The Interview date has passed by and I did get no response. Overcoming the disappointment I was back to my routine job that still helped a lot.

Almost after some 15 days, I got an email with another hall ticket to another location which was almost 500 kms away from my hometown. I was not as excited as last time. All my worry was ‘how will I ask for a time off in the current office? What if I did not get selected? Why should I waste time travelling so long?’ So much of negativity has occupied my mind.

When I shared this details to my father he gave a piece of advise. Instead of thinking about all these. Let’s just give a try. If you are not selected its just one Loss of pay day but you will get to meet new people, get to see new places and nothing to lose. That made sense.

Whenever you step out of a problem and think about it, you can clearly list your pro’s and con’s of a situation. But if you are stuck within a problem, you will never be able to come out of negativity. So if you are stuck, talk to someone out of the box and get their view which will clear your mind blocks.

Myself and my father boarded the bus almost in mid night. I have a habit of sleeping during travel to avoid being nauseous. So travel time didn’t matter. As soon as I reached the destination, got to know that, the college where the interview is organised is still under construction and there is no public bus facility. So the college has arranged a free bus facility.

The moment we boarded, is the moment I started to feel how important this interview is to me. Long journey , nervousness everything led to vomiting as soon as I stepped into the college.

After refreshing, we were waiting for the interview to began. As soon as the panellists arrived, we got the know, the shortage of panellists for the crowd that is gathered. Per our email, it was a technical interview followed by HR interview. Considering the crowd, a group discussion was introduced as first round.

The crowd was split into n number of groups with 13 members in each group. And with no surprise, I was part of the last 13. We started to watch as bunch of people get in and get out in minutes. We could see everyone walking out with tears. Batch 1 – 12 rejected & 1 selected, Batch 2 – all 13 rejected. Batch 3 – 11 rejected and it goes on. This almost gave a mini panic attack.

As time pass by, everybody got used to hearing rejections and that did not matter anymore. As we get out of panic mode, our natural body reactions started, Yes! I was HUNGRY. I told my dad and immediately without thinking that, ‘I may miss my turn for interview’, he took me to small shop which was almost 500 meters away from the campus.

We went by walk by talking about general stuffs and he never ever spoke a word about the interview or motivated me or nothing about the interview. It was all general talks of how this place is and how people survive over here and what kind of entertainment they get here and general stuffs. That was really a refreshing walk and talk I would say.

When we are back, we still had a bunch to go. I was waiting, waiting, waiting… for my turn and almost lost all my nervousness and hope. All I had on my mind was, let me just finish this day off and get back to my routine. My dad was diabetic and had body ache with lack of rest and all I had in my mind was the day to end soon.

Finally, in my turn, instead of group discussion(HR would have got tired of hell lot of arguments), he gave 2 mins talk time for everyone to discuss about the hypothetical situation of our opinions on setting up an age limit for Politicians. Ahhh!! That’s perfect. Even if he would have asked about current affairs, I would have straight away walked out of the room. But when it comes to imagination, being graduated from University, brought all my imagination into words. Finally, 2 selected from that bunch and one of them was ME.

My dad was surprised and said that’s enough, whatever it ends to, the first step you were able to make it and I’m happy for you. But after that moment, I badly wanted to move to the next level. Per order, I was the last one of the technical interview too.

As the interview started, someone placed snacks for the interviewer and he did not have any. He was reviewing my resume and out of all the things I crafted in it, he asked about my areas of interest. I proudly mentioned as SQL and the very moment he started firing questions and I did barely answer for one of them.

I still remember the very moment, he placed his pen on desk, rested back and asked, you couldn’t even answer your area of interest, what would I ask you? I was at edge of rejection, I knew where its driving me, suddenly I gathered all my courage and asked ‘Shall I answer for my own questions?’ I never know how many of them would have had such patience.

I started stating questions and answers for all the ones I prepared for this interview. Somehow, he got impressed(which I got to know later) asked to wait outside.

With my heart throbbing, I was sitting at the edge of the seat and a man appeared (he was volunteer) asking me to go to final round HR.

Yes! I was at last step. But not sure what to expect. As I stepped in, it was the same HR who conducted the group discussion and I got my confidence back. Selection or Rejection status was not revealed to anyone. But it was assumed, the ones who goes till HR interview will get through.

When I walked down the stairs, my dad approached congratulating and welcoming more happily. When I clarified, the result in unknown, his reaction was such Manly. Whatever, you made till last minute and that’s more than enough which had brought broad smile over my face.

You see, sometimes fairy GODFATHERS exist too. He had severe leg pain, so we were walking very slowly towards the last bus to the main gate. As we walk, one volunteer was searching someone based on applicant’s photo and he ran towards me by shouting ‘Can’t you write your email id or phone number? How to contact you in case you are selected?’ The moment he uttered those words, we all had a BROAD SMILE. And that’s how I got this job.

Do the right things on time with no regret. There is saying ‘Better late than never’ but I would rephrase to ‘Better now than later’ so you wouldn’t regret the ru(i)sk.

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