Infosys Placement 2008

In a way, the Infosys and TCS placements were in continuation with no gap in between. I had heard that Infosys’s quantitative test was of a really good standard and if you pass that, you are 90% selected. My experience confirms this fact. Out of 106 students at DA-IICT who were selected in written test, 91 were finally selected. The company was a bit disappointed with the performance of students in written exam as it said it had a capacity of 150. It is possible that people were tired after the TCS process. Whatever the reasons be, those who made it in written test had a really good chance to get selected.

Lets start from the presentation first. The presentation of Infosys was damn professional and the speaker just convinced everyone mentally that Infosys is the best option for them. A Mysore training video showed all the facilities Infosys has. By the end of the presentation, everyone had the feeling that isi mein jana hai ab toh. 🙂

After the presentation came the main part. I had a HR interview of TCS on my head which I tried to get over. The paper had English and Quant sections. Some questions were dummy ie. leaving them was a better option. The questions were of the same type as I had seen in old papers and online tests. One tip which everyone should focus is the last year papers of these companies. You get a very fair picture of how to get through the first hurdle.

The exam was coordinated not by Infosys personnel but they had outsourced the whole job of written exam and interviews to some consultancy I think. Only the ppt was conducted by Infosys people. As the results came, everyone who made it was really happy. People here prefer Infosys over TCS because of various reasons:

1. Infosys is more professional organization.

2. Its training is far better than TCS training.

3. Its posting is in Hyderabad or Bangalore rather than the same Gandhinagar where students have spent their 4 years.

The next day we had our interviews. Infosys has no technical interview 🙂 In a way it lays no emphasis whether you have learnt anything in B.Tech or not. They would rather prefer any graduates with the capoacity to learn and are come cheaper than engineers. These days engineers are also quite abundant and in need to companies like Infosys to give them a start – A kind of mutual win-win relationship.

My HR interview was conducted by an aged person in late 30s I guess. He was very proper and looked very smart. We had the following conversation:

So you are giving an Infosys interview for the first time?

Ans: Yes Sir 🙂 (obviously) Infosys has never come before this to recruit us.

What is this work experience?

Ans: Told about the Sun Campus Ambassador Program.

So Sun is giving you a job also after B.Tech?

Ans: No Sir. Its just an internship (though I do hope to get selected at Sun)

He ransacked my whole resume.

So what is this low carrier case study?

Ans: Yes sir. In our course of EBM we made a case study on Low Cost Carriers of India

Can you tell me something about GoAir?

Ans: Told

So your hobby is skits?

Ans: Yes Sir. In my school I did participate in them.

Which is your favorite role?

Ans: Told the role of a sadhu which I had played once.

Can you name some database security and networking companies?

Ans: I must I was the dumbest person on earth to think about this question. I said that I am not much into database security but Sun is a networking company.

No, leave Sun, any other you know of?

Ans: Everything had gone blank by then. No company that I could think of 😦 I said to him, “Sir, I think you will name the company and I will shout “Oh yes !!”

He laughed and said “Cisco”

Ans: Man !! How stupid can I get. Anyways whats done is done. Smiled foolishly. Wanted to kill myself for this.

So name me a few competitors of Cisco.

Ans: Again the same old blank screen in my head. He helped eventually.

Which company’s routers and switches does your college have?

Ans: I thought and I thought. I mess this and selection is gone. By some divine intervention came the answer in head and I exclaimed “D-Link” – huh and took a sigh of relief.

Yes. See you are there.

Ans: Grinned 🙂

Do you visit Infosys website. When was the last time you saw it?

Ans: Yes Sir. Yesterday only I had a look at it.

What unique thing did you find in its site?

Ans: I knew this answer very well. I talked about the flat world concept that they have mentioned at their site.

So what is flat world?

Ans: Told

His final words I still remember – Great Ankit. Very good. This almost confirmed that I will get selected. I walked out relieved and happy. To my surprise as I discussed the networking company question with any friend, each student was able to rattle out at least 5-6 names. Ironically, its me, the stupid who finally made it 🙂 As is said, all’s well that ends well.

Infosys rendered good news to nearly all written selected students. Only those who completely screwed their interviews were rejected. Its process was much better than TCS. The number of students it took was much more than TCS. So in a way Infy should have got the first day slot which TCS got. A pointer for next year.

DA-IICT Placements 2008 Perspective: Part 1

Our college placements have been going on from the past 4 months and students have had the chance to sit in various companies. I have fortunately been able to manage selection in TCS, Infosys, Wipro VLSI and Deloitte Consulting. I thought of penning down my experiences at these companies as they might be helpful for someone in future.

DA-IICT’s placement policy has categorized recruiting companies into two categories: Niche and Regular. The niche companies (called A grade companies) are the ones which offer a package of more than 4 lakhs. They are not mass recruiters and select only a few candidates. On the other hand, regular companies (called B grade companies) are generally mass recruiters or start ups which offer a package below 4. I would like to mention here that DA-IICT emphasizes placement to be a facility and not part of curriculum. This is made to ensure no points of contention in case a student is not to be recruited anywhere. Nonetheless, from a batch of 240 B.Tech students, we have almost 100% placements every year. As a matter of fact, about 25%-50% of 240 students have more than 1 offer. As of today, 15 students are still left to be placed. Reliance, which came in August has not yet announced the results. So many students are yet to receive an official intimation. From a student’s perspective, I really feed disappointed to tell the package Reliance offers. It needs a revamp big time. Due to this low package, Reliance is the last (lastest) option for anyone.

DA-IICT students are allowed to sit in at max two regular and one niche company. In case you get selected in two regular companies, you cannot then sit in any other regular company. However, you can still sit in niche companies. In case, you get selected in one niche company, you are then officially out of placements. Then you can’t sit in any other company (assumed you don’t need to 🙂 ). Many people have issues and complaints with this policy. I would like to mention a few of them:

1. There is no differentiation between a company like Microsoft or Google which offers 8-10 lakhs and a start up Ahmedabad based company like Renovau which offered 4 lakhs (as I remember, it took no one and was black listed). The suggestion is to make three categories – regular, niche and dream. When dream companies like Microsoft and Google come, everyone should be allowed as they do not put a high pointer criteria. Infact, one friend of mine, Shubham Saxena, who is the only person of our batch to get selected in Microsoft (off campus selecttion) does mention that Microsoft does not look for people on the basis of academic performance (his 7 point something pointer being a testimony). Google, though recruits people who are great in acads. Its a famous joke that for getting selected in Google, you need to be a topper from the time you first cried in the hospital ! I have just mentioned two companies but in future, we can have several companies which come in that dream range. I guess above 7 is a good cut off to place a company in dream range.

But college officials feel that DA-IICT is still a new college (it opened in 2001). Only three batches have passed out in industry as of now. So, it would be unwise to put so many complexities in categorization. It might put a bad image (as its is, lot of companies do not know about DA-IICT as all) in the eyes of companies which come for recruitment. I am pretty sure this policy shall have changes as time progresses and our junior batches come for placements.

2. Allowing every person to get selected in 3 companies (2 regular and 1 niche) might increase the choice level of students. But, due to this there occurs an unbalanced scenario when one person is left not recruited and the other having 3 offers in hand. Moreoever, the people who manage more than one placement do not go in mass recruiting companies at all. They generally go for higher studies like MBA and MS. So, though for many bright good pointer students the policy is very favorable (as it gives them number of options), students with low pointers do face problems because of it.

However, even after having such an aggressive policy, we have only 15 students left for placements this year in B.Tech. This shows the potential of our college which has been attracting all sorts of companies and shall be improving year on year. I have not seen so many options being offered to students in any other Indian college and it really is a witness to our college’s nice performance. The worst affected people due to this are the M.Tech and MS (IT) students who have low communication skills, having graduated from lower grade colleges. In my opinion, they need to put in more effort to come at par with B.Tech students in the communication skills department. Many companies do offer higher packages to PGs than UGs. They should make use of it.

3. Many renowned companies still do not come to college as they feel it to be second tier. This is quite natural as our college is relatively new. As our alumni reaches each and every corner of the industry, the scenario will drastically change. Infact, though only 3 batches have passed out, DA-IICT students have carved a wide network – be it B-schools, IT companies or foreign universities. It is popularly observed that though the first placement of a DA-IICT student might be less, his/her second placement (when he switches) after one or years is very good.

After providing the general perspective, let me jot down my personal experiences with placements. I had a rigorous internship of 6 weeks in Delhi at Solid State Physics Laboratory (DRDO) and Sun Microsystems from May to June. Doing RI at two places was not such a prudent decision by me. Anyways, I shall put up my RI experiences in another post.

I returned back to college on 29th June and found out that placements are going to begin from 4th July. Being a VLSI student, the first company I sat for was Open Silicon on July 7th which offered 4 lacs and was niche. I could not get selected in its written only. So, my expedition with companies started with a failure. However, I was more keen on the IT companies even though they were B-grade. They still had big brands and better chances of growth.

Suddenly, we had some rumours in college about a change in placement policy and we were called for a general student-faculty meeting. In this meeting, we were told that the old placement officer had affirmed to all four companies (TCS, Infosys, Accenture and Wipro) that they shall be getting the Day – 1 slot. Due to this, they are in a fix of multiple commitments. In my opinion, the present placement officer is 100 times better than the old one. They came with a unique solution to tackle this situation.

All the four companies will come on 4 consecutive days from July 17th to July 20th and these four days will be considered as one virtual day. All these four companies are B-grade companies as they offer 2.75-3.5 lacs. A student shall be allowed to sit in at max 3 companies and the results of all these four companies will be declared simultaneously. However, if a person sits for the 3rd company, he has to fill a form stating that it is his second option. So, in all a student can get selected in 3 regular companies (earlier it was 2). In case, a person gets selected in 3 companies, he can then sit in niche companies only. In case he gets selected in 1 or 2 companies, he then can sit for other B-grade companies coming after 20th July and has one regular company selection left to exercise.

Everyone happily agreed to the policy as it gave them more options and better chance to get selected in big IT companies. However, Accenture didn’t come and we were left with TCS, Infosys and Wipro. So all students were allowed to sit in all three and results were declared on 20th July night.

A company’s presentation and written test used to happen in the evening of the previous day and the interviews of selected candidates was scheduled next day. In the middle of all this, we got hardly any sleep 🙂 but no one had any complains !!

TCS came on 16th for written test and completed all its tests and interviews by 17th night. Infy came on 17th evening and completed its process on 18th evening. Wipro came on 20th July with two profiles of VLSI and IT. TCS and Infy gave a package of 3,25 and Wipro 2.75. However, Wipro VLSI was heard to be good.

After sitting in TCS and Infy, I was quite hopeful that I will get selected in atleast in one of them. My Infy interview had gone very nice. Lot of students did not sit for Wipro as they wanted to keep their B-grade option open for other companies scheduled after 20th like Persistent.

I sat in Wipro as it had VLSI profile. Those 4 days are memorable for each DA-IICT student and each student has had his set of experiences about it. Everyone was waiting desparately for the results to be announced. Finally at 10 PM, all the three companies’ results were put up. By God’s grace, I got selected in all 3 companies. TCS took 60 students, Infy 91 (though they had a target of 150) and Wipro took 11 in VLSI and about 35 in IT (I think).

A lot of people managed more than 1 selection while about half the batch was still unplaced. So students had mixed feelings. In my wing, nearly everyone was placed. So we went to celebrate at CCD and started informing parents and friends. A lot of pics of our celebration are placed in my Orkut album.

Orkut Album

I have been able to mention only about the first few days of placements and have so many other stories. However, the blog has become really big and I shall continue the topic in later posts. I shall also write separate posts for each company I sat. My idea to blog about the placements was to give an insight into our new college, DA-IICT globally. I hope I could come up with a neutral and correct description. Please post your comments about your experiences and reviews.

Thanks 🙂