I am growing old..

Oh yes.. some people I know would be overjoyed with the confession. A reminder to such folks -- all of us are growing older with each passing day.. so are you, so is my little girl. She is 2 years,5 months old now against the 2 yrs, 4mnths last month. So much to wipe off the smiles! But I do feel old today, old enough to preach people the importance of honesty, old enough to disapprove the lack of integrity in the younger lot, and old enough make remarks like -"In our times.. blah blah blah!". Is it really so long back? It is less than 6 years since I graduated!

Let me tell you what happened today, so that my rant starts making at least some sense. As I already mentioned sometime back, my company is recruiting these days. For me, that translates to a couple of interviews per day, out of which few are held over the telephone. The intent is to perform an initial screening and save the candidate the trouble of having to come over if we do not see much promise. I did one of these telephonic interviews today. The profile of the candidate was good, a fresher from a premier institute and I went in thinking that this is going to be easy. We would be calling this person for a personal interview in any case. We exchanged niceties, and I asked him about his academic interests. He mentioned something about OS and logic. Fine, I said, we shall start with some puzzles. I gave him a question, and waited patiently for him to come up with an answer. He talked out loudly while working on the problem. I understand that, some people talk to themselves rather loudly especially when they are trying to concentrate hard. Then I heard another voice.I felt the phone line is playing tricks.. Again, I heard 2 voices at the same time. I grew confused, and asked the candidate if he had somebody with him? No Madam, pat came the reply. I blamed myself for hearing imaginary voices. But then, it happened again. I started hearing very keenly. There were at least 2 more people on the other end helping the candidate solve the puzzle. I could have done away with the interview there itself, but just to be sure, I asked him some more, similar questions. The hushed voices kept filtering through his voice. The interview ended in around 20 min, and I was already fuming by then. This is so not done! How badly can you need a job to fall to such levels? And how optimistic can you be to believe you could get away with this? He is a fresher with 2 placement offers already made.. I would have called him over for the next round with eyes shut. God knows how badly we need good people, but to qualify as 'good', you need to be honest first. To cut a long story short, I just returned to my place, gave him the lowest rating and sent the feedback across. Do you think I did the right thing?