Interview Experiences

Hey there everyone! This is Ayush Kumar from Bhopal.

I am pursuing my B.E. from Oriental Institute of Science and Technology with Information Technology Stream. This article is about my experience of the placement drive of Mphasis Ltd. for the profile of Associate Software Engineer that took place in my college on 13th and 14th of October 2018.

Before I start, a big heartfelt thanks to PrepInsta for this opportunity.

Mphasis visted a total of three colleges in Bhopal. Namely: Oriental Group, TIT Group, and IES group in the span of 4 days starting with IES Group on 11th. They were only hiring from the batch of 2019. The selection of any student was based on his performance in the following four rounds:

1. AMCAT based test that had the following four sections:

•  English proficiency covering grammar, comprehension, and word power.
•  Quantitative aptitude.
•  Logical reasoning.
•  Technical questions.

2. AMCAT’s SVAR test.

3. Technical Interview.

4. HR Interview.

AMCAT based test For those who have ever taken AMCAT it needs no introduction. For those who haven’t it is an adaptive test that starts at a neutral level for all candidates but depending upon the answer: correct or incorrect, it asks a more difficult or less difficult question to the student. Maximum marks obtained can be 900 in any section. there is always a minimum number of questions that one has to attempt in a section or his score is evaluated as zero.

If a student attempts just the minimum number of questions and that too all wrong he still gets some marks, 100 to be precise.

Usually AMCAT allows a student to choose sections based on his/her stream but since this was a special test designed for Mphasis the sections were fixed. And, students were to answer IT/CSE technical questions, irrespective of his/her branch.

English section had two paragraph based questions, 3-4 para jumbles, and rest from grammar and vocabulary.

Since it is adaptive no one can really comment on the difficulty level but yes difficult questions carry more marks so try to get more answers correct.

Quantitative aptitude and Logical reasoning sections were pretty basic but again if you get correct answers one after another it might be of some trouble to you.

Other than that it pretty mush covered most if the topics for which you can avail infinite amount of material on PrepInsta. 

So, you must go through them. Technical questions covered basic C programming code correction or code output prediction, Operating System questions and data structures. And, again goes without saying that the difficulty depends on you.

In my college, students appeared in groups of 80-90 students and 4 such groups took the test. From each group they shortlisted top 10 students to go for the next rounds.

Before going for our SVAR test we were briefed by the Company’s HR about the job profile and things that were expected from all of us like we can’t have preferences in location, shifts or even technology for that matter.

SVAR Test

SVAR test  is an IVR based communication level evaluator. everyone was given a sheet of paper on which all the information and quest were printed. It consists of 6 sections.

• The first section is to read out 12 sentences that are there on the paper.
• Third and fourth sections were to evaluate grammar and vocabulary.
• Fifth section was to answer the questions asked by the system based on the conversation first read out by the system.

It is a fairly long paragraph and questions were tricky. It tries to confuse you for simple answers.

Last section was to speak on the randomly given topic for 45 seconds. Preparation time is 20 seconds. Topics were pretty basic like ‘Describe a school scene’, Describe a traffic scene, etc. Result for this section was declared almost instantly. Maximum marks is 90 and passing is 58. After these two rounds 38 students were shortlisted for the further rounds of interview.

Technical Interview

There were two panels consisting of single interviewers. And, they had major difference in their styles of interviewing. In one, students were asked to write basic programs like pattern printing, prime number, fibbonacci, etc. And, in most cases 5-6 programs were asked. While the other panel questioning was done from C,C++. Out of which Pointer seemed to be a favorite topic and Dangling pointer the most asked question almost everyone. Questions asked to me:

• Tell me something about yourself that is not in the resume.
• Which language do you know?
• What is the difference between C and C++? 
• What is pointer? 
• Why pointer? 
• Types of pointer. 
• Dangling pointer. 

Project description. After this round merely 23 students were left for the final round of HR Interview out of the 350+ students who appeared.

HR Interview

After three rounds of steep competition and grilling on all major bases we were told that the HR Interview would be a rather basic one covering the most common questions. But to be on the safe side we preferred gathering all the information about the company that we could.

• Introduce yourself. 
• Cross questioning during introduction mostly from family details and project.
• Strengths and Weaknesses.

After HR round 21 students were finally selected.

I would again extend my thanks to PrepInsta for this opportunity and also for helping me prepare. That’s all folks. Thank you.