Smartforce It Solutions Interview Questions and Answers

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: I was fulfilling their criteria of 60% through out the academics.

Round: Test
Experience: Aptitude was easy. It contained basics of Quants & Logic . Verbal or English part was bit difficult and length. There was a sectional time and sectional cut off.

Round: Interview
Experience: There was only one interview. Both Technical and HR questions were asked in the same interview. Prepare puzzles from the book Puzzles to puzzle you by Shakuntala Devi. This book helped me a lot. Technical questions were very basic but nearly from every subject.

General Tips: BE CONFIDENT. Speak Confident in Interview even if you are not good with ur english.
Skills: English language, Communication Skills, Reasoning Abilities
College Name: Jawaharlal Nehru Engineering College Aurangabad

Round: Test
Experience: Fifty people appeared for the test out of which sixteen were shortlisted.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: How would you promote a newly launched product? What marketing strategies would you use? They asked very simple case studies.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Test was based on data analysis, mainly maths. The interview was to see how much 'C' and probability you know.
Tips: Customized preparation is must along with good CGPA.

Skill Tips: Work details about your internship helps!
Skills: General knowledge, Technical knowledge
College Name: IIT Madras

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: CGPA + resume + online test - based shortlisting

Round: Test
Experience: Online Test:Quant, DI, verbal, and coding45 minutes coding + 15 minutes verbal + 30 minutes quant
Tips: Time constraint will be the major problem. CAT preparation would sufficeBrush up your coding skills- concentrate in either C or C++ or whichever language you're comfortable withE.g.: The coding question- Write a function to find if a number is palindromeBrush up through basic data structuresGraph theory and few sorting algorithms
Duration: 90 minutes

Round: Interview
Experience: (2 interviews, 20 minutes each)Resume- basedCoding skills and the approach towards the problem will also be tested
Tips: Be thorough with the work done in your internships and projects. Be ready to answer why you are interested in the company.Maintain your confidence level in the interviews. They also look for good communication skills, and even leadership, which is evident from the way you conduct yourself through the interview.Practice quant questions, prepare answers for all the basic HR questions.Coding, go through sorting algorithms, FOR, Graph theory.Digital IC design is very important courses. You should be through with this courses if you are interested in digital profile.

College Name: IIT Madras

Round: Interview
Experience: 2 round of interview
First round- technical (basic infra stuff)Second round- HR skills- just a brush up of civil infra courses like Infrastructure Planning and Management(IPM), ECM.HR preparation – slight basic
First round- they took people with CG>=7.5
They asked me how would you determine toll for the Jamuna Expressway.
Tips: I started in September. Obviously early bird catches the fish.

Round: Interview
Experience: HR preparation – slight basic. My HR was very good. Moreover, my intern was in Mumbai Metro Rail, which helped me push in for infra. Also my PORs gave me an edge over others.
Tips: CFA played a crucial role for my friends.

General Tips: Basically puzzles, as they are helpful in almost every company. It provides you a direction for thinking.
www.brainden.com was a good site.
300,400 puzzles book was very good. (Available in DC++)
Have your resume ready early in the semester.Have mock GDs in your group.Have basic fundamentals about what’s going in the country and world. Don’t RG and prepare in groups.
College Name: IIT MADRAS

Round: Test
Experience: One written test. It contains three sections. Each section is of 20 minutes duration.
Tips: Prepare well with general aptitude and have some basic technical knowledge.
Duration: 60 minutes

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: The topic may be any technical topic or any general matter.
Tips: Maintain your voice pitch, be clear with what you are talking and listen to others also.
Duration: 20 minutes

Round: HR Interview
Experience: He also gave me a situation and asked me how I would react.
Tips: Be realistic with your hobbies and interests. Do not bluff anything.

Skills: Good technical skills., Good communication skills.
College Name: NA

Round: Test
Experience: The written test was quite similar to the typical CAT pattern. It contained sections on Reading Comprehension, Data Interpretation and Mathematics.

Round: Interview
Experience: There were 3 interview rounds:
There were 2 interviewers in the first interview, one was a technical guy and the other was from HR. They asked me a few
very simple puzzles, a few basic programming questions (swapping the value of two variables etc.), questions related to the development cycle of software products.  The HR guy asked stuff like what do you want to achieve in life? Strengths, weaknesses etc.
The second interview was resume based. He asked me about my thesis, internship, various projects, positions of responsibility etc. The third interview was the most important one (and I guess that was the deciding interview). The interviewer started with questions like why finance? Which companies are you sitting for? Then he gave me a case study: “As a banking organization, you have given house loans to a lot of customers. Given the current scenario, you have to profile the customers to which loans have been given based on the chances that they would pay back.” He started with this scenario and as I gradually started analyzing things and proposing models he kept on increasing the complexity saying you don’t have this data, you can’t make that assumption etc. Ultimately he narrowed down it down to a problem which was almost unsolvable. When I got stuck at that he told me that his idea was to just give me a taste of the toughness of problems they encounter in day-to-day business.

General Tips: After spending three or four years enjoying the IITK adventure, one suddenly feels a jolt when he/she arrives in the final year. You find yourself wondering at times, asking yourself the pertinent question, what next? And seriously, the best way to start preparing for placements, GRE, CAT or any other exam for that matter is answering this question honestly. Take a few minutes of your precious time and think what you want to do with your life? Where does your heart truly lie? I know it’s not that easy to decide on this but at least give this a good thought and prioritize your options. Make a list of them on paper if that helps. Once you are done with this, the real planning starts. Take each option one by one and do a truthful analysis of yourself from the perspective of that option. For e.g., say you have CAT as your first priority, and then analyze your strengths and weaknesses from CAT’s perspective. What all areas you need to improve on? How much time and effort would it take? How much time you have got left? By doing this exercise you will really get to know the work that needs to be done and will help you plan for the remaining time.


Resume:
I am sure you would have heard it umpteen times but still I will repeat it to stress the point, take resume making seriously! A good resume would drive your interview in the direction you want it to go, a bad resume on the other hand might end the chances of you even getting interviewed! Start by trying to remember each and every achievement of your life and write it down. Spend a few days on this part till you are sure you have got almost everything. Now write it down properly in formal language in the form of a master resume. This would serve
as a repository of information for all your subsequent resumes. And on top of that, having a fresh memory of your achievements would help you in answering the questions in interviews (especially HR questions). Ideally you should have a separate resume for every company you sit for. The way to do this is make sector specific resumes and edit them accordingly for the different companies of that sector. For example, make a single resume for all the core CSE companies and then you can probably change the list of projects (or their order of appearance) targeting individual companies.

PPTs:
If you are serious about getting job in a company, you cannot afford to miss its pre placement talk. PPT is not only an opportunity to know about the company, but it also gives you the chance to know what the company is looking for. This will give you the basic idea around which you should structure your resume and preparation for that company.
Preparation:
Core Computer Science Companies: All the core CS companies first take a written test which contains questions on C/C++, may have JAVA, UNIX, Algorithms, Data Structures, basics of Operating Systems and Compilers, some questions on basic networking in case the company works in that field. Almost all the companies have a couple of questions in which you are required to write code on paper. Some companies also have a few questions on aptitude, simple maths or data interpretations. You can find the company specific details in the placement feedback guide. This is the major
shortlisting step for core companies, so you cannot take it lightly. You can start preparing by revising the relevant courses you did (like Data Structures, Algorithms, Operating Systems, and Compilers). Practice a few questions available in the various placement preparation guides on LAN. Most importantly, practice writing code on paper. This is something we are not used to and requires some practice. This not only will do you good in the written test, but also help you in the interviews.
Non Core Companies (Finance, Consulting, and Analytics):
The written tests of most of these companies are quite similar to CAT. So if you are not preparing for CAT, get hold of some CAT preparation material for practice. These tests are more speed based than knowledge, so practice is absolutely essential. Revising some basic mathematics (like probability, progressions etc.) would also do you good. Apart from that, you need to have some basic knowledge and understanding of the field the company works in. For example, if you are appearing for a finance company, learn the basic concepts and common terminologies of finance. The least it would do is show that you are sincerely interested in the field the company works in.
College Name: IIT KANPUR

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Being genuine helped, they were trying to help out in answering some questions. Being flexible in outlook helped(rather than being rigid about a profile)

General Tips: GD outcome was CV influenced, Enthusiastic about the company and being open to possibilities helped.
Skills: Economics, Banking
College Name: NA