The lesson I learnt from my GE interview


First of all thanking all those who congratulated me for getting into General Electric I felt a deep urge to put into paper all my experiences I had as a part of getting selected for GE. First of all let me explain to all of you guys that I had never ever contemplated sitting for a company as big as GE (leave along getting into it). How would anyone from a college like NITK, Surathkal aspire for a company as big as it and also highly rumored to be out of reach even for some of the most elite institutions like IITs in India???

Well anyway my first impulse when I first heard GE was coming was a wary one I felt I didn’t have the potential to make it to the company. And I had long given up the option and sustained no interest to take up a job immediately after my B.E. I was seriously considering the option of taking up project assistantship to further brush my skills in Finite Element Analysis and all that stuff. (For all my readers who are not familiar with this subject a little introduction. It is a wonderful topic and one I like the most and widely applicable in the analysis of many parameters pertaining to wide range of subjects including electromagnetism, structural mechanics, fluids etc.)

The interview and the whole selection procedure was an experience beyond anything I could ever imagine or contemplate. I had been shortlisted for the interview from a very big group and frankly speaking I was pleasantly surprised that I made it to the interview. The interview was another experience which taught me a lesson which I will continue to remember for a long time. ( I will post a detailed description of my experiences during the interview in a different post). The lesson that I learnt in GE was that I was still an amateur and I needed to learn a lot before I can be satisfied with my own self. I felt more or less that I was being reminded by a super natural power that I was moving too fast without realizing that I was missing out many fine points and was missing out the most important thing required for being a good researcher. I was missing out on perfection. There was a very good article I came across few days before which I should not have ignored so much. I came across it in a community in orkut. I am posting that article directly here.

A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood
street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something. As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag's side door!
He slammed on the brakes and backed the Jag back to the spot where the
brick had been thrown. The angry driver then jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up against a parked car shouting, "What was that all
about and who are you? Just what ! the heck are! you doing?
That's a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost a lot of money. Why did you do it?" The young boy was apologetic. "Please, mister..please, I'm sorry but I didn't know what else to do," He pleaded.
"I threw the brick because no one else would stop..."
With tears dripping down his face and off his chin, the youth pointed
to a spot just around a parked car. "It's my brother," he said.
"He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can't
lift him up."
Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, "Would you please
help me get him back into his wheelchair? He's hurt and he's too heavy
for me."
Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling
lump in his throat He hurriedly lifted the handicapped boy back into
the wheelchair, then took out a linen handkerchief and dabbed at the
fresh scrapes and cuts. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay..
"Thank you and may God bless you," the grateful child told the stranger.
Too shook up for words, the man simply watched the boy push his
wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home
it was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door. He kept the dent there to remind him of this message "Don't go through life so fast that someone
has to throw a brick at you to get your attention!" God whispers in our souls and speaks to our hearts.
Sometimes when we don't have time to listen, He has to throw a brick at us.
It's our choice to listen or not.


And now I am really going to listen to what God wanted to tell to me from my experience at GE.
All along the interview I felt that I had missed out a lot of fine points while I gobbled up more experience learnt new softwares, more novel techniques. I had missed the essence of everything almost every new technique. I forgot to identify that fundamentals were more important than the technique itself.
And now having realized all this I would like to start off anew again. I will strive to start off right from the fundamentals again and attain perfection again. I would like to thank god thank everyone who made me realize this thing (mostly the people who I am referring to here would be the interview panel of GE). With this earnest but modest confession I will mark the end of one of the most important blogs I have ever penned down onto this page.


(I greatly thank Anil Kumar of the community TB in orkut the person who posted this article and helped me learn one of the most important lessons in my life.)