c2C

c2C [campus to Corporate] - Part-1

Scene 1: T for Training

It was on October 9th of 2007, I stepped into a corporate life. My entry to the corporate world is purely dramatic. As always life was more dramatic than a real drama. I had a warm welcome by the corporate officials.

During my induction sessions they have shown us many presentations explaining company strategy, techie’s talk etc. To be frank, it was indigestible. But in between somewhere they had shown some motivational clips, everything were in sink with my thoughts. Then I realized that it is right company for me to start with.

We had some common training in an outsourced agency office. I had some good friends from all over India. We enjoyed those days.

One fine morning, a manager from my company came to our classroom and asked us to join in his team, since he had an urgent requirement of engineers in his project. We were at “cloud 9”; before starting our actual training, we deployed into project!!! We all had CS-IT background so both our self and he (manager) had confidence in our performance.

Our job oriented training started at corporate office. The skill pool manager informed us that they expect us as billable in 30-40 days. The training was on a Seibel, a CRM application, competitor to SAP. But in next day he said “You have to wrap up training in max 14 days”. Our blood turned to sweat. But we were not ready to give up. We really worked hard and in 5 days somehow we managed the tool (only basics).we proud on our self.

The table turned in another 2 days. Company decided not to continue on Seibel part now. So we forced to join back in training sessions. But we lagged about 20 days.

Bad luck (or good) followed us; our domain changed from ORACLE to CODC while we joined in training session. Already there were 3 batches on this domain.

Days in CODC were the time to keep our fingers crossed. For all the three batches, an official from Cisco domain used to come in every Monday, but none to us. At the end of December every other domain people finished training. Some of them deployed- some of them were in traditional BENCH. Our training was scheduled till mid of January.

During the last lap of training, we heard that there will be an elimination exam for CODC. Once we clear it there opens a chance to get into company. First batch attended the test, most of them failed, blame on changed syllabus and trainers. Company given one more chance to them; but they warned other CODC batch that story will be different for them.
After a long wait, it was our turn to go through the firewall. On exam day, training team warned us “If you perform, you are in. Else ….” I have seen my return ticket and my mom’s anxious eyes filled with tears in my mind.

I just re-winded my corporate dreams.May be after a few hours sometimes I may not even be able to dream like this. We all prepared mentally to face the fortune, since there was nothing to loose.

With the grace of GOD, I cleared the exam. Life was again smiling at me.

Scene 2: O…O…Office

We deployed into Telecom-Networking. Alas!!! The subject I hate in my study time.

I got into QA team or testing team – Oh god, there is nothing good for me?!

Personally I believed that there is no much work in testing and it is unattractive with zero challenge. I want to be in development side, so that I will get some opportunity to do R&D.

But few of my colleagues advised me that since I am in telecom networking, QA team job will be different and interesting. I decided to go with their word, so I refused an offer to join in development team by swap method.

I got my first work - CTP level testing (It was a new project). Everyone in team told us (fresher) that you got a golden opportunity to learn everything on project since we joined almost in the beginning of the project.

My experience was different. I did not understand much exactly what the customer requirement is. All the documents that they have provided were huge in size. I am not interested in reading such lengthy document, may be because I will not understand fully.

Next question was “what to read first and what is next to it”. I was like a sailor who lost his direction. But I had done my work, by not knowing exactly what I am doing.

Slowly I picked up from presentations of my seniors. And all of my senior colleagues are very friendly and have a very good helping mentality. Their co-operation and help made me to slowly walk through the project.
I had another good opportunity in my team, since I was fresher, they given me manageable works and full rights to do R&D in my work. I really enjoyed that and this freedom improved the quality of my work and accelerated my learning graph. (This is my personnel opinion after doing a bit R&D of my work)

Days passed on, now I have an identity in my team and I am satisfied with my work . I still keep my eager to conquer new horizons for the next project. Yes, we had successfully delivered our GA release to customer on time.

I learned a lot, but some initial sessions I missed out in this project. I hope I can make up that in upcoming projects; hence the “complete project” dream will come true.

I am thankful to my managers, leads, and colleagues with whom I had a fruitful start-up in my career. Their co-operation and support made me what I am right now. Above all I am thankful to GOD who deployed me into “Mission HCL”.