprised that how Ajay met an accident on interview day itself and doubted if Ajay is telling the truth or not. Ajay insisted that he is telling the truth and will approach her further once he gets well.
With this lie, Ajay killed his hopes he had for his Dream Job. He killed hopes he had for Sakshi. Unfortunately, the demo of POC got ruined due to some silly mistake during the presentation and now it was time for Ajay’s yearly appraisal review coming month in January.
Disclaimer: This is a fictional story. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Read Next, Kashi: The Moksha Dwar