Suyatian Story: 2
Life is a journey, with problems to solve, lessons to learn, but most of all experiences to enjoy!!
~ Unknown
My experience with Suyati started in April 2016 when I attended the first round of interview at Suyati. It was the beginning of a new phase in my life – a tremendous change from a careless collegegoer to a professional Software Engineer.
Here are glimpses of that exciting journey:
Milestone 1 – Standing at the Suyati threshold
- Off-campus drive happened at the office around mid-April 2016.
- The selection process: aptitude test, 2 technical interviews and HR interview.
- 1st technical interview – was taken by Ajith R; he asked me about the basics of .NET and OOP concepts.
- Ajith helped me to correlate between the terms in .NET and Java (where I did my academic projects) at the time of interview, as he saw I’m not familiar with .NET terminologies. That was the start to my .NET learning.
- 2nd technical interview, by Rifaj Aboobacker who asked me tricky questions to measure my problem-solving skills rather than asking pure technical questions.
- My joining date was on 8 June 2016, when the STEP training began.
Milestone 2- STEPping in to Suyati
- Suyati STEP training paved the way to know more about the aspects and terminologies that are related to the IT industry.
- The sessions were not only about learning the programming languages (.NET), they were also about knowing the sales, administrative sides of IT/software industry.
- After 3 months of primary training, I became the part of MS Dynamics CRM team in the organization.
Milestone 3 – My first project in Dynamics team
Under the guidance of our Team Leader Lokin, we learned a lot about the CRM technology, especially Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM.
- The first project I got to work on was with the internal sales team who use the MS Dynamics CRM.
- For an inexperienced fresher like me, it was the perfect place to start.
- Insightful takeaways from the sales team project:
- Power BI, which is a business intelligence tool from Microsoft.
- Agile methodology (different from academic projects where it is always Waterfall model).
- How sales & marketing section of an IT company works.
- Project went well. I am grateful for the help I got from Anoop, Sandeep Thachan and many others who helped me throughout the project.
Milestone 4 – Working on one of the biggest CRM projects at Suyati
After the project with internal Sales team, I got assigned to another project which was to revamp the reporting process of the internal PMO team. Midst of that, my TL informed me that I’m assigned to an important client project from US. I was extremely happy and excited to be a part of one of the biggest CRM projects.
At the beginning, dealing with the clients and their complex systems/requirements showed me I had a lot to learn. But I was not ready to give up. I spent extra time to increase my CRM knowledge. I attended all the calls and meetings and took down notes (which I hadn’t even done during my school or college days!). Within a few weeks, I had a better grasp on things and there has been no looking back ever since.
In addition to CRM, I got a chance to work on SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) in the project. The project also helped me in improving my communicational skills, since my work involved making one-to-one calls with the clients for requirements and clarification. I’m now happy to have that privilege, which I had never heard from my college friends those who are working at big companies in the industry.
My teammates were there to help me whenever I needed a guidance or support (when I had jumped into some mistakes). These “happy to help” people make this company richer in human values; which may be different from the tech giants in the industry. I still remember the moment in which my team congratulated me for solving an issue related to the project.
This project not just helped me increase and improve my technical skills, it also helped me become a good professional as well as an individual. In future, I may work with many projects in different organizations in my life, but I strongly believe the experiences I gone through and the lessons learned from this one won’t go away.
