the e^xponential stress

This is in continuation of part one - How I Messed Up My First Interviews: Chapter I It was December 1st, the 'Day 1' of the 2015 placements, and Honda R&D happened to be the second company to have come after Microsoft. We were 4 students from the batch who opted for the Honda interviews. After a hiatus from my previous interview experience during engineering, I thought that this time I was prepared and would have learned something. I was excited for the interview although not much excited because I wasn't into two-wheelers as much as I was into cars. In a batch of 20 M.Des students at IIT Delhi, I too was amongst the 5 people who wanted to become an automobile designer. In our multi-disciplinary course, we studied product design for both tangible products as well as for digital products. We worked closely with Maruti Suzuki India R&D for more than 6 months and learned the entire process of car design right from research to clay modelling, but despite our efforts an...

I have messed up my first interviews in both colleges that I attended. Today, I will speak of the first one that I gave. I have written about this in two of my earlier posts- Engineering is a state of mind , and Group discussions and introversion . I wasn't sure earlier if I should write this or not but I do feel that failures are an important part of life and I sport them confidently. And, for the past 2.5 years of my career, I have been sitting on the other side of the table, hiring others for my company and I have grown a lot since then so, this post wouldn't hurt my career. Here it is- My interview experience with Wipro. This story dates back to December 2012. Wipro was one of the first few companies that visited our campus and like I always do, I cleared all the prelims and was amongst the few who got qualified for the interview pushing back many ECE, IT, and CSE grads despite I being from the mechanical branch.  I got my formals stitched for the first time in life, clean...

Writing after a long time... Kanpur! An awesome experience because it taught me a few lessons and I blew panel members' heads off (rhetorically). I was second-last on the second day, i.e 10th May 2014. My turn came at around 5 or 5:30 pm though as per list sequence, my turn should have got over by afternoon. It took almost an entire day for the process since the reporting time was 9 am. Unlike other design schools, they didn't take any aptitude tests. The wait for the interview felt really long for me since I didn't have breakfast because there wasn't any; the hostel they allocated, Hall V, didn't have any mess or canteen nor did they provide the candidates with any bedding so it was quite obvious for me to get a little temperamental. But the wait for the interview cooled me down gradually. And, I entered the room with great calm and composure. I entered and greeted with 'good afternoon' and they were like, 'yeah! yeah! talkin...

Qualifying CEED is not enough to get admission in M.Des. The admission process of reputed institutes is quite exhaustive and tests candidates' aptitude at several stages, DAT and Interview. Here, I'm sharing my experience of the interviews at IDC (Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay) during March'14. I was lucky to be called for interviews of all the three disciplines I applied for. Visual Communication Interview: I am a product designer by passion. I had no VC work to show except a collection of my cartoons- my free-time fun and my second passion. I guess, I should have applied for Animation Design with my cartoons but I didn't do so because I wasn't sure of getting placed after studying Animation.  VC! My first meeting with professors of an IIT. The panel didn't seem interested, because of my portfolio? Who knows? They asked me to show the best three works of mine.   "Sir, all are my best. You can see any of these," I said. ...

Food is healthy, whether you eat it or talk about it. While returning from IIT Bombay, on my journey to Delhi on August-Kranti Rajdhani, an incident happened when food actuated a political discussion. The man in his 40s seated opposite to me asked what a Jain-platter was pointing towards my plate which happened to be Jain. [I figured out the availability of Jain-platter on the train last year while on my way to Ahmedabad on Swarna-Jayanti Rajdhani when my fellow passenger ordered it. I went there for the NID interviews.] "It doesn't have onion!" I replied after swallowing. After a while when we were finished eating, he tried to crack a conversation again, "Now you also have got a reservation!" "Sorry?" I said keeping my book (a Paulo Coelho's...) aside as if I heard something wrong. "Jains have got reservation too," he said. "I'm not a Jain! I'm Hindu!" I modulated my voice. "Jains are also Hindus!...

These are some of the links I referred to get inspiration while preparing for M.Des (Master Of Design). This collection contains some great works of many artists, tutorials for product sketching and much more one would need while preparing design portfolio as well as while learning to sketch. These would even help in cracking the design entrances (CEED, NID-DAT, etc.) plus their design aptitude tests (DATs). These links are randomly ordered. To know more about Design in India:- http://www.designinindia.net   (This link would give information about various design entrances, design colleges in India, etc.) http://teacupblog.blogspot.in (This link is the one-stop solution for the preparation of design entrances, DATs, interviews and more.) Another link which speaks a lot about Design:-  http://thedesignsketchbook.com/ Product/ Industrial Design sketching tutorials:-  https://www.youtube.com/user/sketchadaydotcom https://www.youtube.com/user/...

It was only a month after I graduated when I got stressed because of being unable to land up with a job. I had been looking for job throughout the final year but efforts went in vane. Having passed all the 8 hurdles, I mean the semesters, I was expecting at least one good offer in hand before graduating. Well, any above average student would expect that to happen but life just doesn't work the way we want. Somehow, after a pathetic final year I gained my senses and started seeing things normally. [Pathetic doesn't refer to academics; I have always been academically strong; one of the top contenders.] With no single company visiting the campus for us (the mechanical engineers) and my hilarious interview with Wipro [shall write a separate post on that!], the only way out of the misery of bad placements was the off-campus. But, if getting a job through campus is difficult then getting job off-campus is even more difficult especially when you don't have any uncle or...

I always knew that the education in India is in a tattered state with IITs being an exception...And when such reputed exceptions make mistakes, it is simply unacceptable. I had applied for three disciplines for M.Des at IIT Bombay viz., Product Design, Visual Communication and Mobility-Vehicle Design. After the announcement of result I found my name among the shortlisted candidates in Visual Communication and Mobility-Vehicle Design only. I thought that maybe they didn't like my Product Design application (Portfolio plus SOP) and started working on the portfolio for the other two disciplines. Upon reaching Mumbai, in order to pass my time I started reading names of the candidates in the other disciplines...and there came a 'Shock!' I was shortlisted for 'Interaction Design' as well; the 'discipline,' I didn't even apply for.   I instantly called the Admissions Office and explained the situation. The woman on the other si...

Finally! A good result of 2014. Industrial Design Centre ( IDC ) of Indian Institute Of Technology Bombay (IIT B) has shortlisted me among the students called for Design Aptitude Test (DAT) and Portfolio presentation (Interview) for their Master of Design (M.Des) course. Phew! The results are a sense of relief after a series of unfavourable results post graduating. Well, it's not sort of an achievement because I've to go through some more tests and interview to get The seat. But receiving an interview call from the nation's most prestigious institute is a nice feeling in itself. I've been called for two disciplines viz., Visual Communication Design and Mobility & Vehicle Design. Don't know what they liked- my portfolio which included The Most Common Sight On Delhi Metro , my academic profile, my SOP (quite an exhaustive one) or my performance in preliminary CEED (Common Entrance Exam For Design) in which I had secured All India Rank 166...Doesn't mat...