My Rejections (Non-Fiction)
Starting from BTech till now…
Hi, My name is Japneet Sachdeva. I am a BTech graduate. You might know about me through LinkedIn & YouTube, but there’s always more to a person than what’s visible on social platforms.
So today, I’ll describe all the rejections I have faced till now and I hope many more to go!
Starting from BTech days, I was not at all serious about anything. I had taken this course because everybody in family wanted me to complete this booming degree (every household story). Only thing I had idea was Coding/Programming because used to score good marks in school (C/C++) basics that were taught in schools. So I took up Computer Science as a stream for my BTech degree.
Now obviously 3 years passed away, like every BTech graduate I guess I enjoyed my college days, friends and alot more.. but things got serious when people started to have internships and placements were about to get started. I was into android development at that time.
Why?
Because I was really fascinated about mobile applications development at that time, also I used hear stories about some billion dollars startups that are emerging into markets with huge gains, but who knows what future has it for you? So I applied to lot internship opportunities using internshala (helps to post open intern positions). I got selected in 2 of startups and was getting paid around 18k(INR) in total. So everybody in family was happy but somewhere I knew that these positions will not convert into full time. Meanwhile lot of batch mates were getting into job roles with packages like 4, 6, 10 LPA or some had 20 LPA too.
Its been 3 months now and my internships got completed and I was not offered any full time position (I already predicted it). To be serious I was not that mad about it. But now what to do next? because in 7th semester I didn’t sat in any placements so basically I was jobless whereas most of my friends had jobs in companies like TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Indus valley, Google etc.
Now start of 8th semester there was in house coaching provided in our college for aptitude preparations, because every organization had aptitude test, once you clear it then you move into coding round & then finally get a interview. So I was not that good in mathematics (I can do it, but not fast). Due to this I was not able to complete all the questions and used to get rejected in the first round itself.
Now What?
I started preparing for it, eventually got through companies like TCS, Wipro & Infosys. How?
Because they had coding tests within there aptitude tests, so due to this I guess I was able to clear it. Now I got into interview rounds. In total there were 2 rounds. First being Technical and second being an HR round. In Infosys I got rejected again & in rest two I got selected. Then due to family concerns, I had to stay in Delhi/NCR so I moved into Wipro Tech.
In total to count the number of rejections I have faced in college time was 13 (remember this count).
Now the interesting journey starts when I started working in Wipro I got a project for manual testing after 6 months I was moved into another project in which there were two different clients. Basically lot work!
Meanwhile I was also hearing about my friends are switching into different companies and getting higher pay then me obviously! Not to say I was earning less then 3.5 LPA at that time. Also I was afraid of giving interviews, because I had my rejections history. Its been 1.5 years in wipro now, I gave a internal assessment for moving into automation testing. I cleared it because it was specifically based on basics of coding (although till now I forgot what coding was, because I was working in manual testing :) ).
I got a chance to start working in automation testing & after almost 1 year, I made up my mind to make a switch now.
So the situation from which I was most afraid of, I had to finally face it now. So I started to prepare & simultaneously give interviews. Gave my 1st interview got rejected in 1st round, moved into 2nd, again got rejected in 1st round itself.
I was getting frustrated, Why? because I though I am not getting enough time to prepare due to work. So I resigned without even getting a single offer or even clearing a 1 round of interview :( . Please note I don’t recommend to do this. Also note my notice period was 60 days in Wipro.
So In first 30 days, I was giving interviews and even got through 1st and 2nd round but was getting rejected in 3rd round. Didn’t get any offers. Now I was out of motivation and also depressed at the same time. But what to do?
In next 10 days, I didn’t give any interviews and was solely studying and preparing my notes as where I was getting failed? what was the reason for rejection? I even tried to get in touch with my interviewers on LinkedIn. Hopefully it helped me a bit, 2–3 of them actually reverted to my messages. So I got to know my weak points and prepared for them accordingly. So till now I have been rejected from almost 25+ organizations (Total count = 38).
Now only 20 days are left and if I don’t crack any offers, I’ll be jobless after this! Seemingly, at that period of time market was booming (post covid times — 2nd wave) I was giving 2–3 interviews a day now and was not working for my office at all :D. After days 10 days (10 days still left), I had 3 offers ;) again got rejected in 17 companies (Total count = 55)
Almost an increment of 40%. Now I started to have discussion with my friends, so as to know what salary package should I get now. Eventually I cracked 11 more companies in last 10 days. Got a hike of almost 165%. Although during this last 10 days I got rejected in only 2. (Total count = 57).
Everyone was happy, after almost 25 months working in this organization. Again I had to switch, everybody knows market conditions are not really good now. I didn’t get any callbacks from recruiters, neither I was getting referrals. So what to do now?
Although now I had good network on LinkedIn, but still it was difficult to get a new job, because no one was ready to give the salary package, or technology I was expecting. Almost after 20 days of trying my strategies of updating Resume, LinkedIn & Naukri. I was able to get 7 interview calls and got selected in 4 (Total rejection count = 60).
Now what do you learn?
Obviously, I have myself failed to many times, learned from my mistakes, got rejected too much that now I am not even concerned about it. So always keep on learning from your mistakes and primarily don’t repeat them!
I hope that this non-fictional article is useful and motivates you. If you like this and want to read more of it then to follow and subscribe to my medium article email updates.
For other queries you can reach out to me on below mentioned links:
My Courses:
1) QA-UI-API Testing & Automation with Interview questions — https://topmate.io/japneet_sachdeva/666423
2) Complete job guarantee program with Interview prep & Cheatsheets — https://topmate.io/japneet_sachdeva/510872
3) How to get more jobs using LinkedIn, Naukri? — https://topmate.io/japneet_sachdeva/644298
All the courses have intro videos you can view those to understand what all is covered!
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If you need 1on1 sessions with me then you can use — https://topmate.io/japneet_sachdeva
My Youtube Videos — https://www.youtube.com/@IamJapneetSachdeva
My Github — https://lnkd.in/dy7AQD8f
