Graduated in 2013 and waiting for your joining?

July 13, 2013February 8, 2016 Sarvesh

This July a million more would graduate from our universities, ready to join the corporate world. For a large number of students, particularly those hired by mass IT recruiters like TCS, Infosys etc., this would mark the beginning of an agonizing period of seemingly endless wait – for the joining letter or the joining date.

In last 2 years, owing to the downturn in the global economy, IT majors have adopted the practice of staggered joining – new recruits are invited for joining in batches starting from September till next June.

This causes significant anxiety and heart burn among fresh graduates who could not wait to start their corporate careers – after all you have been dreaming about it ever since you got that offer letter in your hand!

While it is natural to feel worried, this delay may actually be a blessing in disguise (yes, you will thank us for this post years later) and here are the top 3 things you could do to make most of this time (other than sitting idle and cursing company HR).

TravelThis is the last long vacation of your life and while you may not appreciate it now, you would yearn for this free time once you are into a job. Just ask any relative or a senior around you, they would be too happy to swap places with you.
Use this time to travel, and travel extensively – literally the length and the breadth of the country. See the sun rising through the mountains in Arunachal Pradesh and sinking in the sea in Kerala. Travel makes you a better person, broadens your horizon, and helps you stock up stories that you can tell to your colleagues once you join.

And before you mention how expensive the travel is, let me remind you that this is also perhaps the last time you can travel like a student – because once you get used to comforts of a job, you would find it uncomfortable traveling in the sleeper class of a train or you would want a nice and clean hotel room all for yourself to stay instead of 6 of you crashing in a dorm room.
Intern with a start upAdmit that majority of you are headed to TCS/Infosys, not because you love programming (on the contrary, many of you hate it) but because this was the only job that you got during campus placements. Now that you have the safety net, why not experiment with something that you really thought you would be good at and would enjoy doing.
And an internship at a start up is a perfect opportunity where you would not be relegated to a corner with some mundane work but would get to do some real stuff. So if you love writing, take up an editorial internship. Consider yourself a marketing Guru? Help a start up acquire new customers. The spectrum is endless. And who knows, may be you would fall in love with your work and the place so much that you may make a career out of it. What more, majority of the start ups today pay better than any of the IT majors that you may be heading to.

BTW, There is this amazing Editorial & Marketing internship at Internshala – why not give it a shot if you think you fit the bill.
Watch movies/Read books/Spend time with familyBasically whatever it is you love doing and have not had time to do in last so many months or years. Because this time will never come again and once this passes, you will again not have time (and energy) to do it ever again. I used to read a book a day when I was waiting for my joining and ever since after I started my career, if I can read a book in a quarter, I consider it an achievement.