Chars AU-Bees

It's been a long break from my blog, but I am back and I intend to keep writing away. Now that my life has again settled down to an indentifiable rhythm its time that I picked up the threads that I left hanging.

My Masters on the whole has been a great learning experience, its not been fun but its been a great eye opener so no complaints on that front.

Summer is soon approaching and the internship hunt has intensified to the maximum. With the terrible economy,tempers are short and depression seems to be sweeping across. Its entirely worth mentioning when someone tries to introduce a lighter side to this process.

Here's a mail I received on April 1st.

Hello Suramya,

We had our team review your resume and we believe that you might be a potential candidate for our Software Developer position in our Character and Natural Language Processing division. Chars AU - Bees is a product and services company which mostly deals with products which cater to word processing tools and incorporating a certain level of automation and intelligence in this area which we believe will be profitable and an area of research and development in the forthcoming years. Its an Australian based company and we have our branch offices in Florida and Maryland, USA. 

Currently we are a start up company of about 100 employees and our current products mainly integrate withing well known software packages. We do not publicize our company since our work mainly involves research and development and we believe in recruiting the best talent for this purpose. For this very reason we do not have a public domain on the internet and our recruits are mostly through referrals from OEMs to which we supply our products to. Please feel free to contact me if you wish to know more about our company and the services we provide.

Me or one of our System engineers here will give you a call later during the day to schedule a quick 15 minutes phone interview where we intend to understand your professional goals and your traits which could benefit our organization. We at Chars AU - Bees believe in presence of mind and impromptu responses which shows a trait to handle any unexpected situation and hence the immediate interview process. 

We're hoping that you will prove yourself to be fit for our organization this evening and we have continued interaction for our mutual benefit. 

Warm Regards,
Allan Donald
System Architect,
Chars AU-Bees

I admit I was taken in by this for sometime, until I spotted the Chars AU-Bees. Hats off for ingenuity at the same time,it clearly admitted it was a prank if one choose to dwell on the name.

Sadly the author of this mischief was not appreciated and received a lot of flak from various victims of this gag.

Tsk Tsk, some people have no sense of humor.

On the other hand, I must mention a reply to this mail.

Hello Mr. Allan Donald (Chars AU Bees) ,

I appreciate the offer, but at onset let me make a few things clear.

There is not a shred of doubt about my caliber and/or my value to your organization. The question here is the implications andserviceableness of your organization for me. Since you were benovalent enough to hand me an invitation to contact you for further information, this is what I propose.

Since you do not publicize your company and obtain the information on potential employees via referral, I would want you to send across, a comprehensive list of your OEMs. There will be a screening process, where my team will decide, which of these OEMs have a distinction of being spoken to, if any. In the next stage we will conduct interviews with the shortlist-ed OEMs, if any, to evaluate if there is any worth in providing your company, an esteemed opportunity of having an interview with me.

 "IF" on rarity of occasion you do pass the test, we shall schedule a formal meeting, lunch - for which, do not worry I will pay, as I know the crunch a start-up faces, and at the completion of which I will conclude on your stature and assess if you earned your merit to have me as an employee.

I like to give, ample opportunity to prepare before I reckon if I could actually be handled by the employers, hence the pre-planned and formal interview process.

I am sincerely hoping that you and your organization will prove to be fit for my expectations, and we have continued interaction for your benefit more than mine, you have a lot to learn from me. 

Good Luck!
Neha Ravikumar