Placed in Accenture

A blog which i always wanted to write........the experience abt my 1st placement interview.......but never thought i ll write this when i am very depressed after not able to clear even the written test of Deshaw and Microsoft..............ok let me begin from 27th june 2008.

27th june 2008
After my days internship work at Aricent I was on my way back to home,when my friend shanthakumar msged me and said he was very vexed abt being not selected at TCS, so he asked me wat he needs to do, my friend praveen had already planned to come to my house to prepare for Accenture .I too had been busy with my internship project so i too had nt prepared anything so all 3 of us planned to meet in my home on 28th dats the saturday.

28th june 2008
Well my 2 friends reached my home by 11,i jus ran them thru all the material i had collected for accenture and GD it was some 30 mb,luckily we started off with some tech,like basic difference between c and c++,difference between c++ and java etc..we landed into C++,praveen who used to be the only guy awake during jayshree mam's classes is a maestro in c++,he recollected us all the basics like virtual function,abstract class etc...
then we had lunch
then i showed them the 2008 pattern,we were by now thorough with the pattern[i ll discuss the pattern later coz its the same which we attended] then it was GD time,we tuk up almost all the topics nearly some 50 which are listed in all websites as popular gd topics,then it was by 6:30 my friends left.This was the first time in my life i did a group studies and it ensured me a job at Accenture

29th june 2008
I started off playing Age of Mythology twice and then watching Annamalai movie on DVD[thalaivar movie always gives lots of confidence to me...especially the song Vetri nichayam]....it was almost evening and i was home alone since every1 at home left for pondicherry
it was by 6 that i remembered that tomoro is my 1st placement...i hurriedly started off with some tech coz i was confident of clearing apps given the previous day's practice...gd was the moment's game so nothing can be said ....all i cud do was some tech..so i recollected everything in data structures and algorithms[my primary aoi] and then OS was not wat i feared it was a breeze[my second aoi].....still to touch OOP......it was 8:30 i came back to the accenture apps pattern and revised everything....my parents return and now comes my dad's part in my placement he discussed with me all the social issues and current affairs from nuclear deal till sethusamudram........ from maran-karunanidhi clash till jayalalitha's corruption for nearly half hour......

30th june 2008
Its the d-day as usual and b4 begining any important thing i did the usual thing i do to my Lord Murugar...with the confidence given by my mom and the confidence i have on my lord...i left home at 7:29[7-30 to 9:00 was raahukaalam]reached velachery by 8:10 ...i cud nt find any 21L..i was actually standing at the wrong place...ran and caught up the bus in running at the opposite side.....reached ceg at exactly 9...the ppt had nt yet started...all my classmates were waiting and preparing seriously...i jus had my resume and water bottle nothing else to prepare[luckily i brought the resume]the ppt began the accenture ppl explained everything abt the salary,higher study options etc.,one incident i need to mention here...a boy during the doubts session went upto the mike and asked "Why are IT companies lieing like this even TCS sed it needed 1300 but it took only 420 same case with wipro ...are you also lieing??????"
Anyway the test started at 11....
its the well known pattern we had prepared
Part-A[verbal]20 questions
4-preposition
3-Synonyms
3-Articles[a,an,the]...a bit confusing
2-Reading comprehension[very time consuming][5 questions in each]
Part-B[Quantitative]20 questions
Venn diagram,time and distance[mostly train problems],time and work,directions related
4 questions on $*...convert to binary and substitute 1-$ and 0-*
Part-C[Logical thinking]15 questions
5 questions checking if both are same
5 questions substitute if- as / , * as + etc
[2 question to find value and 3 question to verify if expression is true..these 3 are time consuming]
5-questions on data sufficiency

total 55 questions... 1 hour
i answered them in order leaving out reading comprehension and the 3 timesonsuming problem to check expression. then i went back to them after finishing all i had 5 minutes left i went back to RC ...i read the passage completely then found many mistakes in my answer i corrected all of them[you have to be very fast with other questions so that you save time for RC.....and many may advice you to read the questions and find the answer in the passage..its really tuff ..coz i did the same mistake...and answeed many wrongly only when i read the passage completely i found my mistakes]
the we need to write an essay for 10 minutes.our topic was "My college life"

the test result wud be announce in 1 hr 15 min ...so approximately 1:30..me,praveen and shanthakumar had our lunch at the ceg canteen and went back to vivekananda auditorium by 2:30 for results....very tense moment they were announcing the result by GD panel wise...12 student per panel,praveen's name came in 6th panel,shanthakumar's came in 13th panel...i still waiting biting my nails...very tense......my name was the last name in the 18th panel
there were totally 21 panels ..so 252 students shortlisted out off 900 odd who wrote the written test

Now GD.... in my panel 11 were ceg guys...all were peters in english...and myself and mervin[ECE] where from MIT..while we were waiting for our turn of GD at the auditorium...these ceg peters started off discussing the best way so that they get selected like starting off when the neighbour stops.....all stuffs...me and mervin were sitting quiet......we started a conversation but they kept ignoring us...pozhachu poranga GD la pathukalaam
GD started by 3...the coordinator asked if we had any topic ..those guys had already decided the topic it seems it was "IPL impact on indian cricket".The coordinator agreed.And smartly mervin started off first...coz he never got another chance to speak when these guys where speaking.I attempted nearly 4 times to put forth my point but they never let me speak, abiding to the GD norms,i stopped myself and it went on i never got a chance to speak,finally the coordinator said Karthik you speak, dis is what i spoke "WELL......As far as IPL is concerned it is jus a commercial venture and it does nt have much of the spirit of cricket in it ,bringing in big corporates and bollywood stars may have raked the revenue but it has nt done much good to cricket as we have seen only most of the international players have been instrumental in their teams winning.Instead ICL which gave ample oppurtunities to budding youngsters would be a better option".The others started off opposing me "This is ridiculous..ICL is completely different from IPL".The coordinator said "Lets stop it here......[he paused for a few seconds]....All of you are selected."

GD over .....and i am confident about my technical skills....i have never doubted it so am very confident about my interview...they took us to a room and made us fill a form after filling it took us to the drawing hal of ceg where simultaneously tech and hr interview were going on....mine first was tech......in the meantime called up parthiban coz i had few doubts in some of my projects coz not only me none of us had prepared for the interview.He searched the net and replied me.My 1st was tech.the person was some 35-40 years old...very calm
Interviewer:Tell me about yourself
Me:told the usual stuff
[in the meantime he went thru my resume]
Interviewer:what is your favourite subject
Me:data structures
Interviewer:tell me 10 important factors you need to consider while doing data structure programs
Me:I had no clue about it...i jus put maintainence and told all stories about malloc,delete etc
Interviewer:That was nt what i expected
[very demoralising for me at begining itself]
well then what all databases you have exposure on
Me:DB2,Oracle,Mysql
:have you done any projects in it
Interviewer:yes explained my stocks management project for IT dept
Me:draw the ER diagram for it
Interviewer:[he gave me a table and asked to write sql for some conditions]
Me:[wrote it]
Interviewer:thre is a minor error in your code
[before i could rectify he got up came near me went thru my resume again]
Interviewer:You have won many coding contests what was the language you used
Me:C++
Interviewer:Write a code to print this pattern given 'n' value
1
121
12321
1234321
[coding has never been my problem i was very fast at that instance than i am usually.And i showed him the code]
Interviewer:That was really fast.It has jus crossed 1 minute[he has been noting the time i took for coding it seems] ok explain it now
[explained it.he was very impressed this is the turning point in my interview......it may be a simple code but i felt i had impressed him at this point]
Interviewer:Ok karthik thats all i have for you for now
Me:Thank you sir

It was 6 pm by now.Then those who had completed both HR and tech were asked to leave and those completed only one interview were asked to wait in a room

Some were asked to leave after 1st interview
When we were waiting in the room,the merittrac ppl came and took some of us .....ten students at once i think..where taken to the interview they had nt attended.....i was taken by around 7:30 for my HR interview.


Me:Gud evening sir
Interviewer:gud evening karthik..tell me abt urself
Me:[the same question and i repeated the same answer]
Interviewer:[he went thru my resume and noted my projects]Are these the projects you did??
Me:Yes sir during our projects done for lab work
Interviewer:Which is your favourite project
Me:Spellchecker
Interviewer:Could you elaborate on it
Me:Explained it..
Interviewer:Why did you prefer Accenture
Me:Well it is a huge organization spread across 49 countries......
Interviewer:Ya i know that.i want to know why you prefered accenture
Me:Because unlike other companies like cts or tcs which recruit in 1000s accenture recruits only around 100 so i wanna be unique among others,dats y i waited for accenture skipping cts,tcs and wipro[this is the actual truth]
Interviewer:ok then what did u like in accenture today
Me:the way everything was organized and everything is getting over today itself
Interviewer:but many felt it wud be better if conducted for 2 days
Me:maybe they wud hav got time to prepare....but this was a surprise to everyone
Interviewer:Accenture is well versed in throwing surprises
Me:I too like surprises[this is the point i felt i had impressed him]
Interviewer:Do you know that there is 1 year service agreement
Me:Yes sir
Interviewer:are you ready to sign the bond
Me:yes sir
Interviewer:are u ready to work at anywhere in India maybe bangalore or pune
Me:i am ready to work anywhere in the world provided the work gives me job satisfaction
Interviewer:impressive[this word from the interviewer confirmed me that i had been selected]Ok karthik thats the end of the interview
Me:Thank you sir


It was 8:30 pm by now...I left home
Some of my friends had their interview for the next day
the results where announced by 2:00 pm
And i was at home .......my friends messaged me that i had been selected

Totally around 800 attended,252 shortlisted in written test,202 shortlisted in GD,144 finally selected
9 from my IT department frm MIT