How I got my first job.
First of all, I would like to say it was very easy, like super easy. I was like a fish in water. This is how it must feel for the coding wizards. Since it was a writing role, I was fairly confident about this opportunity.
I first applied through campus but didn't get shortlisted because of the huge numbers. So I just mailed the HR my writing portfolio (this blog), which got my foot in the door. They were impressed with my work (my delusion), but since it would be technical writing, they wanted to know if I was comfortable with that. Then they told me to come to the office on a Friday for further interview. Mind you, I was suffering from a severe case of food poisoning (looking at you, hostel food), but I thought I would be fine. I was indeed not fine and had to go to the hospital to avoid crapping my pants in the interview (literally).
On the day of the interview, I glanced through the company's products, and one thing that piqued my interest was that the CEO was a principal correspondent at a newspaper and now running a B2B SaaS. My phone bugged out and went into a restarting frenzy when I reached Coimbatore. Thankfully, I reached the destination on time with my batchmate, who was also interviewing the same day.
First, we had an assignment right off the bat. They gave us a task to write two essays (creative + technical). We had one hour to prepare. I started listening to songs at the 40-minute mark because the topic was fairly intuitive. Then we started writing, and time flew by. Since we had some more time, we both wrote another creative essay. Then they handed out the essays to their team. There were some giggles. I was like 70% sure then.
We broke for lunch and had curd rice because of my stomach. Then, of course, the mandatory yogurt. There were two more rounds: HR and CEO. The HR round was fairly standard, and the CEO round was similar to the stress interview I had at my debating club, so it was fun.
We got the results before 4 pm, and we went out to get ice cream to celebrate. Then I watched a night show with my friends to end the already great day.
That's the story of how I got my first job.