"Not The Fruit of Experience but Experience itself is the End,
When your Experiences give you some Lessons"
This post is about wonderful experience i had with the cognizant family in Experience Cognizant-2012
As mentioned in the above quote that every experience has its lesson within it,i too extracted some lessons from my experience.
My experience as a campus ambassador in cognizant is divided in two parts one is lesson part and merriment part.
I will share my experience in the way of lessons i had gained from my experience.
So, how to make your way to be part of the 3-day festival? Open up your mind buddy, let me drop in some knowledge
Around the ending of January 2012, I got the news about the event “Experience Cognizant”. Initially I thought it was an usual mundane meeting wherein people at Cognizant say Cognizant is this and that and show some steeply raising graphs and charts of their profits. (Trust me, it was not so. The experience was AMAZING )Students who were interested were asked to fill a terse nomination form which had questions like “Name” “Department” etc. and the second half of the page was left blank to fill in any specific achievements we would like to brag about
.And some questions like "Strength,Weakness" etc. After a couple of weeks, we got information through our placement cell that we will go through a telephonic interview, our interview was very gud,interviewers made us very comfortable while interview,simply that was awsome.Finally, two students were selected as the Cognizant Brand Ambassadors from my college (ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY). Well! It was me and my college mate Namit Chaturvedi. Yayy! What next? The only thing we knew was that we should assemble at Cognizant Campus on feb 17,2012 and we are gonna stay there for the next three days. Thats it. So I packed up stuff for the next three days and set off for XPC’12.The Cognizant Campus Ambassadors from the selected colleges from all over India were invited to participate in the 3-day conclave ‘Xperience Cognizant’. We were around 110 students in total. The purpose of this conclave was to create awareness among the student body about the work ethics of Cognizant and the future of technology as envisioned by Cognizant Technology Solutions. Lets call it a platform provided for the ambassadors to meet and interact with the senior level management at Cognizant and get to know how things work there. It was fantastic to meet the best minds from far corners of India pooled into a single place. We were excited to know what Cognizant had for us for the next three days.
Here is a brief note on the 3-day festival.I admitt my experience of three days in terms of lessons like day 1 equivalence to lesson 1....lesson and merriment part that i had in the entire event-
LESSON 1
"Take Time To Gather up the past
,so that you will be able to draw from your experience and invest them in the future"
This lesson I took from the DAY 1......How, come with me to know
Firstly Colorful t-shirts were bestowed to the Cognizant ambassadors to denote them explicitly from others. The first of the three day conclave begun with talks from Cognizant’s brightest minds, which were key to kindle innovation in the minds of young and enthusiastic ambassadors.
session 1{chapter 1}
TECHNOLOGY IS GROWING ON & ON.....
"SOWRIRANJAN SANTHAKRISHNAN"(Practise head,Mobility Solutions) who gave us key points about mobility solutions and talked about so many issues and also solved many quiries.....
. He discussed about New Technologies and their impact on our lives; specially he introduced tus with the concept of NFC and made us aware about the ideas and plans behind that.The key point on which he highlighted was “we are moving away from hard transaction to e-transaction. He also discussed Mobility on desktops being more powerful than tablets, “Today we need a desktop because the backend system is designed like that. Once we move the backend to cloud. That makes it accessible and will change the front end gadgets.
We all are inspired alot by his effective speech ....and his Q&A session was really outstanding and inspiring.
session 2 {chapter 2}
FASTER THE COMPANY GROWTH ,FASTER THE GROWTH OF EMPLOYEES
"RAMKUMAR RAMAMOORTHY",( Senior Vice President, Corporate Marketing Brand, Research and Communications) discussed about the Cognizant Advantages.He enlightens on the Cognizant history and widespread on the growth and improvement cognizant is making continuesly. He expressed “We will continue to be the fastest growing industry in the market place. Our belief is the faster the company grows, the faster the growth of the employees. That’s our promise to the investors, to our customers and to you.” Ramkumar also clarified that, “Metrics in the social world are very different from metrics in the real world. Likes, thumbs up, retweets, followers and more! They are immediate, within a few seconds! Simulating this online phenomenon, Cognizant created a rewards points system which our employees can accumulate and exchange it for goodies.”
We understood how a company maintain its consistency in the corporate world....he answered our quiries very perfectly and mannerly.
session 3 {chapter 3}
COGNIZANT DNA
"SUKUMAR RAJAGOPAL",(Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer and Head of Innovation) introduced us about the Cognizant’s DNA. He told“Freedom Empowerment and flexibility is the essence of Cognizant”. He discussed on internal blogging site they developed for the employees to be interactive with each other. The most impressive point he elaborated was “we work on Brainpower not the Horsepower”. His lecture session was really impressive...
session 4{chapter 4}
THESE 3 DAYS WILL BE MOST MEMORABLE DAYS OF YOUR LIFE....LIKE WE HAD
CAMPUS AMBASSADOR-2011, "NANDITA and NARENDRAN"
from SSN College of Engineering, Chennai shared their experience of XPC and increased the excitement and curiosity of each ambassadors .In every line they were making sure and admitting us that next three days will be full of fun ,fun and fun.......along wih lots of things to learn.
And yes,THEY WERE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.......
Session 5{chapter 5}
EVERYDAY IS A NEW CHALLENGE FOR US
A Q&A session with MEERA VIJAYARAGHVAN,( Assistant Vice President), ARCHNA RAGHURAM (Director, Cognizant Outreach) and RAJESH BALAJI,( Vice President, Manufacturing & Logistics) and SATISH JAYNARAYAN(Talent Acquisition Team of Human Resources Department) where they talked about their Cognizant journey and the life they enjoyed during their work and many more things.Most impressive was strategies and smart work they did for overcoming recession period.
MERRIMENT PARTS OF THE DAY
Fun part of the day was awsme....food was damn good and yummy...in the cafeteria of cognizant campus ,chennai. Well actual fun was in events organised there .First event was-
1. TEAM BUILDING SESSION-The ambassadors were divided into teams according to thier birth months, that had weird names like ‘EnnaRascala, ChikiniChemeli,Chennai Chillers etc. to name a few.I belonged to Chennai Chillers team;-). The teams were asked to bring rare commodities like a torn sock, 50 paise coin and 5 keys etc. and among that interesting one was changing look of a boy to a girl in few seconds, the first to come were awarded points .
2. ROLE PLAY- Teams were divided.Every team has its leader( I was team leader of group 3 ;-) )
Team leader had to select a chit and according to their chit containing theme ,they will perform there
role play in the evening party at fortune.
3.PARTY TIME-"Day with work ,party with night", amazing party was arranged at fortune,where we stayed for the next three days. And performed role plays too.Very famous group was invited in the party for thier performances...and that was the best part of the night. We also celebrated birthdays of two ....in all we had gr8 fun.
4.FREEDOM TO DANCE-We all ambassadors enjoyed party with unlimited dancing...in the DJ night ;-).
In this way first day of our experience got ended up! Then we went to room,due to owning to contineous travelling, we were very tired....and slept like a small baby.. :-)
LESSON 2
Day 2 waking up at 7.00 and then had a very nice healthy breakfast ....then we headed to learning and developement centre ,cognizant .....second day ,sun rises with lots of excitement and energy .....so, it was like this.
session 1{chapter 1}
LEARNING HAS NO END
MORE YOU LEARN
MORE YOU GET
SARANSH AGRAWAAL,( Director, Cognizant Academy) informed on training at Cognizant. He said “Cognizant training strives to ensure that recruits from different engineering backgrounds are on the same playing field; there are many leaders within Cognizant, today who are from a non-IT background. They joined us as campus recruits. So in essence, what we look for is the willingness to learn.” He also clarified the doubt of being IT or CSE engineer is not the only way to get placed in any company, a person should posses the courage to learn new things and find out the area of interest from opportunities they get.He ensures us that training period in cognizant is easy for any stream engg. to work on further and to get success in a IT corporate world.
session 2{chapter 2}
OUR FIRST DAY IN COMPANY WAS........MEMORABLE
Cognizant’s Campus Associate Trainees; AAKASH, AAKRITI and SAYANTO took a session. A direct interaction between the ambassadors and recent recruits; they explained the changes of transition from college to work with a statement “You will have some level , at a school or college level of technical, What you learn here at Cognizant, is never just coding. You are taught responsibility, leadership, client interface, working with a manager and more business points. It’s about growth; to becoming a complete professional.” This session was full of questions of ambassadors to the recruits. finally it got ended up with impressive answers.
session 3{chapter 3}
CLOUD COMPUTING
MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES
VIRTUALIZATION
BALAJI SETHURAMAN,(Chief Architect,GTO) admitted very intellectual speech on cloud computing,mobile solutions and virtualizaeion of work. with a interesting presentation or interactive vedios in between. and thats really very knowledgable ,we learnd so much from that presentation .
MERRIMENT PART OF THE DAY
Day 2 was too very joyous day, we are very excited about the events going to be happen......and they were as follows-
1.QUIZ- A sheet of questions were given to us first ,to solve in 20 minutes....all over 52 teams took part in quiz. It was then time for the finals of General Quiz, 6 teams were selected in the final round.(yiiippppppppiiiieeee!! me and namit were also under 6) .Final step was engaged with 4 rounds.then lastly two teams won the war of quiz (KOLKATA and ORIENTAL (BHOPAL),yyyyiiiippppeeee we won!! feeling like was in heaven for a while) ,well that was a display of knowledge and competitive spirit of the ambassadors.
2.MANAGEMENT SKILLS-A very smart activity was forwarded by DEEPAK RAMAKRISHNAN(HR,Pune) and NATASHA GUPTA(HR,pune) .One sheet of four case studies was given to every ambassador to solve ,in order to test their management ability.Again teams were divided ,every team has to present one of the case study and its solution. Only 20 minutes were given for the entire preparation to every team.This event was staged at a very beautifull place "The temple bay".
3.THE TEMPLE BAY - Beautifull resort, place where management skill activity was staged,which was judged by SATISH JAYNARAYAN(Talent acquisition team of human resource department, who is also called as HERO of cognizant ;-)).By this time, ambassadors who already knew each other quite well, raced against time to bring out the future managers in them, and made flawless presentations of their management skills. It was followed by felicitation for outstanding performers and a lip smacking dinner at GRT Temple bay.
4.PRIZE DISTRIBUTION-Time for which, every one is waiting for..Winners were awarded with very exciting prizes... me and namit also got prize for quiz,yayyy!!! .Then every ambassador is awarded with a cognizant certificate and a nice nice cognizant family photo.
4.FREEDOM TO DANCE-Again its time for party buddy!! dance upto infinite :-)................
In this way day 2 ended up.....and my lesson 2 still creating lots of views to dance inside my mind....fabullous day it was...unforgottable!!
LESSON 3
After doing lots of masti with freinds on the last night in our rooms at fortune, we woke up at 7.30 next morning...with again lots of energy and smiles all around ,but one thing that was making every ambassador to feel sad was"Its Last Day".Third day ,was full of merriments .After having mouth watering breakfast,we moved towards bus and day begined as...
MERRIMENTS WHOLE DAY
BEACH- The third day of the conclave started off with a visit to a local beach, which gave the ambassadors some much needed relaxation. Fresh sun rays and high sea waves at the shore creating a beautiful feeling inside...
DAKSHINCHITRA-Then we headed to DAKSHINCHITRA, a heritage center in the outskirts of city.
At DakshinChitra, StoryTrails, took the ambassadors on a ride into the long forgotten culture of South India. Some more team games, which tested even the physical and intellectual stamina of the ambassadors, were conducted.Teams were divided with very nice names like " HYDRABADI DUM BIRYANI" and so many..I was a part of hydrabadi dum biryani team , we played lots of games like chicken walk and many more and won so many gifts..simply it was awsome.
Experience Cognizant 2012 gave us an idea of of Cognizant’s work culture, taught us on the values, and made us capable to stands for and brought the spirit of team work and also sooo manyyyyy freinds,just like increasing connectivity from a Local Area Network(LAN) to Wide Area Network(WAN),sounding quite technical,well thats an identity of a engineer :-) ;-)
LESSONS ARE INCOMPLETE UNTIL WE IMPLEMENT IT PRACTICALLY
I am feeling very glad after meeting Ms.JOOZAR SHUKLA HASTAK (Senior manager.recruitment(cognizant) in college,her seminar was outstanding,she is a great lady with effective personality.
I am very thankful to Mr. ANUJ GARG (TPO,OIST) for their support and for giving us best opportunity to be a part of this event.
Hearty thanks to Prof.ROOPALI SONI (HOD,CSE) for allowing us to organize different activities and seminars for cognizant.
THANKS ALOT to ORIENTAL GROUP OF INSTITUTES ( K L Thakral,chairman(OGI))
A very biggg thanks to entire HR team for their help and support and for providing us perfect hospitality ;-)
THANK YOU COGNIZANT
Words are very small to express hearty thanks to cognizant,for giving us such a great opportunity to become a part of cognizant family.The way in which we were introduced to the corporate world with lots of fun is amazing...When we came to chennai we had nothing but after going from chennai ,we had lots of memories ,freinds ....and most important LESSONS that surely help us to step forward towards success...
Keeping all lessons in mind, i will end my lines by saying lessons that I gained from my experience,surely helps my juniors and freinds and me also to lead life perfectly with a different positive personality.These 3 day experience is heart touching experience, I wish every student will get a opportunity like this, for their help "I am here " ,to show them path "I am here", to take them to cognizant " No I am not here, dude rush ! for next edition nominations" .......:-) :-)
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