I had to go through mock interviews a couple days back as
part of a mandatory exercise for all graduating students. As part of the last
minute information-swap that students do, we were all asking each other a bunch
of questions that are generic to interviews. Two questions stood out for me
& I couldn’t think of a concrete answer.
1. Define yourself.
Now this is a tricky question. I can ramble on and on about myself to
people who couldn’t be less concerned but when it actually counts, I’m at a
loss of words. And I think this happened to everyone. I thought about it before
the interview and the only things I came up with are the general terms that
everyone uses; confident, problem-solver, team-player, people person.
But who am I really? I sat down to think about it and all the things that I
came up with were nothing that the interviewers wanted to hear, because they
are totally unrelated to my degree program or the IT industry in general.
So, who am I?
- I’m a reader. I can’t live without books. 95% of the time I
can’t even step out of the house without a book tucked into my bag, my one
defense against loneliness. The book is the one companion that won’t leave me
or won’t stand me up.
- I’m a writer. I love the feeling of pen/pencil between my
fingers. It is the one kind of innovation that I’m moderately good at. I can
put my thoughts into words and then put those words out into the world. And
that is more than most people can manage.
- I’m an “imaginer”. I have always had a wild imagination. I
might have never gone on an actual hike, but in my mind I’ve travestied across
dense African jungles and frozen landscapes.
- I’m a believer. I believe in things – some true, some merely
rumor and some wild ramblings of a half-mad mind. It is incredibly easy to fool
me into believing something – especially when that ‘something’ revolves around
the people I fancy. And I believe in the impossible, the improbable, because my
faith tell me that my God is bigger than any impossibility.
- I’m a child-of-the-universe. Aren’t we all? I’m a student of
the human condition. I try to understand what drives people to action, and what
dulls them down to do nothing. I try to understand how each event carries so
much weight that we have a whole phenomenon to define this.
2. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Honestly, how do you answer that question? For me, the answer changes every
6 months. People might call my confused, and I’m pretty sure I fit the general
description. But I’m not confused, I’m just dynamic. My mind is filled with so
many possibilities; I don’t know which one to wholly pursue. And for a person
who says they don’t put much stock in what people say, I get deeply upset when
someone tells me I can’t achieve something. Half of me wants to prove them
wrong but the other half just wants to forget everything and move onto the next
‘big’ thing.
When I was in high school, I wanted to open my own software house. I had the
name picked out and a design that would pass for a logo. Then I wanted to start
writing my own column for a newspaper. Then I wanted to start my own
e-magazine. Lately, I’m thinking I should open my own café/bakery.
But where I really see myself in 5 years is in some exotic location, carrying
out the grandest of adventures – A World Tour. I still haven’t worked out where
the money for such an endeavor would come from, but I don’t think I should
stifle my imagination with such trivialities right now.
These two questions baffled me ever since a fellow asked me
before the interviews began. I couldn’t answer them at the time because I kept
thinking I should find an answer that would please the people around me, and I
wasn’t really thinking about being truly honest with myself. I came up with
these answers right now within seconds. And I had to write them down, because I
feel the next time someone asks, I should answer properly. It might be the
answer they’re looking for, and it might not satisfy them. But at least I’ll
know I was honest with myself.
