I don't actually remember when I slept yesterday, but it should be later than 2:30 am. Today, I woke up at around 10:15 am, and went online immediately. As soon as I logged onto my work mail, Gil messaged me and asked me to join a conference call. I hurriedly brushed my teeth and then connected to the meeting. But, as soon as I connected,my internet connection went down. With no hope of conference calling with wireless, I connected directly with hard wire. But still, the internet was far from being fine. After around 10 minutes, I managed to connect finally, and then attended the conference call along with Ankit, who was at office. The connection broke off in between the call too, but got restored soon enough. I tested the speed of the hard wired connection and found it to be very low. There seems to be a problem with the connection every morning. Anyways, after this scary encounter, comes another dreadful encounter when I tried to access this blog. First, it showed me a temporary error message, but after few refresh clicks, the browser said that this blog doesn't exist. I was shocked and drowned in fear. All the posts, videos, write ups vanished. It even said that the blog name is available for registering. I tried opening the other new blog, and the temporary error message was there too. Although it was a huge setback, I didn't try to create the blog again, and decided to wait for some time. I tried various methods of accessing the blog. By some, I was able to see the dashboard, but for some, there was nothing. Finally, after around 30 minutes of bad and scary time, the blogs reappeared. I felt relieved. I even posted new posts in both of them, to check whether they get updated or not. It worked, and hence I was fully relieved now. Next, I had an interview scheduled at 12:00 pm, for Diamond Consulting. I got a call at 12:10 pm. The interview started off with a brief introduction to the work that the company does, its verticals, its horizontals etc. Then, it was my turn, I gave a brief introduction of myself, covering my extra-curricular activities and project experiences. Then, there was a business case which required me to build a strategy to increase the number of visitors to a scientific artifacts museum. I asked a few questions, and within the discussion I proposed a Customer centric strategy i.e. figure out the customer base through a survey on the website, and then give out offers, discounts and other attractive opportunities so that customer visit the museum regularly. Next, he asked me about my leadership experience at my college. I just went on saying whatever came to my mind, and whatever seemed a good answer. After that, there was another business case. This one was more interesting than the one before. It was about an Auto company, based in Canada, and had two lines of business - Rental line and Service line. Rental line consisted of retail shops where car accessories and related things were available. Service line consisted of service centers where the vehicle would be kept for a period of time, and would be given back after repairs and additional services. In Canada, the business was very good, with both lines of businesses working with good margins. The same company tried to expand to US, but in 2-3 years, it realized that it is booking loss. I was the consultant, and was supposed to analyze the reasons for the same. Unlike my other interviews where I was filled with fear in solving the business cases, this time I was not all scared. I just spoke my mind, and asked questions. The interviewer was giving me good feedback, and guided me very well. I moved on from one phase to another, and finally arrived at two points - Competition from some other company, and Customer. Then, he told me that there is indeed a competitor, but focus on the customer part. So, I dig deeper, and tried to categorize the customer profile which came out to be Upper middle class and above. Then finally with some clues and hints, I arrived at the answer i.e. the location of the service shops. He added that the company in order to reduce land costs opened up many shops outside the urban areas, where the customer demographics don't match, and hence these shops recorded loss, and brought down the overall profit of the company. I was happy at least that I reached close, and was going in the right direction. Anyways, after that the interview was over. It was a 40 minutes interview, but I never felt any stress. After that, I returned to my present job, where Ankit was facing some problems with the connections to Data Exchange and Data transformation. I looked into it, and somehow managed to fix it (Started a few services here and there). After this, I rested a bit, and then waited for the next interview call, this time from Accenture. Although, I had no interest in joining it, but I took it as a practice interview. The call came at around 2:40 pm. The person asked me about my job experience, and tool proficiency. He asked a lot of technical questions, some of which I didn't know, some I guessed and some I knew. Overall, an average interview. The call ended at 3:05 pm. Ankit was tried to call me during this interview, so it was a bit scary. I called him up later giving some excuse of the waiting call. Later on, another problem sprung up. The AC was not working again. I cleaned up the filters, banged it here and there, but still it didn't work. I even used vacuum cleaner, but still no result. So, I opened up all my windows and curtains to let the fresh air come in. I slept for a while, and then started writing this blog post although there is a significant part of the day left. Next, I plan to have some Tea, and then watch the IPL match, some episodes, and finally sleep. I will aim to sleep early today as I HAVE to go to office tomorrow otherwise they may fire me.
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