A student with papers pending and a less than stellar overall score – definitely a candidate for rejection. Right?
In this case it wasn’t – let me tell you why:
The ability to ‘Apply Thought’ and solve real-world problems with available resources.
It was a tiring day filled with interviews. We were in a well-known college in Coimbatore and I was part of the Campus Recruitment team.
I had completed 15–16 interviews and was preparing to wind up. When I came out of my cabin there were a couple of candidates waiting. The HR head then asked me if I could take up one more.
‘Sure, let me get a coffee. Ask the person to sit inside and please give me his profile so that I can go through’
I went through his profile – a couple of projects in college, not among the toppers and nothing really outstanding. He had one paper pending in his last semester. As a rule we aren’t supposed to recruit anyone with a back or supplementary.
‘Good Evening’ – he wished cheerfully as I entered. It had been a long day for him as well, waiting from Morning.
We discusssed about his college projects, some basics of Digital Signal Processing and Applied Mechanics. He had previously sat in a couple of interviews for other companies, but didn’t get through. His passion was clearly in coding, .Net specifically. Then I asked him, of what you have learnt, what have you really implemented?
He had this story to share:
“Sir, my father is an accountant. He works in a small company and does not earn much. I wanted to help him set up his own practice.
so, in order to help him, I took Tally (A popular accounting software) as an example and recreated the features that my dad wanted in C#.net. It runs as a stand-alone application on a laptop that I salvaged and created for him.”
This really got my attention. With several leading questions, I made sure this wasn’t a sob story.
A resourceful individual such as him would be an asset to any organization.
I hired him along with a note to head HR why I was breaking the rule and placed my reputation on line. He promised to clear all his papers without fail.
I checked on him the following year – he had joined and was doing extremely well in the .net practice. An asset in the making.