Onkar Joshi's blog

Index: Other posts on training in this series

Finally, the joining date had arrived. Around 50 people showed up to join at 9:00AM at the designated center. That seemed to be one nice place to work. Well lit. AC. Active. So far, so good.

We filled in forms for bank account, PF, employee info, declarations etc. Nothing important or obscure needed other than at least one permanent address and if possible a local address (can do without it too).

Ask for your parents’ date and YEAR of birth if you want to nominate them for PF, bank account in case you happen to…err…die.

Some photos were needed. We submitted 2 photos and put one on our bank form. I think more will be needed later, so keep a decent number handy just in case.

PAN, passport not present/not applied for is no problem so far. But better apply ASAP. You will need both soon. There is an Income Tax form given to us and we really don’t know what to fill in on it at this point of time.

Get photocopies of PAN, passport if you have them. Get photocopies of 10th, 12th and all relevant engineering marksheets upto 7th sem if 8th semester results are not out yet.

Only one photocopy of each has been asked for so far. Doesn’t look like more will be needed. You will need to show originals for each photocopy. If original not present, attestation by gazetted officer should do. (I think I heard the HR lady ask one guy for that.)

Free lunch coupons for all new joinees!

Those of us who still hadn’t got final offer letters got them there. There were quite a few including myself who only had the Letter of Intent until now.

Surprisingly, they didn’t ask for bond documents today. But they did ask to have it ready. It will most probably be taken on Monday.

Rest was chill. Good to see the plush interiors and people at work. People were friendly and helpful. Not very sure if our training is going to be in-house or at any of the third party training centers but for our batch in-house does seems likely from what I understand. So far, rather impressive.

Was great to meet and be recognized by a whole lot of Orkut junta there.

By the way, blood group is also needed to fill in some form, but no problem if you don’t know.

Bank accounts are provided by IDBI “corporate services”. The card we will get can be used at any VISA enabled ATM without any extra charge (except for balance inquiry). No minimum balance required. Net, phone, mobile banking enabled. Bank representatives are present in office everyday. Bill payment facility also given. No annual charges. Seemed good.

The internal office network seemed to be pretty good too. Phones available for us to use. Extensions of useful/important people provided in a list. HR policies available on the network. Card swipe-in/swipe-out for attendance monitoring – seemed cool since this was the first time most of us were going to use RFID cards.

“Decent” casuals allowed on Fridays and business formals on other days. Slippers, floaters, sandals not allowed on any working day.

Some kind of a bus service connects the different offices in the city – so transport should be taken care of for most people.

We had our medical test at a near by hospital. Nice complete checkup. Blood – Four small test-tubes taken. Not four bottles like I heard some one say!!! Two females fainted! But nothing serious – happens all the time in blood tests. They were fine in a few minutes. Everything was pain less and well conducted by professionals in a very hygienic fashion. Good hospital. Try to get tests done in a hurry, early – people who didn’t finish early had to wait a long time.

Colour blindness is not a problem. I asked the HR lady about this myself for a friend.

I found that I happen to have a 6/6 vision in spite of after staring at my monitor in a dark room for 15 hours a day, every day. Lucky me.