Alva's Job Fair @ Mudbidri

Time: Jun 7th-8th, 2024

Company: Colleagues

Place: Mudbidri

Highlights: Had to hire trainees for our company, and our HR asked us to leverage Alva's annual Job Fair at Mudbidri. Caught the 9:30 am flight from BLR to Mangalore. It was my first time at MLR airport, and like so many of Nepal's airports, this has a tabletop runway. Quite an ordeal for pilots indeed!

A cab from Alva's Job fair was waiting to take us to Alva college, which was about an hour away via winding roads. Just when we were getting motion sickness, we reached. The college is a daunting structure atop a mountain-of-sorts. An extremely noble service this college undertakes every year by organising this Job Fair across all kinds jobs - IT, pharmacy, industry, manufacturing, automobile, banking, etc.. Even for me, it was overwhelming to see so many job options and such a wonderful opportunity for all the college graduates who had arrived from across the state (transportation also arranged by Alva's college!). Apparently this is an annual 2-day event, and I was awestruck at what I saw.

Anyways, we had a job to do, and it was already noon. The prelim online tests were conducted by the HR team and we had to start with the interviews of the shortlisted candidates. We were 5 panelists and we had about 20-25 candidates. It was humid, sometimes it was raining and we were in a makeshift metal shed, so the heat and humid was getting to us. The fan was of no use. It was hard to conduct the interview with so much cacophony, somehow we managed. In my previous experience of interviews, had not faced this kind of ambience for interview!

Lunch was offered at 2 pm, and it was a strange Mangalore-style food. We continued with interviews till about 6 pm, finalized on three candidates and then the HR team made us meet with Alva's Chairperson. It was great interacting with such a great person who had arranged this fabulous event. He insisted us to partake in the cultural event which was due to start at 7 pm. We were too tired but relented to his invitation. The first two dances were mind-blowing, one was Bharatnatyam and another was Mangalore-style. Dinner was offered too but we skipped it and went to the resort where our stay was booked. It was just a few mins drive away.

The resort was extremely good, set atop a mountain, with varying grades of altitude for stay, sports and trek. Checked-in, refreshed, came back down to restaurant for dinner where we colleagues spent a nice time relaxing and talking about the day in general. A much-needed refreshment after the humid day's chaos! Retired for the night.

Next day, was just the return back home. Left the resort early at 7 am, and a 45-min drive to airport where we had breakfast, and another 45-min nice flight back to BLR. About 2 hours later, reached home by noon. A short official trip, hopefully an impactful one in the office!