Smifs Interview Questions and Answers

Round: Test
Experience: Questions of verbal and logical reasoning, data interpretation etc.
Duration: 90-120 minutes

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: The topic will be relevant to the times and you will have
about 2 minutes of speaking time, in total, if you're lucky. Make that count.
The GD topic was "FDI in Indian Economy". You could take it in a positive or negative stride. However, the stand had to be backed up by solid facts and emphatic statements. Some keywords were, loss of jobs(-), R&D(+), corruption and red tapism(-), higher prices for raw materials(+) etc.
Tips: GDs have a tendency to become a shouting match, the end result in such cases is the entire group getting rejected. If however, it does become a slugfest, the better option is to calm the offended party by playing the
moderator. The objective of any healthy group discussion is listening to everybody's opinion and offering arguments or counter arguments till most of the people are convinced and find a common ground. Opening
the GD can fetch you important points but do so only if you are immensely confident about what you are going to say. There are numerous sites/blogs out there which can help you with the nuances of a GD, but nothing beats practise and mock runs.
Duration: 15-20 minutes

Round: Interview
Experience: Personal Interviews(10-30 min)- If you've sufficiently impressed the interviewer during the interview process, it'll be a breeze. If you've left him on the fence, he'll grill you enough till he reaches a decision.
Know your CV inside out, rehearse the questions with a friend, attend workshops organised by the Placement Office. The interviewer has the right to question ANYTHING(hobbies/languages/extra currics)
you put on your CV.

College Name: IIT Roorkee

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: Case Study Interview
Experience: Its not an elimination round, you can go with your informal clothes on.
Tips: Any one who has prepared for day 1 and day 2 companies will get through this round. Just read news papers and learn to shoot graphs here and there even if it has got absolutely no facts and definitely practice to write a lot. Be prepared with both for and against the topic coz the interviewer keeps changing the topic in between the GD.The topic was same as that of the case study Don’t write bullet-ed points, this makes your cases look small. Try applying your vocabulary spectrum. Try to give exhibits even if you don’t know any facts.

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: 12 students on the table, one interviewer.
Tips: Play old school .But don’t wait for your chance, just break into it, but with a gentlemanly attitude. Try giving examples. Throw arbitrary facts to prove your points, if you don’t remember the real figures.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Two interviewee were present.
Tips: Don’t start with your brilliancein your core subject. Tell them you hate your department. Convince them that you won’t ditch them for a Ph.D or an MBA. Tell them you have a friend at Wipro who keeps giving you intel about how great the company is. Look confident and if at times you can be funny, they will appreciate it!!

Skill Tips: 8 and above CGPA is required. Later it was lowered to 7.9, mine was 7.98. They mainly ask HR questions, so being involved in Extra-academic activities gives you more that you can talk of. I had an eye for coding in C++. Helped me on this, but my extra-acads list was enough. Coding was just a bonus. If they are non core its better. But my both the internships were core based. You just have to convince them why you are dropping from core.
College Name: IIT KHARAGPUR

Round: Interview
Experience: This round went pretty much well and i answered them fairly and easily.

Round: Interview
Experience: This was the round where i felt bit nervous but as i was known well my my subjects i answered them all perfectly.
Tips: Brush up your skills regularly.

General Tips: Have a good sense of your clothing,have confidence on what you speak.
Skills: Technical skills , General Knowledge
College Name: IIT ROORKEE
Motivation: i am a self motivator

Round: Test
Experience: My first Interview was for the post of Network Engineer in HCL Technologies held in April 21, 2009. In the morning in that day at 9.00 AM I am with dressed up with formal dress code, black shoes and a tie. I waited there for around 2 hours for the company officials to come. They came at around 11 AM. Then they started giving information about HCL Infosystems through a powerpoint presentation and what all procedure they are going to follow in their recruitment process.
The recruitment process consisted of two sections:
1. Aptitude Test
2. Personal Interview.
The Aptitude test consisted of 30 questions in Quantitative Aptitude and 30 questions in Non Verbal Reasoning and the time allotted to complete the test is 60 minutes. The questions were quite tough and challenging. It was evident that the HR were expecting more talents for their company. I could answer about 40 questions and there were no negative marks so I answered all the questions. I was quite confident that the cutoff would be less that 40. We waited for the results of Aptitude Test. The result came around 2.30 PM. About 45 candidates were selected for the personal interview and I am glad that I am one of them. From the results we could guess that the cutoff was 35. The Personal Interview was at 2 PM after lunch. At 2 PM we waited there for Personal interviewer. Four different panels were there for conducting the interview. My turn came at evening 5 PM.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: HR: Are you Anbarasan?
Me: Yes Sir.
HR: Take your seat.
Me: Thank You Sir.
HR: Introduce Yourself Anbarasan.
Me: (I gave a brief Introduction about myself)
HR: What is your father?
me: He is a Civil Engineer Sir.
HR: Why didnt you join civil branch in engineering
me: I am more interested in Computers than civil Sir.
HR: What is your mother?
me: She is a housewife Sir.
HR: What is your career Objective!
me: My career objective is to work in a challenging environment where I could
constantly upgrade my knowledge thereby contributing for the organisation where 
I work and my professional growth as well. And my life ambition is to become a 
reputed Ethical Hacker.
HR: Good. Who is your role model?
me: Bill Gates Sir. Because he is the best programmer in the world. I like his thoughts more than his programming. He became the best businessman in the world because of his great thinking. He is a really innovative and inspiring personnel.
(Then He asked questions from all topics in Networking . As I am good in Networking I could answer his questions. I could see that he is satisfied with my answers.)
HR: How did you learn Ethical Hacking?
me: I learned through lectures of Ankit Fadia Sir. But still I need to learn more in Ethical Hacking.
HR: Will you join HCL if you were placed anywhere?
me: Sure Sir. When it is HCL, I wont hesitate sir.
HR: Your Personal Interview session ends here. You can leave and wait for the results
me: Thank you, Sir. 
That interview session took 30 minutes to complete. And the result came at 6.30 PM. Out of 45 students, 30 got placed. I was also got selected in the interview. Almost all of friends got selected. I was glad that I got the Network Engineer Job. That was the most happiest moment I ever had.

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

General Tips: Company was very impressed and wanted to make an offer but with a different profile in the interview itself but I was consistent on what I wanted and through strong negotiation finally convinced them that I am fit for Investment banking or global markets and hence that worked
Skills: Economics, Banking
College Name: NA