Business Communication

• Name: Ria Subramanyam
• College: National Institute of Technology, Puducherry
• Branch: Computer Science
• Type of interview: ON-Campus Interview

Student Interview

I was very excited when our TPO (training and placement officer) announced that the recruitment drive for the final year would begin from the next month. This year IBM GBS (Global Business Services) also visited our campus for the recruitment drive. So I started my preparation for the drive through practice papers available on PerpInsta and referred several competitive books as well.

Written Round

All the final year students eligible for the IBM enrolled for the written paper. There were three sections in the paper,

• Quantitative Ability
• Number System/Logical reasoning
• Business Communication Test

There were 18 questions related to the Number series topics, and 18 questions were related to General Aptitude topics such as Profit & Loss, Percentages, and Distances & work. There was a predefined time limit of 2 min 15 seconds for every question.

In the business communication section, there were 22 MCQ questions and the total time allotted was 20 minutes. There were questions related to active /passive voice, synonyms, antonyms, fill in the blanks. Also, there were few questions on effective email writing.

The result of the written paper was declared within an hour. Only 240 students out of 500 qualified for the next round. Luckily I was able to cross the cutoff and was selected for the next round. The shortlisted students were asked to report in the college auditorium, for the face to face rounds. We were informed that there would be just one face to face round which will be Technical as well as HR.

Face to Face Interview

The interview was held in the college seminar hall. The interviewer asked me to Introduce myself and then began asking technical questions.

• Your resume says you are CCNA and OCJP certified, so let’s have a quick session on these?
• What is a subnet mask?
• Draw the OSI Physical Layer.
• Write code to remove duplicity from the array in JAVA.
• How do you implement the concept of inheritance in JAVA?
• Tell us about your major project, what was your approach?
• Can you draw its ER Diagram?
• Rate yourself out of 10, for working on group projects.
• Are you planning for further studies, I mean M.B.A. or M. Tech?
• Why do you want to join IBM?
• If selected, how will you be beneficial for us?

The interview went for around 45-50 minutes, and in the end, the interviewer asked me to wait for the results.

Soon the results were announced; however, only 35 students out of 240 were selected. Fortunately, I was amongst those 35. The offer letter for the post of Associate System Engineer was handed to me at the same time. I received the joining letter after two months.