For the first time, the Dell Interview's process was held through a hackathon. The problems were given to us in advance and everyone had to get separated into teams of 4. Most of the problems were trying to solve some problem through the use Artificial intelligence.They encompassed both pressing social and technical problems that were solved or being solved by Dell.
Our team was given the problem statement titled Using Artificial Intelligence to solve new product demand and forecasting. Till 2 days before the hackathon, we researched extensively on this topic. Since this problem involved both web development and machine learning, we split our team into 2 sub-teams of 2. As I had already worked on machine learning earlier, I paired up with another friend who had experience in Regression analysis.
In the Hackathon, we were judged by Dell committee members who had prior experience in these areas and guided us too. While the hackathon ensued, the judges regularly took feedback and asked us questions about our progress and gave some essential advice for the actual presentation the following day. We toiled till the whole day and night and completed our product.
The presentation took about 10 minutes in which all team members had to present the product to the Dell committee members. The time constraint was very strict and the product demo was the most important component. They asked us questions regarding the viability of the product, Test Driven Development, Extreme pair programming, and how we individually had contributed to the project.
After judging a few teams, the committee shortlisted approximately from the presentations for the behavioral interview. In this interview, candidates were judged upon soft skills and culture fit to the company. Some of the questions that were asked were:
ZS Associates had 3-4 rounds of interviews. The first round consisted of 55 aptitude questions including Database questions. The round got over in 55 minutes. After passing some threshold, a candidate is directed to the next round, which is the psychometric(video round). In this round, we are asked behavioural and cultural fit questions like What are your biggest strengths, weaknesses?, Tell me about a time where you worked in a team?. After this, some 20 odd students were shortlisted for the next round to be held in Gurgaon office of ZS Associates.
There were 2-3 rounds here. The first and the most rigorous round was the Case study round. A case study related to some problem is given and a candidate has to solve it in a very short period of time, 30 minutes. The case study was extremely rigorous and was 12-pages long. It had a lot of tables and a question was asked whether this information can be condensed to fewer tables. This required a good knowledge of database concepts. A lot of grilling was done after the solution was presented. The interviewers wanted a very elaborate study.
The next round was a guesstimate interview. These questions judge the candidate's ability to guess insantly and be unfazed even on some grilling. The answer is not important but the process to get to it is judged intensely. This round might be followed by another puzzle round or a behavioural interview. The resume is scrutinized heavily and be ready to answer some questions about programming languages mentioned there. Be careful not to go overboard in your resume.
This was the interview experience for the role of Business technology analyst. Other roles might have slightly different interviews. The speciality of ZS Interview process is its unpredictability and so it should not be surprising to see many differences from the current interview process.
The process of shortlisting candidates for PPO linked summer internship at DAIKIN (one of the core MNC’s for Mechanical) begins roughly in the month of February, during the 6th semester and lasts till Mid-March. Based on your college location, you will be either face Aptitude test + telephonic round interview Or Aptitude test + GD + Tech & HR interview. In my case, since Daikin visited our campus, we faced an online aptitude test which consisted of 25 general Mechanical questions and 25 questions related to Refrigeration and Air conditioning. The test duration is of 60 minutes for 50 questions. Around 50% of the students are shortlisted from the first round. Results were declared the next morning (9/2/2018) and we had the rest of the selection rounds on that day itself.
After a brief pre-placement talk, the selected 27 students were divided in the groups of 9 for a Group Discussion (GD) round. Topic given to all the 3 groups were general topics, keeping in mind the fact that almost all the students could speak on the topic. For example, our group was given the topic ‘Should the rule of 75% attendance made mandatory in college?’ 3 students from each group were shortlisted for the final Interview round. My tip for you would be to be patient and be a good listener. These are the two most important skills that the evaluator tests. Never cut in between your team member. Start your GD by appreciating the good points that your team members are saying. The best way would be if you are the first person to start off the GD process. You have the chance to make a great first impression and also any chance of your point being said by someone else is also eliminated. Don’t speak unnecessarily. A person who speaks valid points, is a patient listener is always selected over a person who rants anything.
These 9 candidates were then called for a face to face interview which lasted for around 25-30 minutes for each candidate. Your technical skills will also be tested by the interviewer. However, the interview would consist of around 60% HR related questions. You yourself can mould the interview in the way you want. The kind of answers you give here will determine the next question he/she would ask. So, you always have the option to play around your strengths.
Tip:-
After the final interview rounds, results were declared after a week and 2 of the students from Mechanical Engineering Department were selected. 48 students all over the country were selected. I consider myself fortunate enough to be one of them. You will get to interact with some of the best students from around the country. You will be facing a tough training session at Neemrana, Rajasthan for 3 weeks, where you will be trained in Service, Sales and Research & Development sectors. There will be tests everyday after each class and the classes go on from 9 in the morning till 6 in the evening. Lunch and tea breaks are given in between. Weekends will be occupied too with presentations and assignments. Accommodation, laundry, food, everything is free here.
This all seems so rough and tough but trust me these 3 weeks will change you in the best ways possible both personally and professionally. Daikin summer training for students are one of the best trainings in our country.After the first 3 weeks, you would be given the option to choose your own city and department under which you would like to work on for your project for the next 3 weeks. I chose Technical Sales Project at Daikin Ghaziabad branch. The environment at office is extremely holistic and co-operative. You will get to work with one of the best brains in the corporate world and have a great time here. For any queries, feel free to contact me. Thank you Anirudh for giving me a platform for sharing this. I wish all the students reading this a very bright future ahead! Email id
American Express came for the role of SDE Internship linked full-time opportunity. Amex first conducted an online test on Mettl consisting of 50 MCQs on Java, Node.js, SQL, Design Patterns and Logical Reasoning and 2 coding questions. Out of 105 candidates, 21 were shortlisted for next rounds of the interview to be held at Amex Gurgaon Office.
There were 3 rounds here. In first round, they asked questions from Resume. The Interviewer asked me questions from the skills, I mentioned in my resume. Then I was asked to tell about three of my projects. I was asked to draw the architectures of projects. Second round was a little technical, Interviewer asked me what are the programming languages I am good at. I told him Node.js/JS, Python and Java. Interviewer asked me some questions on Java. In depth knowledge of Java was required to answer the questions. Then I was asked some questions on Python and SQL.
Final Round of the interview was with Engineering Directors of Amex India. The Interview started with my introduction and then I was asked to draw architecture of my best project, followed by discussion on business feasibility of this project. Then the interviewer asked me some questions on Hadoop and MapReduce because I had done a project on it. In the end, I was asked some HR kind of questions. i.e. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Why Amex? Why should I NOT hire you?
5 candidates were selected for the internship offer. For the tip: Do some good projects and be careful of what you write on your Resume.
Shared by Priyansh Rastogi. Get in touch.
Goldman Sachs visited us for the first time. It was pretty unexpected and overwhelming owing to its prestige and it being the first company to visit the campus (Beginning of August). The job description was for Strats Analyst. It came for hiring full-time employees along with interns.
The first round was same for everyone and it consisted of 2 sections. It had 2 sections: Quant and Computer Science Aptitude. It was a 2 hour exam and each aforementioned section had 9 MCQs each. The coding section consisted of 1 coding question as well (Dynamic programming for us). After this round, only 10 people for the fulltime offer and 28 for internship position were considered for the next round. Example questions can be found here. Selection was based on a combination of GPA and performance in the test.
In the second round, there were 3 panels consisting of 1 member each and with each round of interview, a few candidates were shortlisted. The interviews were mostly technical, with the interviewer having a keen look on the Resume, simultaneously. For students who preferred Quant, guesstimate questions were asked.The questions in the interview were mainly related to Data Structures and a few on Web Development (beacuse of my previous projects) that I had mentioned in my resume. I had used platforms like GeeksforGeeks, InterviewBit and Hackerrank to get a good grasp on Data Structures and CS fundamentals. It was a tiring day but I kept my nerves throughtout the process and was quite enthusiatic during the interviews. Some example questions are: What are semaphores and write code to implement it?, Implement Garbage allocation in C.It was a very nice experience and I look forward to join the organization asap.
Goldman Sachs visited us again during the end of December. For this round, 18 students were shortlisted for the process. This shortlisting was again done as a combination of previous test scores, GPA and resume. However, there was no coding round to assess the coding skills. The interview was as follows:
In the end, 6 students in total were selected for the internship.
HP came to us with 2 HR professionals and 5 technical officers, who conducted 3 rounds of selection for candidates. The position for grasps was a job-linked R&D Software Developer Intern. Here is how the rounds were conducted for most people:
One last thing, HP released their selected candidates list in installments. We got to know the first 4 students who got through and had no hopes for any other communications. Then came another list for 2 students followed by another list for 1 student in the same week. The joining date may lie anywhere in between 10-21 st Jan.