Ashish Kumar from Tekriti Software

6 of us from Tekriti went for the campus placements at MNNIT, Allahabad and IIIT, Allahabad over the last extended weekend. It was a tough, tiring and yet very exciting event for us. This was our first trip to any campus and so was special like many other first-things.

Both the institutes were good hosts even though their approach to placements was a bit different. MNNIT had around 700 students in the passing-out batch while IIIT only had 180 (including Bachelors and Masters programme). We got total 100 students (50 from each institute) to write our test which wasn’t bad given that we were a bit late in deciding on campus placements and many companies had come before us.

The highlight of the placement process was the fact that we got feedback from both the institutes that our pre-placement talk was the best so far. People liked the interview process also since it was very different but pre-placement talk got everybody discussing. After I got done with delivering the pre-placement talk at MNNIT, somebody complimented me saying that “This was the best pre-placement talk in the institute so far, even much better than Microsoft (Microsoft’s was best since then)“. Oh well, I will take that as a very genuine compliment
As a place, from what I was told (we didn’t get a chance to go to any places), Allahabad didn’t have anything to offer other than a view of these 2 engineering institutes.

Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT).

IIIT Allahabad

In general, the learning from first campus placements are:

• Schedule a trip to campus as early as possible - you want to be one of the first companies to go to the campus (this will also depend on an institute’s policy but contact them early)
• Have a nice presentation-deck and back it up with a good presentation: Encourage questions, make it humorous and cover things that makes more sense for people who have never worked before. I think our presentation conveyed that well through the photos that we had on the slides. Feel the passion you have for the company to the students while presenting - it is contagious.
• While interviewing, look for the attitude in people. Technically, there isn’t a big difference in people. There are categories - smart, average and others but sub-categorizing beyond that might not be the best idea amongst freshers. People learn a lot in their first job and there won’t be a big difference in the learnability of the sub-categories. But, ask yourself, is this person culturally fit for your company?
• Take all those selected out for sometime: People always like to be treated on their first job. A lot of us cannot afford to go to a restaurant that we always wanted to go while still in the college - treating people to such a place is always a noble gesture and something which is remembred and appreciated.

Even though I have been traveling for the last 2.5 months continuously, I haven’t gotten a chance to complain so far Thank you MNNIT and thank you IIIT and thank you all the future TeknoKrats - you made my trip worthwhile.

Another experience to treasure! And, I am sure, it was the same for Arun, Ashima, Gaurav, Manish and Rahul.