Alumni InterviewWasiq Zia, Electronics 2007

What it takes to be in the industry

Wasiq Zia is a Verification IP Developer with Cadence Design Systems. He is currently working on USB 3.0 protocol. He is a 2007 batch pass out from Electronics and Communications
How did you land at Cadence? What is your role in your current position? Getting into Cadence was purely by luck. I was ready to go to my campus placement in Nov. but a senior from Jamia who worked at Cadence called me up in July and said that there was a temporary position as an intern at Cadence. I jumped at the opportunity and was working at Cadence within a week!!! If we talk of companies like INTEL, or Qualcomm,or even Cadence, how difficult you think it is for a graduate from our college to get placed there? The most difficult part is getting a contact in these companies as these companies have different colleges entrenched there from where they pick up freshers every year. So to get the break is most difficult. But once you are there, it's nothing but your knowledge that matters. If you are good, people would look beyond the college. What will you suggest to those who want to get into this field? Be very serious about your core subjects. The basics are what matter the most. From a fresher every interviewer expects the basics to be right. Next step is to decide on a field of choice and pursue it for the last three semesters of college. The presentation, minor and major projects should all be related to this subject and be done thoroughly. Did you have a mentor? I had Qadeer Ahmad Khan, who was a lead design engineer at Freescale as mentor during my last year in college and guided me through my major project. Another senior Fahad Arif mentored me about the general electronics related stuff including the interview skills etc. Did you do any training or internship while in college? Do these really help? I did an internship at IIT Delhi during second year of college. It helped me in two ways. First it instilled in me a good work ethic and inspired me to do better work looking at the guys there and secondly it helped me understand practical aspects of electronics, working on a breadboard and debugging issues there.

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Alumni InterviewWasiq Zia, Electronics 2007

You did chase the CAT!? Yes, I did chase the CAT for a long time but couldn't bell it!!! It was more a misguided adventure. More of following the herd than anything else. Nevertheless it taught me a lot about me, most of all the fact that I will not be able to understand probability ever!

MBA or get through a PSU or really want to become an engineer. Most of the time, a long time elapses before we realise what we should do. The mantra is, decide early and give it your best shot.

Your batch had all kinds of high flyers: those who got into US (and other) universities, those who If we talk of education scene today, belled the CAT, and even future entreour ilk spend two years preparing Intel, Qualcomm, prenuers. Your comments. for engineering, and once there, C a d e n c e . t h e s e We were lucky to have people with such spends his/her last two for CAT,IES companies have a different dispositions in our batch. The or other exams. Where does that fixed field of col- important part about all these people was leave engineers, considering that leges where they that they were extremely confident of you really learn the subject in 3rd pick freshers from their capabilities and highly focused toand 4th years? We never enjoy the its very important wards their goals. In fact coming back to present, only rush to secure the futo have a con- the previous question, I believe we also ture. had someone who belled the CAT as well tact. I agree with you on it. The trouble is the as cleared the GATE, hows that for versaculture we have built. Everyone wants tility. It was indeed a pleasure and great learning beto be an achiever and the only achievements that ing with all these people. seem to be worth talking about seem to be an MBA from top 10 or getting into IES etc. But if the priorities If you were to go back to college, what's that one are right, I don't think there should be issues. First of thing that you would do differently? all you should decide early on, what you want to I don't really know. Maybe attend more classes ;) do. Whether you want to become an

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Ankit Rawat

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