G. Kalyana Sundaram Inaugural Speech at Thiagarajar College of Engineering

Good Morning Friends!

Firstly it is really an honor to be here on the occasion of ECE association inauguration and IEEE chapter and IEI chapter inauguration.

Thanks to our principal Dr. Abheykumar, HoD Dr. Raju madam, beloved Professors, many of you have thought me classes (pointing lecturer madam and Sir that took classes in grace) while studying back in 2003 thanks to all staff members and last but not the least, thanks to the students of ECE for inviting me.

I am excited about for two reasons: being an IEEE member and a beneficiary of IEEE am really excited on being here at this occasion. Frankly I must admit that I am the most beneficiary of IEEE when I was a student with nearly 4 awards and prizes when I was studying it was worthy of about Rupees Three Lakhs price money kind of. At that time we did not have a proper channel in the institute like an IEEE chapter and a channel to route us to different events happening with IEEE. I used to interact with Dr. Raju madam on registering with IEEE and we used to have around 5 to 6 members that were willing to pay money to register for IEEE. Each of us we did great things bringing IEEE, we sowed the seeds for IEEE becoming a Chapter in Madurai atleast in Thiagarajar College of Engineering. It is a sentimental memory and worth remembering and recalling now.

Basically I do not want to end up giving a series of lectures and I just wanted to give some tips to different set of students, tailored for every student of different years.

Starting with the Final year students: you should be busy preparing for your campus interviews. Mostly you would end up in a software company as Sir told. If you are planning to take a job in Software Company, make sure you are 100% confident in C, C++ and learn atleast one modern programming language. One thing Sir mentioned is that most of you are interested with Software Companies and core companies are not interested to come to TCE for hiring. One particular reason for that is Most core companies in the industry they employ Postgraduate students and they do not give much importance to Undergraduate students. That is one major reason why core industry companies do not pay visit to TCE for hiring fresher for their industry. The reason is that when they hire an undergraduate student Š there is an uncertainty that he might switch to other industry (Software) very sooner but if he has done a postgraduate or Ph.D in his particular core area it has a certainty that he is going to stay and work for rest of his life kind of. That is one reason for International core companies like Intel, ST Micro, AMD are reluctant to hire particularly for their needs. So if you are looking to finding a career in your core discipline, be strong in your subjects for first thing and secondly that is also going to help you for your higher studies incase if you are looking for post graduation in India or abroad. In India we have IITs and TCE also has a ME program. Being strong in the core subjects is going to help you in many ways.

Product companies are one thing that mainly people are trying to get in, but the product companies are looking into finding brilliant minds. If you look into the placement in recent few years of your institute, you will see that most people get into service companies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro. These companies, particularly service companies, do not look into details, if you know to spell the word JAVA Š you are getting hired immediately. This is something you cannot expect with product companies. Product companies generally look for people with brilliant minds, they just donÕt look into technical skills alone, they also look into for some sense of practicality; some questions expect you to be very witty and apply your practical skills. If you can provide some feedback, I will provide a few examples, your feedback would be really great. I will ask a few questions that I faced when I was interviewed for Intel in 2005.

One interviewer asked me: How many stars are there in the Sky?
Any guesses?
If you were putting yourself in my shoes, what would have been your answer? Anyone?
Basically the interviewer is not expecting you to come up with actual theorems, or something, just give up some huge number that he cannot make any correlation or verify it. I gave the answer as: There are 1 billion 876 million 543 thousand and 210 stars.

He looked at me for a moment and asked is this number correct, I replied, yes I counted yesterday night that was the number I ended with. He replied that he came up with a different number that was plus one than my count. I replied, you must have counted from East to West or West to East that either you made a mistake counting one star twice or I made a mistake missing a star. And it ended up there.

One more question we had: There was a race happening and all the athletes were running on the track. In the middle of the track there was a signboard that had something written on it. One of the engineers that were running on the track read that board and started to run in the opposite direction. The question was: What was written on that board?
Any guesses?
(One of the audience mentioned: short way to finish track was other side)
That is one answer you can take, but the thing is that the company is expecting you to be bit witty, the answer that I gave was, since it was for Intel: The board read like there are openings in Intel and directions for hiring is this way so he started running the other way I told him.

So you just need to be witty with your answers, so as on how to impress a company as much you can. Technical questions every one in the industry can answer, any candidate that is studying with you will be on par compared to you with the technical aspects, but the wittiness and application of the principles he learned to a practical situation is what is going to really help in getting placed in product companies like Micorosft, Intel, ST Micro, they also have some sort of great questions, Google interview questions is going to be lot more complex than these, they will give you an empty box and ask you to fill up something useful in that. It is that you need to stay ahead of the crowd and think out of the box in order to be placed in product companies if you are looking for placements alone. So that are the tip for the final year students, stay ahead of the crowd, enrich your skills in core subjects, if you are looking for placements in software companies just enrich your skills in specific programming languages like C, C++ plus one modern programing language.

Third year students are you present here today? OK. Third year students my request to you, you have already spent two years in learning more things in your core subjects, so it is time to start experimenting with it. The ways you will experiment the skills you have learnt are: submitting papers to events, participating in events like workshops, symposiums, these are the ways to expose your thoughts and bring merits to yourself as well as to your institute. One major issue with most students, especially Indian students is that they are always in a state of fear on how others will perceive your thoughts when you showcase it. Fear is the major hindrance to success, not just success alone but to innovation and entrepreneurship.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship are in our genes basically, our forefathers of ancient India are known for worthy innovations. Iron pillar of Qtubminar stands still rust proof for nearly 1500 years. We were the ones that found the PiÕs infinite series, Pi was found by Greeks, but they just came with only maximum of 5 digits 3.14É we were the ones that found that Pi is an infinite series and accurate up to 33 decimal places with no help of computers. There was even a slogan in Sanskrit that encrypts the PiÕs value in it, I even canÕt recall that slogan now. Many astrological inventions and accurate solar cycles done with no rockets launched and no use of telescope. Such great inventions are made by ancient Indians, but recently no big innovations from Indians of the current generation. With the fear that we have we are only able to learn about them now, but the sad part is that the 21st Centaury Indian generation does not anything worthy to showcase to our future. What can we show to our future as an innovation that my generation made? Nothing! The failure is mainly to the fact that we burn in fear and end nowhere. Just overcome fear, share your thoughts or inventions as papers, take feedback, revise and you are sure to succeed. There are many tools that are available for the current generation especially with the internet and advancement of internet has brought you the social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, blogs that can help you post your thoughts onto the entire world. Many forums like IEEE, IEI has community sections where you can also share your ideas and interact with intellectual peoples, candidates from IITs participate in these forums actively. You can also participate in small workshops that happen in your college or nearby small colleges, symposiums organized by the colleges in around Madurai and Tamilnadu. This is the first step in participating in IEEE, ACM and IEI events. Every small step is going to count, sharing your thoughts is caring and you are sure to succeed. So start exploring your ideas that is the advice for the third year students.

Do we have second year students assembled here as well? So my only request to the second year students is that understand your subjects, score marks and enrich your skills, nothing more. Make sure you learn everything about your subjects, that also holds good for first year; I guess they are not yet joined the institute. So if you happen to meet your first year juniors, during ragging sessions or something! we do not have it anymore?, so convey them to understand the institute, understand their subjects, enrich their skills and score more marks.

So first two years concentrate on scoring marks, Third year onwards start to present papers, participate in events and share your ideas to the world, Fourth year onwards if you are looking for placements or higher studies work in that particular direction.

To sum up: Dare to Explore, Share your Experiments and you are Sure to Excel.

Thank you once again for inviting me and sharing my experiences with you!