Life beyond Grades

[Following blog post is my personal view and it's not written to insult anyone/any company. If you find such content/comment in the blog and if you feel that it should be removed please let me know! ]

Every person in India with basic knowledge of computers has an aspiration to become a Software Professional at some point of time in their life. Ever since I used computer for the first time when I was 12, I wanted to do something that is related with Computers and so I did :-) But while dreaming about the highly paid IT Jobs, students do not worry much about their academics, they just want to clear the subjects that are not in their 'To Like' list hence many students perform outstanding in some of the subjects - the ones which they like and they perform average in what they never loved to study!Here is the glitch and a major one!

In India, IT is an ultimate destination for majority of the people and the worst of it is many of the IT Giants choose people by looking at their academic grades and not the skills! I have seen it rather many of you must have seen this - an average (of course the one with 60% through out his educational race) and 0 to below average skills and interest in Computers get recruited in the IT Companies. I bet none of you will oppose this scenario being wrong - because this FACT.

So called Indian IT Giants have ridiculous recruitment process, I've witnessed it once. There is a XYZ Indian IT firm they came to my College to conduct the recruitment drive. The first step is Screening on the basis of Academics - this XYZ company first said that they need students who had consistent 60% through out as well as Math as a compulsory subject in 12th standard or HSC. They got very few people so they further reduced the cut off to 55% with Math compulsory. Again same scenario so they further reduced it to 50% but Math compulsory at 12th standard. This is pathetic - just because you want a guy having math on 10+2 level you are compromising on person's overall performance? This XYZ company recruited even Commerce students who had Math in 10+2 level.

Then comes another scenario, IT companies often hire on large scale when they visit college campuses. I have witnessed an insane recruitment drive where company - ABC recruited more than 300 guys from a single college campus. When I heard the recruitment process experience from students, I was very SAD to know the low quality of process that was followed in the recruitment drive.

I feel the upper management in these IT Giants should analyze all these things from grass root level. Because of such pathetic recruitment strategies Indian IT Companies lack the real passionate students. They just stock the 'Through out 60% guys' and keep on adding the bench strength of the company.

Another hype in these IT companies is - Engineers are equal to the MCA or M.Sc (Computer Science) guys! This is not fair at all. People should be judged not by the qualification but the quality of skills they possess.

In my opinion Indian IT Companies should look for skilled individuals, passionate coders/programmers.

One of the worst part i feel about most of the IT Companies is, they treat freshers as someone who doesn't know anything. They never ask a fresher if he has any skill that they have developed during their school/college time. Companies train freshers on any damn technology and ask them to work on it, irrespective of the fact that even a fresher can code better than  an employee (2 yrs of WorkExp) with constant rating of 2/5 in yearly appraisal process.

These IT giants would hire a Civil Engineer with no prior knowledge in computers but they'll never even think of Non Engineering Computer Graduates who are comparatively more  productive than an Engineer grad.They would recruit a commerce graduate with knowledge in Excel, powerpoint with consistent 60% through out his educational race. But they wouldn't even entertain a person who has good knowledge on various computer related subjects but do not have First Class grade ever in his life. The guy will be kicked out of the recruitment process.

 I feel this is the reason when Recession hits the IT sector, many of the IT employees are sacked.

 I will definitely keep on adding my view in this post but before that let me know your views on my post.

Trekking - It Teaches you, literally!

[Before reading below post, understand that it may contain thousands of spelling/grammatical mistakes but instead of pointing it out try to understand what I really want to say:-) ]

Trekking I heard this word quite late - when I was in College, yes this is true. I'm the only child of my parents so ultimately the life wasn't so easy when your parents are watching you all the time, I do not blame them for this but this somehow made me 'Not much into Adventures' kind as I always did what my parents used to think is right for me *Sigh*And obviously going for Treks or over night stay at any of my friend's place was never in my parent's 'To Allow' list for me! Let me clear one thing - I'm not blaming my mom dad ;-) They did what they thought was Okay for me.

Being the only child of my parents is very cool thing as I never had to share anything with anyone. I used to get everything and anything which was New. But these cool things turned out to be problematic for me, when I completed my college and stepped in to the Professional Life. Then I started realizing things - it was very difficult for me to share things earlier. I used to be dominating over little things. When I was in college my friends - they adjusted with me, my behavior. But in professional life - people make you realize that 'Dude you ain't a kid anymore, no body is going to listen to your tantrums' and slowly I started learning the things - I would say I started understanding my behavior and myself.

So how does Trekking come in between???

Well I did my First Trek when I was in Senior College during Sept - 2009, it was at Duke's nose. I had been to this place twice but still it scares the hell out of me :-( Till now I have been to 5/6 treks and every time while returning back to home I promise myself that I won't go to trek again! Reason - I feel trekking is risking your life for an adventure!

Photography is a thing which attracted me most because I Love the feeling when every time I click something, imagining something and when the image comes out to be just so perfect than what I had thought! This is one of the reason that even when I'm scared of Trekking I go there, just to click some shots ;-) Conquering fear you see! :-D

The most important thing which I love about trekking is, every time I happen to meet new people from different cities, communities, professions and what not! I really love meeting new people, talking to them regarding anything and everything and trust me this helped me limiting my Dominating nature - because you just can't expect everybody to listen to you and tolerate you when they just know you hardly for some hours. People management & behavior handling - you get to learn it!

It's difficult to climb the mountains without the team, people from your trekking group they help you when you need some help while climbing a cliff. They make sure that you don't feel left out of the group - they talk with you, laugh with you, take care of you if you suddenly feel ill. If you are lagging behind of group, people cheer you up and make sure you pick up the pace And eventually by looking at others you understand the real meaning of Teamwork - team bonding.

Most important thing - Time management, you understand the value of it during treks! Ask me, I missed a train just by a minute and I ended up going back to home. In trekking you have to travel with a group of people and you have to make sure that you don't spoil somebody Else's day by not coming on time. You also need to make sure that during treks you walk with people, try not to rest more because of which ultimately the Schedule of trek collapses and you have to bear the consequences that may include No place to seat in a train because you just missed the one which was reserved for you or worst case you just don't get proper vehicle to return back to the base station just because you wasted too much time and driver flee because he thought you may not come back soon. So you gotta watch the watch baby ;-)

During my first trek I was reluctant to share the food and water which I had bought with me, reason - I never did it before,sharing wasn't in my list :-) And yesterday I was carrying extra water bottles in my sack just to make sure that my group mates don't feel the scarcity of water.I felt awesome when we all were trying to help each other, share things just to make sure that all reaches to the destination, safely!

Alertness - you really have to be alert every time when you are trekking in mountains that have a slippery path or a stiff patch where in you wouldn't take chance by being careless. The moment you make a mischief and the next moment you will probably screaming for help! But this doesn't mean you have to be serious all the time without having fun. You will understand by yourself when to have fun and when to get back to your senses and start walking ahead :-)

Responsibilities - when you ask your friends to join for a trek, they look at you as someone who knows what it takes to do trekking. So you have to be very careful while they are with you, taking care of what they need during trekking and making sure that they walk by all the difficult patches and reach to the destination - safe and sound :-)

This is what I think from my past trekking experience, I'm totally clueless why I scribbled all this at 2 o'clock in the morning :-)