The Tale of TCS Campus Recruitment

A month before 11th october 2011 -

We had a formal announcement that Tata consultancy Services will be coming to our college on 11th October 2011. There was a huge excitement about it. First company visiting campus for placements. There was some kind of a positive energy everywhere in college. Everyone preparing for the campus selections; solving quant, data interpretation, english,  logical reasoning and having group discussions. The environment was truly awesome. Also , it was our last year in college so everyone was happily sad. :P. Everyone was gearing up for the TCS recruitment battle by learning obscure word which would act as a deterrence from being rejected. 

The Aptitude Exam -

The  preparations for the exam had begun as soon as the last semester began. Everyone had a QUANTS/LR book in hand every time. I guess they took it in the toilets as well. :D :P . Everyone was gearing up for it. We got study material from various placement websites and solved aptitude questions which were asked in other colleges of India when TCS visited their colleges. What everyone found out was the pattern of questions were the same.Every college got the same pattern questions. Only the values were changed. And in some cases, the values matched too. It was a joyous moment for everyone. Everyone started MEMORIZING answers. Many of them even admitted that they had memorized them coz they were unable to solve the same question with different set of values :D

The day of exam ( 11th October 2011) -

I reached college at 7:30. I was really tensed with the exam coz i knew this was the only chance i have. I had a BACK (KT) in a subject known as Digital Logic Design. TCS somehow allowed 2 backs. I knew that no other company would do it so i had to go for it with a full throttle. My turn for the exam came up at 3 pm. Till then , i just revised and revised the stuff i had studied. When the exam began, everyone had the same set of questions we had already studied. Only the data was changed. It was an easy job to solve those questions but the competition was tough as everyone knew these questions and many of us had to be eliminated through this exam.

Finally, in the evening, while i was returning after a game of cricket, i received a call from my friend Ashish Kashyap. He informed me that i have been selected in the Aptitude exam and my HR and technical interview were scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at 3 pm. 137 people were selected for the next round out of 300.It was a joyous moment. I went to a nearby hanuman temple (saat peepli as ajmer ppl call it) and offered my prayers and begged for a job with tcs.

I then rushed to a nearby ATM, took out cash and went straight to a stationary shop; bought all the necessary stuff for the interviews lined up for the next day. I rushed to my room and started preparing for the PI.

HR Interview and Technical Interview - 12th October 2011

I was not confident that i would clear the aptitude exam, so i had studied nothing for the HR and technical interviews. I concentrated on the Aptitude part  so as to at least clear the first hurdle. I was confident with the HR/Managerial part as i had participated in many group discussions and was no longer an introvert/shy person as i used to be when i had joined college. The only problem was the technical interview. I knew and i still know that i am not that good at technical stuff. But somehow i had to clear it. Read all the technical books one by one and somehow managed to read the basics of everything . It was 2 pm by then. Went for a shave. It was my first Shave :P  . Had a nice warm bath and dressed for the interviews. As soon i reached college, the tcs management was already there. They informed us about the life and benefits of TCS and told us about our pay package. Then began the interviews. After a 10 hour long wait; Yes, a 10 HOUR LONG WAIT, i was called for my technical interview. What did i do in these 10 hours????? I just sang for myself. For 10 hours i just sang. Roaming in the college corridor, and whenever a friend used to come out of the interview room, we inquired about the questions being asked by the panelist and who was forwarding and who was rejecting the applications. 

There was a panelist (nicknamed SARDAR as he was a Sikh)  who was rejecting almost all the applications. He had interview about 20-25 people and forwarded applications of only 3-4 people. We named it as REJECTION ROOM. Thankfully, my interview was scheduled in another room with a different panelist.

10 minutes prior to my tech. interview - 

Sardar came into the room where i was supposed to give my interview and took out 4 application forms and asked the coordinator to announce that these guys had to go to him for their interviews. I was among those 4 guys. As soon as i heard my name in the sardar panelist room, I GAVE UP. I gave up because 2 of my best friends went to the same room and gave their interviews but they were rejected despite their technical knowledge being far more widespread than me. I had totally lost all hopes of selection. Phushp Jadoun and Mohit Sharma asked me not to worry and gave me confidence by saying that "Yaar jo hona hai hoga, tu apna best de, tera selection pakka hai". I just went up into the room with full confidence and started my technical interview. I introduced myself and chit chatted with the panelist for sometime before the technical part came up.

First question -  Draw a flow chart of Bubble sort algorithm. Oh My God.... So Easy!!! i did it quickly and drew the flow chart with an example to explain him. Then came some other tough questions. All required to draw flow charts and i did them with ease. But the last question which i don't remember was wrong. I had missed an important step in an algorithm and that was it. My interview was over. I was asked to go to the HR interview room. I dint believe i was called for the next round. I had cleared the technical round and that too SARDAR took the interview. OMG, it was like i had won the world war :D :D :D 

HR interview -

  A nice middle aged man was waiting for me. He took a look at my CV and commented "Oh you play badminton, cricket, table tennis. Thats good. Tell me the names of 5 Indian badminton players :D :D"....... somehow, my TV Viewing habit helped me. I named 7 badminton players playing for India :D :D. Then came the question "What is DRS!!!" I was like, oh it has to be something from the CV. Then i told him everything about the Decision Referral System used in cricket. Then came the toughest part . He asked me to ACT and Perform. YUP.... He gave me a situation "Suppose you have spent 10 years in TCS and you have to sell a product by TCS to a customer, how would you do that. Imagine me as a customer and you as a TCS project manager". I was convincing him and he was not getting convinced at all. It took me 20 minutes to convince him and that was the end of the interview.

It was 1 am by then. I was one of the last people to get interviewed. I took my bike and drove to a nearby dhaba with friends and had aloo parantha and reached my room at 3AM. How to sleep :D, it was the results day. Somehow, i managed to sleep for 2 hours and woke up at 5 am. Chit chatted with my landlord and prayed to god that please help me get this job. I reached college at 8 and tried to get the results out but the result was with the TPO and was to be disclosed at 1 pm. It was a long wait. At 1 pm, a list came up with students that were selected in TCS. I asked someone to checkup my name. He quickly browsed the list and informed my that i have not been selected. I was depressed :( .... felt like crying. But before doing that i thought of checking the list on my own to be double sure about it. When i saw the list, my name was there, placed at 8th position. I was really Jumping off my feet now. A quick call to everyone in the family made it an icing on the cake. It was truly a special moment. Every thing seemed so good. Next day, all the selected students offered sweets to our faculty and hope to those not selected. 

Cant forget this day- 13th October 2011....