Jobs 2017: My Interview Experience
Hey there. It's been a long time since I posted here. I was busy prepping for my placements, and so I decided to share my experience with you all, and I believe my juniors will find it most helpful and enlightening.
I thought of starting this post by slandering the name of my university, our trainings and placement officer, and every other staff who were responsible for the very bleak placement ratio this year. But I choose to be optimistic and look on the bright side. Well, I’ll try to find that side.
The first company that I heard was hiring from our university was Oracle Financial Software Services(OFSS). They had an online aptitude round. Since this is my personal experience, I’ll take you through the whole thing. OFSS, as they showed in the presentation, was previously a company named I-Flex solutions, that was later bought by Oracle (the one that publishes JDK releases). They are mainly based in India, with clients abroad, like most other companies nowadays. It was a pool placement, meaning that students from my university weren’t the only one contending for the 5.19LPA package that they were providing. The pool was hosted by a private engineering college based in Adisaptagram, and recently doing very well regarding placements(most private colleges are, actually). The placements took place on 12th and 13th September at CA Community Hall in Salt Lake.
Day 1:
The reporting time was 8:45am. I had woken up at 5:30am, an hour before my usual, and I was really drowsy. I reached the place by 7:30. By 10, most had arrived. Firstly, the guys introduced themselves(feminazis, please don’t make a field day out of this). Then we had a break, then they proceeded with the essay-writing round and the group-discussion round. The topic for the essay was “Why should Oracle hire you, and how would you contribute to innovation in the next 3,9 and 12 years”(or something similar; I know, I should have been chosen for acting in Ghajini). In 15 minutes, I managed to write around 400 words I guess. Then we had the group discussion round. The topic for discussion was “Search Engines are killing our creativity”. I nailed it(I actually have no idea if I really did). After all the rounds were complete, the interviewers had chosen 15 candidates to be interviewed for that day. i wasn’t one of them.
Day 2:
For the rest of the candidates, they had to come the next day. The colleges that participated in the placement were: AOT(of course), GCELT Salt Lake, GCETT Serampore, Govt. College of Leather Technology Berhampore and ours. Most of GCETT and Berhampore ones were done the previous day. Candidates who passed the online aptitude test were: Aditya Pratap, Ivana Mondal, Priyansu Sarathi Ganguly, Ranodeep Saha(yes that guy), Rohit Das(yes that’s me of course) and Samiksha Dhar. Samiksha had been interviewed the previous day itself, and we got some insight from her. We had arrived at 9am in the morning. By the time my turn came, it was 9:30pm. I was exhausted, bored and was also wondering if they got their selected candidates, and were keeping us to be interviewed as a courtesy. But anyway, I was called.
My first round(technical + HR) went well. I was asked to write some code in Java, queries in SQL(which I messed up a bit since I hadn’t used SQL in a year) and asked questions about git since I mentioned it in my resume. They seemed to like me, and I was told to wait for the second round. Well, lets just say the second round(technical) made me wanna cry. I don’t have many projects or internships under my belt, and this round made me feel that i won’t make it(I didn’t). They called me for a third round(HR) before i was told to leave. I left around 10:30pm. Ranodeep and Aditya stayed till 11:50pm before they were rejected too. Later I came to know that 5 people from AOT and 6 from GCELT were selected. So little for so much time and energy spent.
The last two companies to hire were Wipro and Infosys. Wipro had given dates on 20th and 21st September, and Infosys on 22nd and 23rd. Both were pool placements too, in a way. While these companies had arrived on our very campus last year, why were they conducting pools? One reason could be the new regulations by the Trump administration requiring foreign companies to hire more Americans than bring employees from abroad. The other reason, well, will as well be slandering of college officials.
Before I proceed with the other two companies, I would like to talk about someone. Prithwijit Guha(he should be thankful that I got his name right). My mates from MAKAUT will know all about him. And also about his tantrums and virtues. Please do feel free to contact me if you want to know more about it, because like I mentioned earlier, I am trying to look on the bright side here.
So Wipro. The management was efficient. The venue was at GCETT, Serampore. Only Goverment Engineering Colleges were participating, i.e. MAKAUT, GCELT Salt Lake, GCETT Serampore obviously, Kalyani Govt. Engg College and Ceramic College in Salt Lake. We had to register ourselves online on their website. I received a boarding pass for the event. There was an aptitude and coding round, which took place online at the venue. I believe there were more than 300 students who participated in the pool, and the interviewers had their work cut out for them. The aptitude questions were divided into various sections for quantitative sums, basic grammar, coding(2 questions, 45 min) and essay writing. Questions were fairly timed and well within our standards. The first qualifying round took place in, at least, 3 batches to give all students a fair chance. I qualified in the first round, along with 22 other students. In all, 4 students from MAKAUT qualified in the first roundL Aditya Pratap, Nishant Singh and me in the first batch, and Debal Chakraborty in the second.
The first batch qualifiers had their interviews on the first day itself. It was quick and smooth. The technical interviewer was friendly, asking about my hobbies, extra-curriculars, why I do what I do, and he seemed very satisfied. The HR round was conducted by a woman, who was very friendly, and even bookmarked my blog for later reading! I have reason to believe that the selection spanned over three days instead of two, due to the sudden upsurge of students from Kalyani Govt. Engg. College. In all, nearly 30 students were selected for the job.
I had a day off on 21st, since my interview was over on the previous day itself. I decided to skip the interview for Infosys because, for one, the aptitude was to be held at NITMAS, Jhinga, near Diamon Harbour station, and it would take me well over 4 hours just to reach there. Nevertheless, many students from our university attended the selection round. The other college participating was CEMK. While we had about 30 students, I have reason to believe that the other two colleges had around 100-150 students, and I’m glad 18 of our students made it through to the interviews. The interview took place in our university campus itself. 9 were finally selected for the job.
Combining CSE and IT streams, we have in all 57 students, out of which 11 + 3 = 14 (1 student got into both Infy and Wipro) got placed. The rest were either backlogs or couldn’t make the cut. Few of my friends didn’t attend the placement drives as they wanted to opt for placements off campus. The rest will either try for jobs next year or go for higher studies. In all, 25.5% of the total strength got placed, barring those who didn’t attend. You can get figures for last year, and the year before, and before that easily, and I suppose they were better than this. What was the reason for such a drastic fall in arrival of companies on our campus? Seems we are not the only one. GCELT Salt Lake had only pools for OFSS and Wipro. So is the overall placement scenario in all colleges the same, or is it just us? I am yet to figure out. Meanwhile, send me your opinions and thoughts on this.