Citelum India Interview Questions and Answers

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - they will ask about some finance knowledge and the rest is just a normal interview question

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: I had a standard resume for this company as per our institute placement cell norms.

Round: Interview
Experience: Arup Engineering directly had an interview round after short listing the students based on their resume. I was the only candidate from Civil Engineering to get shortlisted for the interview round. The interview took about 20 minutes and there was a mix of technical and HR questions. I was asked questions from the areas of interests I had mentioned in my resume. Some very common HR questions were also asked.

General Tips: For written tests of other companies, I did revise concepts from IS 456 for core civil engineering tests. Also, as I had been preparing for CAT, I didn't have much problem with the aptitude based tests.
College Name: IIT ROORKEE

Round: Resume Shortlist
Tips: Maintain a high CGPA

Round: Interview
Experience: Thirty minutes interview on both Technical and HR. Technical questions will be based projects, intern and academics
Tips: Be prepared to answer questions about your minor

College Name: IIT Madras

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Its very easy.

General Tips: For juniors , decide what u want , don’t go for what is happening in society , see what ur good at and prepare accordingly , aim for one thing and proceed. Don’t dig holes every where , focus on one practice math. It will even helpful in core interview
Skill Tips: Start preparing earlier will always be better.
College Name: IIT MADRAS

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: I specified about my extra-curricular activities in an organized manner. I had loads of techno-managerial activities. Whatever extra-curricular activities that I was involved in, I had been pursuing them since my first year, hence I found it necessary to group them in an appropriate manner in the resume. Also I had participated in an event called Robocon, I had done a project and had 2 different internships, I highlighted all these specifically in my resume.
Tips: I referred a site of Princeton University to prepare the resume. It’s a very good website and hugely referred by students for preparing their resume. I also got some valuable insights from my seniors in accordance to building my resume. I intended to join a technical company hence I had framed a technical resume.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: This was a direct personal interview round. They started asking H.R. questions initially and then floated over to the technical questions. In total 8 students were short-listed for this round, 2 from mechanical, 2 from electrical and 2 from civil and each and every student was practically asked the same set of the HR questions.

My interview was taken by 2 people, one Indian and the other was a foreigner. Right at the start of the interview they explained me how the interview would proceed. They even told me that the interview would be conducted only for 20 minutes. They started asking questions like ‘Tell me about yourself.’ and the likes. While I was answering the foreign interviewer seemed to be noting down some points. He also asked me whether I had any knowledge whatsoever regarding the company. I gave him an apt reply based on the knowledge of the company that I possessed.

Further he went into the technical questions. He asked me to state the role of a mechanical engineer in a company like Arup which mainly dealt with engineering design and construction. I said that mechanical engineers look after the refrigeration and the piping system. They also asked me to name the building that fascinated me the most and that was built by Arup. I said I liked the building built by Arup in Hong-Kong which consisted of the overhanging beam. I was not aware of the name of the building. They enlightened me further about that building for themselves.

They asked me about which monument did I like the most. I gave a very honest reply to this. I told them that earlier when I was in an internship at Mumbai I had seen the sky-scrappers for the first time. I told them as to how intriguing I found those huge structures and how different I found the world from the top of these sky-scrappers. They were pretty impressed with my honest reply. They moved on to asking me questions on the sky-scrappers. I started talking on vibrations, but they corrected me stating that this is looked after by the civil engineers. They started dropping some hints. I thought for a moment and finally figured out that the mechanical engineers carried out the works related to energy and sustainable development, refrigeration and ventilation and also the piping systems. I also gave some suitable examples for each of them.

He asked whether I had any experiences of working in a team. I gave them a brief account of the Robocon event that we participated in and how under my leadership we gave the best performance compared to the past three years that IIT- Roorkee participated in the event. The Indian interviewer further inquired about my family background. I told them about my father’s business and convinced them that I would never do business and that I would remain loyal to the company.

College Name: IIT ROORKEE
Motivation: I heard about the company for the first time during the recruitment process. I did not even attend the pre-placement talk held by the company; consequently I was not much aware either about the company or the profile on offer.

Round: Test
Experience: Subject paper related to the branch undertaken in UG/PG.
Tips: Strong academic knowledge proficiency, confidence and having a clear idea about where you would like to see yourself after 5 years with the company would help. Try to be clean and specific about your answers.

Round: Interview
Experience: Face to Face interview with company officials.

General Tips: Keep a strong academic knowledge of your field and show your interest in the company during the interviews as it helps a lot. And try to improve your English proficiency.
Skill Tips: Surely CGPA matters to get shortlisted to Interviews. Extra-Academic involvement matters but to a small extent. Project and internship are most likely to have an impact during the interview phase. Probably companies are more interested in students who have done internships/projects in the similar areas of work matching with the company profile. Doing such a project, which is affecting the society for some good reasons like project for water purification of some locality, environment assessment would be appreciated.
Skills: Quantitative ability, English proficiency, SAP 2000, ETABS, Autocad, Revit, C, C++ language, Orion
College Name: IIT KHARAGPUR

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: CGPA will be a criterion for initial shortlist. A well-written and edited resume helps a lot.

Round: Test
Experience: There are two parts with structural and construction management/architecture with basic questions like bending moment, influence lines from structural and on planning and scheduling, site layout, identification of parts of building components, concrete technology from construction management.

Round: Interview
Experience: In interview questions were all based on the resume, internship and BTP as both matched the work profile.

College Name: IIT Madras