Today I woke up at 7:10 am, and got ready to go for my interview with Numantra Technologies at Powai. I reached at the place at around 9:45 am. The office was small, and seemed as a meeting point for few individuals. The first interview started at around 10:20 am. The panel consisted of two members, both of them were pass out from IIT Bombay, and one of them was also an alumni of IIM Calcutta. They gave an introduction of themselves and asked some general questions about me and my experience. They asked a lot of questions on team dynamics, leadership instances, situations of conflict with team members or client and similar types. I tried relating them to my work experience, and gave out examples. Then they moved to the business analysis section where they asked me a guesstimate - "What could be the approximate population of Powai ?". I am not good at guesstimates, and hence the next few moments were awkward and frustrating. They told me that you know the number of buildings here. So, I answered by assuming an average family size of 4, and average building floors with number of flats per floor. All this can provide me the data for population. But, they were skeptical on my assumptions, and I didn't sound very convincing. They asked me whether I can figure out any other metric apart from building data to find out the population. I thought for a little while, they gave me a hint on the number of cars, and then they said that we can figure it out using the tags of residential building on the cars. They gave me one more chance, and then I answered that we can look into the electricity consumption. A corporate building will have a single account at the electricity bill and the residential building will have individual bills for residents. Then they told me that electricity measurement meters would have been a better choice. After all this, one of them started explaining the kind of work they do, and how team dynamics play a major role and all. I found out that they are particularly focused on clients in India, primarily in Mumbai, and work on the client location. The interview ended at around 11:15 am. After the first round, there was a break of around 5 minutes, and the second round started. It was supposedly a technical round. In this round, I was much more confident and articulate in my answers than in the previous interview. Here, I found out that they work primarily on the SAP - BI side, of which I have only 2 months experience. They asked me about my motivation to work on SAP, specific details on data model designing, custom development and so on. It ended at around 11:40 am, after which I gave in the details of my compensation and notice period to the HR executive and left. I was free at 12 pm, and hence decided to call up old friends from Deloitte to join in for Lunch and catch up. Dallas unfortunately was working from home. So I called up Shashank, and he called up others to plan the lunch. He said that they would be free within an hour, so I decided to just roam around the Galleria. I did some window shopping, went inside random shops and asked for prices of wireless routers, and even bought a KKR T-Shirt. After that, I finally met them (Shaurin, Shashank, Rukmini, Deepak, Amlan, Sandy and Tanvi). We had a great time, reminded me of those times. I, Sandy and Amlan decided to give the treat for our own reasons. After that great time, I came back home by Train. I reached at around 4:15 pm, and was very tired. I had few chats with my mother regarding the interview and all. Then I checked my mail, whether any new work has come up, but there was none. After that, I just switched on the AC, and slept as a baby. I woke up at around 8:20 pm, and started watching the IPL match between RCB and Punjab. It seemed like a repeat telecast of yesterday's knock by Virender Sehwag. But this time, it was Chris Gayle. He made 107 in just 49 balls. RCB reached 205 in their 20 overs. Punjab were hopeless in their chase and fell apart like house of cards. RCB won the match by 85 runs, a huge margin. After that I was watching the news regarding the reactions of people to Osama Bin Laden being dead, and the role of Pakistan in guarding Osama for so many years. A debate started at out dinner table also, where my father was blaming everything on Pakistan, and I was blaming US for all the miseries it has caused in general. I tried to convince him that 9/11 was not an attack by Al-Qaeda, but was an internal affair of the US government itself. I focused on the evidence available to us, and the various other facts that would explain my defense, but he was adamant. My mother was very supportive of me, as she was able to understand the deeper details. I went on giving instances of how US manipulated the opinions of people etc. I felt very happy that I was able to put them in a very articulate way. Anyways, after all this, I went back to my room and searched for the moon landing controversy on Youtube. I watched it for a while, and later watched the latest episode of Big Bang theory. After that I wrote this post, and now I plan to watch the latest episode of Bones, followed by next 2 episodes of CSI:Miami. I plan to sleep by 3:30 am.
