Well Well Well..sip is over....The 3 n a half month brk I got after an yr of MBA ws quite interesting. I had to do my interns in Philips, lighting division. The project which I got ws "Mapping of cfl in gurgaon", wherein I ws supposed to visit perhaps thousands of retailers in gurgaon, who sell philips cfl. I went into the market for 2 days and realised, it wasn't my piece of cake. Roaming around like salesman in a very very hot weather wasnt at all my dream job or anything I ever imagined I would ever do. So I became reluctant to go to the distributor. Distributor himself didnt want me to come, neither his staff. Well the reason may be that they would have to tell all the schemes to the retailers and their extra profits may dwindle. So I had a pact with my distributor that I wouldnt visit his place, on the condition if he doesnt tell it to my boss. He did so and then I was free so I went in for a job which I never thought I would do...ever....A job at the call center.
I had heard of ppl sayin that bpos are hiring people big time. I thought I have a lotta tym and bpo training would definitely help me with my personality development. So I searched the net for finding addresses of bpos in gurgaon and vicinity. I reached "CONVERGYS" and there the told me to have a seat as the interviews were already going on. I was accompanied with a brother of mine, who was also in search for a job. Soon we were called by an angel ( her name was himani,,how can I forget the name of my recruiter), She was very sweet and I instantly fell in love with her :P... jus kiddin
After going thru numerous rounds like telephonic interview by an HR (who gave me a random topic and I had to speak over it for 3 min I suppose. Then I had to pronounce few words also). This was followed by another computerised telephonic interview ( Himani congratulated me after that round telling me that I had scored highest in that round amongst the candidates who appeared that day.
Soon after a few more ol tests I had the first 'offer letter'of my life in my hands.It was 10th of march 2010. I must say I was feeling good that time but I was taking it easy.
Then we were called on 15th of March for joining. I told about it to almost all family members and good friends. When I reached convergys on 15th, all the people who were engineers were asked to sit into another room. For almost whole day we sat in that room hoping that someone would come and tell us when and how to start. No one came till evening... Then again gud-lukin lady came that she was sory for d inconv n crap...She told us that they didnt gt updates from their clients and we'll have to wait for joining till further notice. I and evry1 was totally pissed off but no one said anything and left the building. I had no hopes and also tried giving interviews at other places like IBM daksh n Wipro. I got an offer letter from wipro....same package...technical job desc......but the problem was this comp was located very far from my place and they were askin me to relocate.....which obv wasnt possible.
So Again out of the blue I got a call from convergys that I should come n join the company on 22nd. So I went there again...The scene was like a mela over there...The document submission was going on in the cafeteria. After doc sub , they gave us a temp card..
After few hours 'Induction' started. This time another beautiful angel eyed girl 'Radhika' took us thru induction.She was with the HR deptt...I tel u this deptt is a beautiful deptt......They gave us a few convergys material like pens and booklets and a lot of documents were to be signed as well. The building where we were called next day is called "Agora". Its located adjacent to the famous 'Sahara mall' in gurgaon. On Day 2 of induction we were taken to a classroom cum cafeteria on 4th floor of the building and were made aware of convergys policies, about the comp, salary and blah blah blah......
We were served snacks, which was a humble gesture indeed. Many people came from various deptts that day and had a word with us. One cant forget Ashwini from transport deptt, a big time #$^&
On Day 3 we started with our CCT (cultural) training, also called voice and accent training where we wud be trained about the UK culture and way the britons speak english and pronounce it. This trainig was real fun and I wud say it was the best part of the complete 6 weeks of training. Our trainer here was Akash Piplani. Good guy..... Helped us a lot and was real good with his command over the language. We did a lotta fun activities during CCT. We used to play games like " DUCKY FUZZ-FUZZY DUCK-DOES HE" n act on plays like "sholay theme", "Rmayana, Mahabharat theme". ( Who can forget the famous pot smoking Jatayu act by Imty).
About the people I met there, specially my batchmates. Met some real good people and made good friends in a short time, I must say. Just to name a few,gaurav,bharat,richa,tamdin,vaibhav are the top of my mind recall. Before this stint,I never had an opportunity to interact people from the north east( like darjeeling,nagaland,manipur etc). Here at convergys a lotta ppl are from the north east and even in our batch we had 6 ppl from there.All of them were talented..singing, playing guitar etc.
It was a great opportunity to meet them and I made real good friends with some of them. Tamdin was a cute girl,she was very introvert initially and hardly spoke a word. By the end of 5th week I think she made frnds with evry1.I wish she would really soon turn out to be a very confident individual,,,rocking the floor wherever she goes. Lima was a good singer and she had a good intellectual level. Kabuana was a serious lookin beautiful lady and played awesome guitar but ppl who know her are aware she aint as serious as looks. Aki looked like " Hero Nakamura" of "heroes" and gave an impression of a damn damn stern person on day 1, but as time passed by everybody saw the other side of this guy. Great guitar player, good at drums and had good sense of humour. Gaurav chopra was one of the good friends I made at convergys, another engg like me, into the bpo industry just for a stopover period. Then there was vaibhav ,who claimed he had 6 girlfrnds. These are the ppl I envy (just kiddin), coz he closed 5 potential openings for other guys. He was a helpful and good at heart person as well. Bharat was a matured, simplified person was like a big brother as he was agewise sr to most of us. He had a 1 yr daughter.
Every one there was an interesting individual and I must say I developed an attachment with the batch and it was really hard to say goodbye forever. So I decided not to tell any1 that i was leavin. I ended my last day@convergys just like any other day and then never returned.
Good news was I got my first salary 16.5k, though not much, but the excitement of earning it was great. I attended 40-50 calls from the uk and I must say initially in some cases it becomes really difficult to understand what the hell that person is saying. I mean what the hell....But they say as u spend more time taking calls u start picking up the keywords. The longest call I took was of some reena begum from bermingham who ate up my head for 45 mins. But one never realises how time flies by when u r takin calls.
I wish my frnds back there in convergys , a very best of luck for their future endeavours. Hope they will keep rocking the floor..........
