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Student Media
Body of IITR
Body of IITR
I’m writing this not to inspire you but primarily to show you that anything’s possible, and you should be prepared enough to grab the opportunity when it arises. Read it like a story - maybe grab a vegan shake at CCD, put on some Red Hot Chili Peppers (shoutout to their biggest fan that I know - 19119031) and breeze through this (this is precisely what I was doing while typing this out).
I’m Chandramouli Koushik; as I’m typing this, I’m a senior from the Chemical Engineering department. I’ll set the stage a little for the semester before the intern season - my department isn’t known for fabulous intern seasons, which I realised after joining college (if someone doing JEE prep is reading this, I beseech you to research well about what companies hire from which branches across all the IITs, before taking a decision). My CGPA wasn’t great either; it was a touch above 7.4. I was recovering from a severe case of Pulmonary Tuberculosis. And I had little to no interest in coding. All I wanted to do was play basketball.
I had dipped my toes into the usual coding stuff - Codeforces, CodeChef, Leetcode. But after the 4th sem, I decided to lock in a little, but I didn’t really have hopes of securing an on-campus internship offer. I won’t bore you with my preparation details (I think there are way better people out there to guide you, but I’m always open to helping people out, so you’re free to reach out to me anytime, and I’ll try my best to guide you in the right direction) and get to when the intern season started.
Day 0 companies made nary an offer in Chemical Engineering, as I had expected. AmEx Analytics was the first company to extend an offer to someone from my branch. I was on the waitlist for that company, but they stopped calling people from the waitlist two names before me. But I just saw making it to the waitlist as a massive win in itself. This was repeated again with Tata AIG - they didn’t even make it to the waitlist.
I vividly remember walking back from the Sprinklr coding round on 19th July at 11:50 pm thinking, damn, that was the biggest “he’s not him” performance I’ve ever given. I entered my room, and my friends were there with a cake and candles. July 20th was my birthday. But I just felt extremely low after that underwhelming coding round. By 12:10 am, the cake was finished, and I sat back down to study more, while my friends continued chilling in my neighbor’s (and bestie, shoutout 21112013) room. Then came one rainy night, when I was out with a junior and another friend (shoutout to another bestie 21119034) in Rustic. Standard Chartered’s coding round was that night, and I was a hair’s width away from just giving up and not appearing for it. The rain only added to my laziness and despair. But, almost prophetically, the skies cleared up, and I thought, why not just give it? After some initial technical hitches, I was the second or third person to finish both the questions, even after starting a little later. I was pretty happy with how it went. I called a senior of mine (shoutout 19117075) and told him everything. He was highly confident I’d make it to the shortlist this time. I didn’t share the same enthusiasm, but two days later, my name was on the Noticeboard app under the shortlist. I was overjoyed.
My interview readiness levels were mid, at best. I knew most of my projects from top to bottom and DSA pretty well, too. Why did I say I wasn’t too well prepared then? You’ll find out soon enough. In the first round, my interviewer was a fun late -30s man who worked in the analytics department, if I remember correctly. He constantly had a smile on his face and made a strong effort to make me feel comfortable throughout the interview. I had (still have a bit of) performance anxiety, which didn’t surface because of how nice he was. The round went wonderfully well, and my name was on top of the list of 10 people shortlisted for the second round. I assumed that was a good sign and was quite excited for the next one.
Here’s the part of this read that’ll clarify why I know I was underprepared, looking back now. I completely blew over preparing for common HR questions because, for one, I never thought I’d make it that far, and two, I thought I’d be able to bullshit my way through it. But let me stress this, it is IMPERATIVE to know HOW to bullshit through it, and that requires SOME prep.
My interviewer for this round was (no offense to him whatsoever) a little scary - no smile on his face, a mean mustache, and a very unnerving voice. He exposed my lack of knowledge in commonplace things about coding (for example, I couldn’t answer which programming languages use a compiler, which ones use an interpreter, and which ones use both. Stuff I’ve known since school, but I’d forgotten). Then he got to grilling me about the weak points in my resume (I was pretty proud of the rest of my resume, by the way, arranged and worded beautifully thanks to 19117109), and there was the prominent single glaring crater in it - my CGPA. He asked me to explain why it’s low. Now, there’s a way of answering this, which I did not know at the time because, well, I hadn’t done the slightest research on how to tackle these questions. I beat around the bush under-confidently, mainly talking about how I faced major health episodes in college (which I really did; I faced things no healthy 20 - something year old would even dream of). This answer fell flat on its face; the interviewer didn’t buy it. After what felt like being thrown into a food processor after being defended by prime 2014 Kawhi Leonard for two hours, I got out of the round. I didn’t want to be seen; call me 2012 John Cena, the way I felt at rock bottom (someone please get all the references I threw in here, I know 19117016 will).
9 more people were left until I found out what would become of me after this round, and so began the strenuous 2-hour wait. 8 names came out after. Mine was not there. Heartbroken. Tired of the process. Despair. Agony (too dramatic, maybe?). I began the long walk back to my hostel. My mother, the real MVP, ever so supportive, told me it’s alright. I’ll get something else. I wasn’t too sure of it. But wait, I didn’t get an offer. Why am I writing this?
A few days passed. I had mostly gotten over the interview fiasco. But I had a lab course to deal with (torturous as usual). The professor had once yelled at me for sitting on the table while observing an experiment - I was told to go sit on the ceiling—trademark South Indian sarcasm. Almost made me laugh in nostalgia. I missed home so much.
My phone was on silent that day, and when I checked it, I had three missed calls from an unknown number. A classmate of mine walked up to me and told me to call it back - it was a Placement Cell rep that had called me. I was pretty confused. I jogged out of the lab and called back. The rep told me I have my third round of interviews scheduled for the afternoon!? How? Why? I was obviously ecstatic, but I didn’t understand how this happened. The third round was just a formality round to give location and other preferences - it basically meant you had secured an offer. After that call was over, I was informed that I did actually get an offer from Standard Chartered. Seventh heaven. I remember running to my room and slamming the balcony door in happiness. I remember calling both my parents and informing them about this. I remember thinking “oh shit, I can hoop seriously again”. I remember taking 21322024 (bestie 3) to Milk Bar for celebratory sweets. I remember story-ing a photo of the iconic Kevin Garnett “ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE” below (after the 2008 championship win) - because it really felt that way. This should explain the “SOP” of the article. Later, I found out how this actually went down. The students are to fill out a Google form giving their preferences for a particular interview day - one of the Standard Chartered selects had Jaguar higher on his priority list, and he ended up going there. That opened up a vacancy, and I was slotted in to fill that. A stroke of luck, finally, after all the setbacks.
Later, I was told that my office would be in Bangalore (which meant I could just stay home). I had a great 2 months at the organisation. I worked under an excellent manager. In those two months, I got my health and fitness to the best it had ever been. If I may sidetrack a little - I bought myself a pair of Ja 1s, a KD jersey, and a LeBron jersey (both city edition) as soon as my stipend hit. I even received a PPO from the company later, which spared me a lot of placement season stress. To anyone reading this with an upcoming intern/placement season, I’ll reiterate what I said at the beginning of this article - prepare. No matter your branch, your CGPA, or your interests, be prepared for the process. It will result in something great. As cliche as it sounds, take help from the people around you to define a goal and the means to attain it, hustle and trust the process (unless you’re a 76ers fan, in which case I’m sorry you read those words). You’ve got this.
