The Wondrous Wanderer

  Hi everyone. I know I took a bit of a breather from writing for a couple of days. Today I am back with another InterPhew story! This was with a multinational computer technology corporation, back in February 2020. I was asked to come down to the office location. Stepping out and going to an office location seems like such an ancient thing we used to do. Anyway, I reached as per usual way before time, pardon my high functioning anxiety and paranoia that I would be late if I don’t leave at least half an hour before what the map says the duration is! I was asked to wait at the reception and then directed towards a conference room. As a person who has had quite a fair share of her interview experiences, I have always made sure that I am kind and sweet to everyone from the guard at the gate, to the security, to the receptionist. I have always felt that whatever you do, as soon as you step foot inside the office location, you are being noticed. You must put your best foot forward. Smil...

  I woke up today morning feeling uncomfortable. I woke up today to a message on the family group informing us about the loss of a cousin. She was a 32-year-old, and she lost her life to severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2) and lung congestion. She had recently become a mother as well, of all days, on Mother’s Day 2021. Her baby girl is 10 days old, safe, and healthy. Baby girl would never get to know her mother. The mother never got to see her daughter. This is a story among millions of stories everywhere. All of us have been impacted by this pandemic. All of us. Regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, religion, location. I am writing this post to help myself cope with grief and loss the only way I know how to. By writing. By penning down my thoughts.   Coping with loss is difficult, but in the COVID era, it’s even harder. The loss of life is so sudden, that we as human beings are unable to process it. What’s even more difficult is that family ...

Let’s get back to one of my favorites topics, my job interview experiences – an idea which was the genesis for this blog. We are going to be talking about InterPhew #17. If you have been following my blog, you know my experiences are in no particular order, it’s all Jeremy Bearimy , baby! I received a call from a tech start-up company, and I had read about them. They were an upcoming organization in the Artificial Intelligence space. Since they were upcoming, I guess they thought it would be super fun to have 345 rounds before making a decision about the candidates. I am not exaggerating. I had an HR round, then hiring manager, then senior manager, then vice president, then senior vice president, then director, then CTO. Oh, and did I mention that among these pertinent rounds, I also had a sprinkling of what I can only presume irrelevant rounds. I am all for being absolutely sure about the people you hire as a company. You want them to stick around with you for a considerable t...

  Come on kids, gather around. This is going to be about one of my favorite things to write about. I have always been curious about anthropology. Where do we come from? How did we get shaped into the generation that we are today? Anthropology is a fascinating subject that would take massive amounts of research, but today I want to talk about us – millennials. And the fact that we are seeing FOUR generations working in the same corporate environment, perhaps for the first time. Millennial – I am a millennial, which means I was born in the late 1980s, making me part of a group that is frowned upon for just having it so easy. The baby boomers do NOT like us. Mind you, they are the ones who gave birth to us and to generation Xs. Gen X: nobody talks about them anymore. They are the tiny segment of people who were born between 1965-early 1980’s. They are your older cousins, aunts, and uncles – you know the “cool” ones who don’t drop adages on you, like your parents. For example, "...

  Let’s be honest. I did not  stop  being a homemaker, per se as soon as I got my new job. It’s not a switch you flip when you get back on the career flight. Women are and will be, the primary caregivers for their families and loved ones. They have a role to fulfill. This narrative is going to take many more years of the feminist movement, to change. Even if a woman is working, it will not come in the way of them taking care of their families and vice versa. Their career may not come in the way of their familial commitments – this one is a sentence with a big asterisk though.    Folks, this post is going to be pretty objective. Or at least, as objective as I can get. I want to steer clear of any heated emotions, pent-up frustration at our patriarchal society (because that’s a topic for another post!) and try to portray how life changes from one stage to another.    It is a study in anthropology and eons of mental and physical conditioning w...

In all these past months, I have come to realize that I have had such unique experiences while dealing with various job interviews, processes, conversations et al. I am sure you all have too! I would love to hear from you how your experiences molded you as a person.  Let’s talk about InterPhew #44. This was during last year July-August 2020. One of my colleagues in my last organization had worked there before, and she referred me to a Senior VP. We are talking about a travel technology company. So, I received the call from HR, and things went forward.   Since we were in the middle of the first wave of the pandemic, all the rounds were via video conferencing. There was a total of 4 rounds – 1. Preliminary HR round, 2. Hiring Manager round 3. Associate Vice President round, 4. Senior VP round and lastly the happy call, that I made it! I got a final call from the HR recruiter saying that I am through, I have been selected. I was elated! I had made it, I was finally going to be wo...