Journey @ IOCL

Chapter-1 : The journey begins

It was 10th December 2008, when I got my second campus interview scheduled for IOCL, after being rejected from Nestle. The pressure was extreme as you being among the branch toppers; others make you a benchmark for their own selection, something which is illogical but natural.

The interview was a short one, with a few technical and HR questions, and the good news came in the evening. It was indeed a party time for all those selected and this continued for 2-3 days and finally the excitement subsided away with time.

Finally, the day, 23^th August 2009, came when we reached the IiPM campus at Gurgaon. I was waiting at the reception with one more guy waiting there. In a glance, I was doubtful whether he was waiting there for the same purpose as I was. Though, I was always an introvert (I know most of u won’t believe it now), I mustered some courage to start the conversation with “Hi! I am Himanshu”. This young and dashing man replied (no pun intended J), “Hi ! I am Priyam Saxena”.

In the midst of sharing our academic qualification, the receptionist intervened and asked us to board the vehicle that would take us to F-66, where our stay was organized. When I first heard this name F-66, I thought it will be a room for maximum 2-3, but when I saw the name of around 20-25 students on list that would be residing in F-66, I thought “Ab to bhasad machne waali hai” (local Roorkee lingo :P).

When we reached F-66, I was somewhat relaxed after seeing that F-66 was the name of the guest house and it had many rooms. Since the rooms were allotted on sharing bases, Priyam and I, both lonely souls in F-66, decided to become the room partners. The rooms were no less than a three-star accommodation and we decided to avail every bit of service that was available.

Late to bed and late to rise continued and we missed our first and the only bus that was supposed to take us to IiPM on the very first day. We informed this at IiPM and a cab was sent to pick up us. We knew that guys at IiPM will now be ready to impart us gyan for being on-time and gyan came as expected. Registration process started with almost every male eyes strolling around and calculating the gender ratio and by evening everyone had a good statistics to improve their data interpretation.

The training period of 14 days was awesome with different kind of skillful activities, so called “knowledge imparting sessions” and yummy food of IiPM. Who says we were working in a PSU. With a three-star accommodation stay and a nice lunch, I felt IOCL is no less than a multi-national company with world class facilities. Finally, divisions were imparted to our batch and most of the guys like me were disappointed on not getting marketing (Though later we realized that the word “marketing” is a misnomer at IOCL and its scope is restricted to LPG bottling plants. Thank God! I didn’t get it).

The luxurious life continued with our divisional training being scheduled at IOCL Guwahati and we were provided air tickets for moving to Guwahati. Everyone was happy totally oblivious of the fact that the dreams are about to shatter and we are going to face the real IOCL.