US Visa: A mid-summer Night's Dream

[Setting: A Scene at a software office during the pre-Y2K era.]

Since Mohenjodaro and Harrappa days, IT industry has had its own say in the many different stages of Visa processing. Here is a small introduction about all these types.

The prerequisite before you are called upon for the first stage is that the Manager would come and call you only when you are surrounded by 43 employees at your tea break. Then he will proceed ask you if you were willing to travel to the US, Slovakian Republic or to Uganda. Most of the employee using the method of elimination (same as in KBC) choose US and says he is geared up to go. Then the second question to follow this is if he/she can relocate within short notice. A short notice for them varies from 1 day for an overseas trip notice to 287 weeks for approving a technical book.

The first Stage is Resume Collection: This is one of the most preliminary stages wherein the Manager would come running at your seat and pestering you to give in your most recent resume. Here, the word most recent means resumes that are only nanoseconds old. (Note: Not even a day old resume shall be accepted.)

In this kind of a situation, the employee would sit down and prepares a resume, in a traditional format. No one would be able to tell the difference between an ancient Egyptian inscription and the traditional format. One shall always wonder why such fonts and sub-headings are chosen in the first place. Although the main rationale of a resume is lost, we still have to act in accordance with these rules furnishing unnecessary information such as my neighbour’s chest size, my favourite pet's name, do you like Abhishek Bhachan etc.

While this process of building a latest resume is going on, the Managers can't wait. They look like cats that have sipped a boiling hot pan of milk and keep jumping here and there. Their momentous commands makes you think that they would even try going and sitting inside the Printer and pull the paper so that they could tender the resume.

Once tendered, then it's left to lie low like how you prepare mango pickles. Collect all of them and FILE it, File is the last nail in the coffin. For a debutante, filing the resume means a lot since he doesn’t know that this is the one and only step in this type of processing. After a few submissions, he is more matured and just changes a few words here and there in his name, so that it is qualified as a Latest Resume. (Note: Further matured employee file in the previous version without any change since mostly all managers can’t even differentiate between a Word File and a Carbon Paper)

Only if an employee has had more than 6 resumes collected from him is entitled to enter the second round of processing.

The second stage is Telephonic Interview or in technical jargon Conference Call: Since the employees in this stage have already felt the mental trauma of preparing resume after resume, they are giving a small break. In this stage, the managers call the overseas department and fixes up a time for an interview. This time is generally during the nights since most of the clients belong to the Wild West.

Although the time of the call is very uncomfortable, the employees are again made to fall into the same trap as in stage one by saying that if the interview goes well, then its barely hours before you leave this country. Employees are also not given much time to prepare for an interview, and are handed over a bunch of mock sessions that closely resembles the Shakespeare's Hamlet, with a bold message "Something rotten in burning in Denmark". These booklets which are purely aimed to help an employee better in building a conversation, is in fact mainly used as a bib for many lunches to come.

For example:
Interviewer Question: Hi, this is Jim, how are you doing today?
Employee : Hello Jim, I am [Your Name] (Note, Please don’t say Hi Jim, when his name is Tom)

Interviewer Question: Tell me in short about yourself?
Employee : Poorly paid hairy weasel. (Note: This is an assumption that you are in a software consulting job)

Interviewer Question: What is your Weak Point?
Employee : Females (Note: Be specific for example Blondes. Red necked or Spanish)

The employee has been given a date and time and made to hang around through the night waiting for the call. He very closely resembles those people who go to receive their cousins coming by the Howrah Mail. Never has this train, to the best of my knowledge, come on time and so is the interview call. Since being a Quality oriented organisation, you are required to stay till you can be sure that the call did not happen. Let’s assume that the call was to be at 8:00PM and then the algorithm is that the employee waits till 3:45AM the following day to clarify that the client hasn’t called.

The next plan of action for the manager is to again call the overseas department group and fix up another appointment and then turn to tell you that the client was off to Hawaii on that day as the mail which he sent had reached a bit late. Hence, the employee has to redo all the things on the second day too. This continues for 5 days (not contiguous days), after which the overseas department group get wild and disclose that the client has found another suitable candidate.

The only good thing here is that, this doesn’t damage you in anyway. In case the client had called for an interview and then you had failed, that was the last time you can think of going abroad through this organisation. Now, since there is no faux pas of yours, you shall be expected to do this routine again.

On an average you repeat the above procedure for 4 times and after which you finally attend a call. You were supposed to be interviewed by a Web Development project manager, but the call is from an Accountant of the client who purely asks what your name is and what salary are you drawing currently and things like that. Since the helpful tips given by the organisation didn’t carry these you make up by answering on the spur of the moment.

For Example:
Interviewer Question: Hi, this is Tom, How are you doing today?
Employee : Hi, this is Mahesh here and I am doing pretty lousy since you have called 4 hours late.
Interviewer Question: J (laughs)! I am not sorry. Now what's the salary that you are drawing?
Employee : Almost close to Zero
Interviewer Question: What is your Expectation?
Employee : $23 Billion per Annum
CLICK!!! The Phone hangs up.

The overseas department group conveys that the call was well handled by you and they would get back to you by tomorrow. This is the only time that they are prompt, they call you up tomorrow to say that you were technically not sound to handle such a tough project and hence you had to repeat all over again for another Web Development project.

Assuming you get through 7 client interview, it brings us to the Third Stage called the Consulate Visiting: In this stage we fill up those 2,94,587 forms that repeat the same questions like shown in below:

Form 1023

(Fill it in Bat’s Blood only, NO owl blood. Please use Hebrew Font Only)
1. Has the employee ever flown to Madagascar and Sent Back due to Flu
Yes/No
2. Does the employee wish to take his Neighbor's Wife along with him
Yes/No
2a.
If answered yes for 2, please specify which Neighbour
Name Age Relationship with you Sex

3. Do you need Money from your Organisation *
Yes/No

4.Do you own any share of Infosys Ltd **
Yes/No

5. What is the purpose of this visit
A/B/C/D/E/F

A) Tour to Intel
B) Detailed Weather Report
C) Refer Invitation Fax

D) Y3K COBOL patch fixes

E) None of the Above

F) All of the Above

*: If yes, you may not be permitted to leave for overseas assignments.
**: If yes then surrender them if you want to leave, If NO please buy them and then surrender them to us.

Once you have filled in the essential forms (in triplets), they instruct the travel agent to send the forms to the consulate. As any Indian travel agent, he juggles with the forms and the certificates, which creates an alarm in the consulate and they land up calling the manager. The manager, who in the brightest time of the day, will hum and haw in their replies causing the embassy officials to panic This results the person to appear for a direct face-to-face interview.

As a customary thumb rule, the last employee whom the company doesn’t want to appear before the embassy is the one who is chosen. For these kind of emergency events also we have a document. (This is because we are a CMM level company which has documents for everything from going to the lavatory till using carbon papers) The employee has to rehearse and practice before he leaves for the interview.

A typical sample is shown below
Consulate Interviewer : So how long to do you plan to stay in the US
Employee : All daylong and the night too if you allow us.

Consulate Interviewer : What is the purpose of the visit?
Employee : To spearhead a new pilot project in DVD domain at Sony Labs.

Consulate Interviewer : Do you know anything about Chip Technologies?
Employee : Yes, many of them like Potato, Tomato and Plantain.

Consulate Interviewer : Could you clearly and lucidly elaborate about your credentials
Employee : (Tamil) Soaka Sonna lady, Naanum Edhai Yengayavadhu use pandren Catch my point.
(Note: see Michael Madhana KamaRajan, the film for more clarity)

By all things, Murphy's Law works to its true nature. What must go wrong will go wrong and the chosen candidate does answer in the same lines as shown above and gets himself rejected. Once rejected, the candidate is crestfallen since he now has to initiate from the first stage yet again after a year. Now it’s been unofficially established that when you are summoned for an interview use your brain and not the handy sheet that the company gives for reference.

For some lucky candidates, they bypass this step and get their passports stamped and do the next step which is Post-Stamping. Along with this, the Managers also show a variety of documents such as a Sunnyvale Road Map, a proposed Project Plan without any reference to your name in it, 1385 sites that show what the actual project is about etc. These things are shown so that they develop a confidence in the employee’s mind, while he is well trapped into this drama. The employee is made to believe that he should be able to leave at any moment in the next 48 hours.

The build-up for this event is so pleasant that right from the Project Manager to the Project Leader, they give such nice sugary dialogues that make each of the selected employee's float in their dreams. Many things will look like happening from a fairy tale. (In most cases it's SLEEPING BEAUTY.) You would start to wonder if it’s the same HR that made you wait for 345 hours for a Salary advance are now staying late to send in your papers 456 hours before the deadline, but with a valid H1 all these will happen.

Many new employees, who have not gone through the first and second stage for some reason, fail to understand the principle motive behind this drama. This is purely done to keep the employee busy and also give an impression that he is really an asset to the organisation.(According to a survey employees came 8th in the most valuable asset in an organization, 7th was Carbon Paper) As the hour's starts to tick down, the Visa comes through without any problem, the flight tickets are all confirmed and the Foreign exchange all comes through with just a single nod.

In the meantime, the fresh employee would be on a spending spree right from a baggage to all the masala mixes, while the seasoned professional traveler remain as stationary as a rock watching the events with at most calmness. At some time nearing the 30 hours mark, the Manager could call upon those who are supposedly to leave in a tone as to convey perhaps how to conduct ourselves or whom to meet once we reach the US. The actual ulterior motive is to convey the best climax statement in this drama, the TRIP stands CANCELLED.

The way a manger normally says this news is shown below
Case I:
Manager : (sad voice if the team is really big) I got a Good/Bad news for you. Which do you prefer?
Employee : Sir, I prefer the Good news first.
Manager : Well, here is the good news, the Hurricane Andrew is not going to hit San Jose as expected. Also Salma Hayek is going to do a live show there after you reach.
Employee : HAHA (Background thinking about the Bad news)
Manager : The Bad news is that you will not be there in San Jose to witness that event. We have just heard that the project has been suspended.

Case II:
Manager : (sadder voice if the team is big) I got a Good/Bad news for you. Which do you prefer?
Employee : Sir, I prefer the Good news first.
Manager : Well, here is the good news, The Malaysian Flight is not going to be hijacked as expected.
Employee : HAHA (Background thinking about the Bad news)
Manager : The Bad news is that you will not be there in that flight. We have just heard that the project has been suspended.

Of course the employee may have faced many a trauma, but at this juncture it gives him some solace because he is not alone in this group.