This was normal campus drive for Jabalpur (MP). Both IT and non IT branches were allowed to take part in prelims, which is a online test via intranet. The test was objective and divided in three parts: aptitude, English and logical reasoning. After the test, the shortlisted students were informed to give interview with HR team. The interview was organized in the college.
There were five rooms with five teams (each consist of two members) for HR round and around 10-15 engineering subject experts in a big conference room for technical round. The technical round starts around 12:30 afternoon. Each personal is interviewing one student. In the interview, the personal starts with inquiring two favorite subjects from syllabus. They have the university syllabus to cross verify the subjects and topics chosen by students. They asks for normal what and how questions for the syllabus topics and give some practical scenarios to work upon. Also some small logical programs like printing tables, different series of *, Fibonacci series etc in C and basic concepts like integer range, loops, break or continue in C etc were part of technical. If the student was able to clear technical, he must wait for his turn to undergo HR round. The HR interviewers were skilled interviewers with around 5-10 years of experience.
The HR rounds starts around 8:30 PM at night and continued till 2:30 AM late-night. I had been interviewed around 1:30 AM in the cold night of January. The HR round starts with the usual question "Tell me about yourself?", followed by "Being with a non-IT engg. branch (Industrial Engineering) why you want to join TCS ". The answer were usual as practiced before. The sequence was further continued as usual conversation : "Tell us about your family", "What is good in your city", "What are your expectations from TCS", "Why your grades were not good in the starting semesters", "Why you took admission on this branch rather than IT or CS engg.". At the beginning, there was a little nervousness in my mind, but as I propagated, my comfort level got increased. At last there was a practical question bang to me: "How drawing helps in software industry" (This was the last question and was suddenly asked by the senior HR Manager as he was looking to the school level drawing certificates in CV)
The answer for this question comes almost from nowhere: "Well anywhere where some product is manufactured, be it a hardware or a software, the product life cycle has to be implemented. The life-cycle starts from requirement gathering and then brainstorming for conclusion for final requirements. After requirement gathering, the next is to design the product. for Hardware it is actual designs constructed by mechanical drawing, for software it is basically logic design, which is achieved in form of algorithms and then flow-charts. Flow-charts are also drawings. Thus drawing play a vital role in software industry by serving as the building block for software". I was told to wait outside after this question. Around 2:30 AM, we have informed to visit around 3:00 PM for final list. Around 3:00 PM, we have informed to gather on the assembly hall and then TCS HR team started announcing the names of selected students. Around 5:00, TCS HR team have announced that there are only 10 names left in the list. I have filled with nervousness as my name was not announced till then. In the last ten students, list at last my name was announced as 7th last for the day. we have informed to submit CV with cell number and email ID. After graduation, we have informed via email to prepare list of documents and join 4 months training program known as Initial Training Program in Gandhinagar Training Center. After conceptual training (for 2 months) on topics like programming basics, procedural programming basics, oops concepts, DBMS basics, trainees were allotted a mainstream technology such as Java, .NET, Mainframs, C/C++, the trainees were sent to a base delivery location and they have continued their stream training in their base delivery location. After 2 months of stram training, the trainees were allotted the business units on round robin fashion and then as per project requirements, they were interviewed and allotted to the project.
