My Entry To Professional World

June 10th, 2006, A Sunny Saturday I was standing in front of the Infosys Gate # 5 of Electronic City Campus. It was my Dream Come True day!!! I was joining my dream company through it’s subsidiary Progeon.

My dad had come with me to drop me till the gate and then we were guided to the “Opera House” aka the Lotus Building (Kamat’s Food Court ). Had a plate of Khara Baath and a cup of tea!!! The time had come!!! It was a huge batch 600+ freshers just out of the college, who had dreams in their eyes to start a brilliant career with one of the Greatest Indian MNC – INFOSYS!!!

2 day long Induction programme where they introduced us to the Infosys culture, policies and a day long session to sign papers and get allocated to the projects. On 12th June, the Pre-Process training started – where we had to undergo the Communication skills (written and voice), typing skills, MS Office components in 10 days. On the first day when I was sitting in the Online Training Room in Building 12 with 20 other people – I could see new faces and most of them had their friends within that batch – I was sitting with a lonely and left out feeling. Then the trainer Angela – gave us a break for 10 to 20 minutes – that’s when I found a unfamiliar face but sitting lonely and left out just like me. I went upto that person and introduced myself – and in return he replied “Hi, I am Vikram Kamath, from Udupi, Karnataka. MGM College”. That’s it folks!!! I was in heaven – reason on Jan 15th 2006 I had attended Progeon Campus Interview in MGM College, Udupi!!! And I am a Konakni Boy meeting another Konakani Boy!!! WOW!!! I had found my first friend in my first job on the first day of my training. When he was going for dinner – I asked him can I join you for dinner. And he said “Sure, but if you do not mind I have 2 of my other friends with me for dinner”. It was OK with me and I met his other 2 friends!!! Both of them were out of the same college – Uthej Hegde and Robin Vijay Fernandes. We four had a wonderful time during the breaks and enjoyed the first 10 days of training with all fun!!

Uthej, Vikram and Robin are my best friends till date - especially Uthej and I are more than brothers and my mother considers him to be third son of her. I will get into details in future.

During the training – Robin and Me had to undergo a test and we were totally clue less as to why are we writing that test. Uthej and Vikram had got allocated 2 different BCM clients and we 2 totally clue less about our clients. After some creative writing and on the next day we were asked to report to Eshwari Shanmuganathan on the Overture floor.

As per the schedule on 27th June, we entered the Overture floor to meet Eshwari – and coincidently it was her birthday and team was celebrating her birthday. After a while we were made to sit in a training room and we could see 25 to 30 new faces – [some beautiful faces too ;-)]. After an hour's wait a Big Man with a client representative and a young looking, studious fellow entered the room. We were too silent and confused and clue less. The Big Man introduced himself as Karthik Ramachandran and the client – Steve Southerland. And my first team leader – Gopa Kumar was the Studious fellow who entered with Karthik.

We were introduced to the work culture of the work floor and from next day it was Process Training by Mohan Chandrashekar P aka Sam…

From here - the actual journey starts and I will try to cover as many people as possible - and my learnings I got from each one of them.