TCS Placement 2008

After writing on an overview of DA-IICT placements, let me write about each and every company I sat for one by one. As I have got selected in some of them, I would be glad if some one takes tips and is helped by this post.

The first regular mass recruiting company which came for placements at DA-IICT on July 16th, 2008 was TCS. TCS has opened a big branch at Gandhinagar and that’s why was expected to take in big numbers. It presentation started at 5 PM. General opinion was that it didn’t have a lot of professionalism in ppt as the person started speaking about ethics and stuff. But I guess, that’s how TCS is. It has some core values which it abides by because of which it is so successful. A lot of my school friends are placed at TCS. So I was hoping that I also get selected.

After the presentation, TCS had an online exam. I had prepared for the tests from various sources like online papers at freshersworld, Quantitative Aptitude (famous author whose name I have forgotten), Barron antonyms and model test papers and some puzzles from Shakuntala Devi. Students were divided in two batches and I was in the second batch. So i got a gap of 2 hour after the ppt which I was eager kii kab khatam hoga. As first batch students came out, were told that the logical reasoning section was a complete replica from Barrons Model Test papers. There were about 12-15 logical reasoning questions in Barrons. Everyone started rattafying the orders and questions. There were funny ways to remember – if car wala question comes, then its D-A-C-B-E. Actually the questions were not that tough that they could not be solved but why take chances! Everyone wanted to save time and get through this round by hook or by crook.

I was not far behind and to be honest, I also did the same thing :P. The english section has antonyms coming from Barrons. So I memorized them again. As I sat for the test, I was given a login ID and password. Quant was easy and english was ok – not very tough but not very easy also. All the plans that students had prepared to help each other vanished as everyone was busy in his/her own paper. Though some people did help each other I guess.

The LR section as predicted had all three questions from Barrons. I remembered all the answers. So I was elated. Even then, the extra cautious me solved them to double check.

After the test, the screen prompted “You have been selected for the next round”. Wow, amazing feeling 🙂

Some good students surprisedly could not clear the test. Its not that they had not prepared but I guess preparing the right thing mattered.

The next day we had two interviews – one technical and one HR. My interview came late in the afternoon and I went to the room feeling a bit nervous. The person was in the middle ages (I guess late 20s or early 30s). He asked me:

Where are you from Ankit?

Ans: Lucknow Sir.

Tell us something about yourself?

Ans: Ratta hua tha

So which language do you like?

Ans: Java

Question on multithreading?

Ans: I didn’t know the answer. I said something something.

Are you sure?

Ans: No Sir. Not completely

So would you like to ask any questions?

Ans: I asked about the current projects TCS, Gandhinagar is pursuing. He explained about some system they are implementing for Gujarat Police.

That’s it. I left with a short interview of not even 5 minutes. technical interview was not very technical for me. Some students were asked basic OOP questions and C fundamentals.

After my technical interview, I got my result in half an hour. I was selected for next round 🙂

At 5 PM, we had infy ppt which I didn\t want to miss. So my HR interview was scheduled after the ppt and Infosys test at 9 PM.

Exhausted by the Infosys written test which was really of good standard, I came for the TCS HR round.

I was the first person to be interviewed after the Infy ppt and written. They were as it is irked that they had to wait for us !!

Two people were there in the HR round.

So Ankit, attended the Infy ppt. How was it? Compare it with our ppt?

Ans: This was one of those delicate questions for which I could neither praise nor critique Infy ppt which was awesome compared to TCS one. I took the middle path and said, “Sir, TCS ppt won the hearts of people while Infosys ppt won the minds of people. So they were quite different in their approach”.

The guy was impressed by my answer 🙂 Even I was.

What is this Sun Campus Ambassador thing?

Ans: I explained

So you are into open source thing..han..tell us something about Solaris features?

Ans: I was surprised that this is an HR question. Anyways I explained ZFS and Dtrace.

So what is the difference between a 128 bit filesystem and 32 bit filesystem?

Ans: Again, I was wondering is it HR interview?

What would you like to be 5 years from now – a system engineer, an application engineer or project manager.

Ans: I said system engineer as I was VLSI side.

So you like public speaking. Who is your favourite public speaker?

Ans: I just fumbled with this question. I had no names in mind. I said some blah blah about a Picasso autobiography which is no way related to public speaking. Anyways, buying some time, I took the name of Shahrukh Khan ! at last as my favourite public speaker. Astonishingly, the person agreed 🙂

That was it. With the vibes, I was confident that I had a fair chance of making it. After the interview I ran to see my Infy written results where also I had got selected 🙂 As you can see, the whole TCS process was not at all difficult and anyone can clear it. Its just a matter of good communication skills and clever preparation.

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 🙂