EXPERIENCE OF THE ROUNDS COMMENCED IN HCL DRIVE.

PRE PLACEMENT TALK.

About 11’ o clock HR of HCL (Mr. MAYANK) entered the seminar hall. He is a young guy, was wearing black shirt and formal pants. He carried his laptop along with him over his right shoulder and walked to the stage. Well his laptop didn’t get connected to the projector, maybe some technical issue. So he started without showing any presentations. He didn’t use the mic even.

Pre placement talk is a session in which concerned representative of the company (Here the HR) talks to the students/candidates about the companies objectives and achievements. So, Mayank sir started, “Tell me something about my organization!” He started with the companies profile and then one by one, gradually he talked about the key responsibilities for a graduate engineer trainee. He explained each and every round and told us- speak clearly, speak relevant in technical round. He also explained the probation period, its meaning and conditions. It went a long session, yet the interest was kept alive by his intellect.

ENGLISH GRAMMAR TEST

Two more pupils from HCL joined Mayank sir for this round. There were some volunteers, students from the campus, who also assisted the round.

Rules were:-

A question paper will be provided along with answer sheet.

# 20 fill in the blanks questions.

# 10 minutes.

# No negative markings.

# A single tick on the options given in answer  sheet.

We were first made to sit in such a way that in a row of eight seats only four were meant to be seated, with a gap on one seat from another.

Answer sheets were first provided to us for filling up the details, i.e., name, roll number, contact number, email id and date of birth.

It’s funny, but some students, including me, wrote our date of birth wrong as I stated my date of birth- 08th September, 2016(instead of 1995). But I did – 2016 1995 and waited for the question paper. Question paper was provided to us after everyone got the answer sheet and the test began. I completed all the questions within 5 minutes and started rechecking the answers. Don’t know why but while rechecking all the answers seemed wrong to me, so I stopped rechecking as it was surely going to make me do blunders.

Five minutes later our sheets were collected. They arranged the answer sheets and counted them and left us in the seminar hall announcing- results shall be declared within half an hour. So I, along with my friends, came out of the hall and headed for stationary shop to staple my resume and punch the documents properly.

Approximately, after an hour they returned and HR announced the names of the selected ones. Out of 134 candidates 67 cleared this round.

GROUP DISCUSSION

We were then divided into seven groups, six groups consisted of ten members and seventh group consisted of seven members.

Instead of a GD it was a face to face interaction in which a group of ten members sat in a room with a panel to judge. The panel would first ask for the personal introduction from the candidate and then would give a random topic, on which the candidate was required to speak for about one to two minutes.

The groups were then sent to the CRC room, term by term. My group was number four, so we waited for our turn till then we kept discussing how to speak out our introduction and prepared a pattern for the introduction. Then we started to discuss about the answers to the questions that may be asked in the HR round. Funny discussions and chit-chats lessened the pressure of the placement drive. I was no longer worried about the GD round.

Well, finally it was our turn. We entered the room with ‘May I come in Sir’ and stood in a circle. He asked us to sit according the names he called, the first name he called was mine, and hence first chance to speak was mine. This made me nervous. Very nervous! I was sitting straight and had a light smile on my face. I made it purposely. I wanted to look confident.

GD started:

He: So, first we have XYZ, please introduce yourself.

Me: Good Afternoon Sir.

I paused and waited for his reply!

He: Good Afternoon!

Me: Thank you sir for allowing me to introduce myself. My Name is XYZ ABC. I was born and brought up in DEF. I did my schooling from GHI, which is affiliated to ISC board. Currently, I am pursuing, B. TECH degree, EEE as the discipline, from IJK College. My strengths includes that I am an optimistic person and a good grasper. My hobbies are listening songs and blogging.

He: OK XYZ! You said you do blogging!

Me: Yes sir! I do!

He: What blogs you write?

Me: I write stories, musings, snippets, micro tales and short stories.

He: What is the latest story written by you?

Me: A talk with the monster.

He: Ok, please share the story with us.

I then started to tell the summary of the story, but in the middle of my explanation he asked me to stop and that made me hell demotivated. I thought that I must have bored him!

Well, I had no other choice than to wait for the rest nine students to finish their turn so that he could declare the results.

Boy sitting next to me was asked to introduce himself. He did that. Then he was asked to speak on the topic- Mirrors. He started, “Mirrors are something that represent us. They show us what we are.” Then he repeated the first line and finally stopped. The judge said, “Speak up boy! Silence may kill the cat.” He wasn’t able to speak any further. Same happened with another girl who was given the topic- ‘Environment.’ She too spoke one or two lines confidently but then she stopped. One of us was given a topic Goal (Not the football one) and he started to speak very nicely, but then he got distracted and started stammering as the judge started to write his scores. Judge gave him one more chance to speak on the topic – ‘Locomotive.’ He still was very anxious and wasn’t able to speak. In my group topics given to students were – Cricket, ambition, Latest novel read, water, locomotive, mirrors, environment etc.

At the end he announced the results in which me and one more boy of my branch got selected, thus two out of ten were selected.

We two stayed and rests were asked to move out. He then said to us, “Congratulations guys! Any questions you want to ask?” I raised my hand and said, “I do, Sir!” “Yes you may,” he replied very politely. “Were you concerned with our body language and gestures?” “Yes I noticed them as soon as you all entered the room and the way you all grabbed your chair and sat down.” “Thank you Sir,” I said decently.

We were then again sent to another judge for another face to face interaction. We both went to her cabin and sat after taking her permission. She started with me.

She: Introduce yourself.

I gave my introduction.

She: Explain your yesterday. What all you did yesterday?

Me: Thank you for the question Mam. Well, I took a leave from the college so as to prepare for the drive. I visited several websites such as Indiabix, freshers world to read the shared experiences. Then I read some networking notes and some Q/As. As a whole, my yesterday was dedicated for the preparation for HCL drive.

She: Ok, Thank You!

Then she asked my fellow partner, to introduce himself. He did! After that, she asked him to explain his last weekend. He explained well! We both got selected again and were moved to next round – ‘Technical Interview.’

TECHNICAL INTERVIEW

There were three persons who were given three cabins to take interview. Candidates, selected from the GD round, were asked to assemble in a room. So when I entered the room I saw approximately 16/17 candidates waiting for their turn. All were of CS branch. We both candidates from EEE were quite motivated at the very moment. But didn’t had much expectations from the next round as they would be asking questions related to CS/IT stuffs like OS, networking, computer hardware, programming etc and we were of EEE. Now, three candidates were analyzed at a time in three different rooms. Interview began and after few minutes a candidate, whose interview has been conducted, entered the room and told us that they are asking programs like sum of two numbers, reverse a string etc. At once we again got boosted and hoped to get selected in this round too. Our turn came and we both went to the cabins of our respective interviewers.

“May I come in Sir?” I asked politely but firmly, opening the door. “Yes yes, get in!” He replied. I walked near the chair and stood near it. He then asked me to sit. I gently pulled the chair and sat.

He started reading and analyzing my resume. My project attracted him and so he enquired about the project. I explained him and he was impressed. He asked me to write the program of my project. I wrote! Then he took my sheet and wrote 24092016, i.e. 29th September 2016, and asked me to write a program which may tell the day of this date. Guys, I am a EEE student, and few minutes before I was told that they are asking programs for reversing a string to CS students, and this was just so much out of my expectations. But, I logically thought over the concept of calendar and came up with logic and wrote the program. Then he made me write six more programs, which were, palindrome numbers, Armstrong numbers, reverse a hexadecimal number, swap two numbers without using the third variable, find a number in an array and sort an array. I wrote all of them. Between which he checked and confirmed my blog and then asked me, by showing his phone, “Is this your blog?” I replied, “Yes Sir!” He started to read one the posts. After this, he asked, “Which one is faster amongst linear search or binary search?” “BINARY SEARCH!” I replied confidently. “But there is a problem in using it. What is that problem?” “We need our data to be sorted,” I answered. Then a boy came into the room with some cups of tea. The interviewer picked one of them and asked me if I want it. I denied. Then he asked me, “Is there something that I should ask you?” I said, “Layers of OSI!” “Networking!” he exclaimed and continued, “Why layers of OSI?” (Because I have read 100+ question/answers yesterday and I was expecting only them- I wanted to reply) I replied, “Because it amazes me that how people came to TCP/IP from the layers of OSI.” He then asked about the IPVE4 and IPVE6. I answered them too. Then he said, “Ok. That’s all. Wait for the results.” And then I took his permission to leave and finally came out of his cabin. It was a long interview. I waited for the results which took about an hour to be announced.

Four students, including me, were selected; three of CS branch and one (me) of EEE. We now waited for HR round.

HR ROUND

HR entered the cabin and asked us to get in. All four of us entered the room following him. There was a round table, surrounded by five chairs. We waited for him to be seated and then we too grabbed our seat. A boy came into the room with five glasses of water. HR took a glass and asked- anybody needs water? To this, spontaneously, one of us replied-‘no sir.’ I raised my hand asked for water (I was very thirsty) and this made that candidate, who denied it earlier, to ask for it. HR smirked! HR started with me; again the first round was mine. He asked me to introduce myself and while I introduced myself he kept reading/observing my resume. He asked about my blogs and asked my opinion about indo-pak relations (relating to one of my posts of the blog). Then he scolded me, literally scolded me, as there were three mistakes in my resume:-

I didn’t mention that I am from EEE branch.

I didn’t mention my B.TECH average percentage.

I didn’t (forgot to) sign my resume.

Some more talks he did, I didn’t lose the professional grip while talking to him.

I won’t explain what he talked to the rest of the three as they own their story ©copywrite.

But I would share what all he talked to them. He questioned them related to the things present in their resume. He tested their strengths, mentioned in their resume, through different examples. None of us was able to match his intellect.

Then he started to share his experience with the HCL. He made it very clear that in an MNC you cannot be an apple of eye to everyone. He said- There will be a time when your friends are waiting for you outside your house to go for a party but you will be in your room and you’ll be doing coding. There will be always a pressure upon you. I give you 365 days to enjoy. Ghumo, firo, night camping kro jo karna hai abhi karlo.(Enjoy in these days) He also said-  Now focus on your coding skills. Speak coding, eat coding and drink coding. He then wished us luck and congratulated us. Four of us were selected! YAY!

Thanks to GOD, PARENTS, BESTIE, ENTIRE CAMPUS and FRIENDS, for all the support and help.

(NEXT PAE>>)


To read “PREPARATION FOR HCL DRIVE” click here
To read “SOME SUGGESTIONS REGARDING THE PLACEMENTS” click here
To read “THINGS TO REMEMBER BEFORE YOU ATTEND A PLACEMENT DRIVE” click here