Campus Interview part-5

3. WRITTEN TEST----TACTICS

My first written test was for Talisma. I was not shot listed. Afterwards I regret it because in interview they asked only puzzles (my favourite area) and the salary was 37k. Do you know why I did not clear the test? Because I had not carried my watch. Yes, you require a watch to manage the time. Sometimes you need to be as fast as a humming bird.
Based on my experience I have written some tactics to crack the written test. You can follow your own methods also.
If you have sufficient enough time, then you can start from the 1st question and go till last. The problem arises only when the questions are more & time is less. It’s like providing voice, data & multimedia through a narrow band.
After getting the paper it’s better to attend that section which looks easy to you. Many go for quantitative aptitude (numerical) questions. You can go for verbal at any time, but don’t spend much time on verbal because here you may have to guess a lot.
If there is -ve marking don’t guess the answers. You can guess when there is 50% chance. But I suggest don’t guess. If no -ve marks are there, tick all the questions. But beware, “some companies look at number of wrong answers too.


3.1 QUANTITATIVE


i) Here leave the tougher questions and move further.

ii) Manage your time. Often look at the watch.
In PHOENIX written test, 100 questions were to be answered in 30 minutes. So each question was to be answered in 20 seconds. It so happened that the first 10 questions were lengthy (4-5 lines long) and hence took more time for reading them. I realized it sooner and skipped the lengthy questions. I moved further where there were single line easy questions. I finished them all & then came back to the lengthy ones at the end, so I ended up answering 90-95 questions, but many people who started with initial lengthy questions, took much time and ended up answering just 70-80 questions.
Hence plane your time properly.

iii) Representation with figures

As you read a problem or puzzle, you represent it with figures so that your brain can easily retain the problem for long time which makes you solve the problem quicker with faster analysis, for ex: let the question start like this, ‘A&B are couples. C is their son, D is C’s son and E is D’s wife. You can draw like




Or if the question is, A is older than E, E is older than C, D is of same age as A and so on. Then you can draw
A = D > E > C
This representation makes you to compare or analyse the questions asked and answer fastly.
If they say a train of length ‘l’ and tunnel of length ‘L’, then immediately draw a rectangular tunnel and a rectangular train with horizontal intercepts as bogies; indicate the length as ‘L’.

iv) After reading the question and after drawing their figure representations (not for all) subsequently, write down the related formula even if it is as simple as
Speed = d / time

v) If there is speed-distance problem, I suggest solving it at the end. Most of the time such questions eat up your precious time.

vi) No company allows usage of calculators in the written test. Then how do you operate with fractions, say how do you calculate 29.11 x 41.24?
If you start doing it digit by digit, you will never dream of finishing the paper.
Here you can use some mental techniques, like instead of multiplying the fractions, it is better to approximate them to nearest integers. 29.11 can be increased to 30 and 41.24 can be reduced to 40. You should see that the amount that is increased in one number should be proportional to the value that is reduced in the other number. Then you get 30 x 40 = 120, as 29.11 x 41.24 = 120.04964
So you almost got the answer! If the options are 115, 120, 125, 135, you can tick for 120, while approximating even if you get around 118.5, you can tick 120.
If there is something like 41/7.2 then you can approximate 7.2 to 7 & correspondingly reduce the numerator to, say 40.
Then you get 40/7 = 5.71 as 41/7.2 = 5.694: the approximation became almost accurate.
You can master this technique when you practice this extensively. This saves your time like anything.

vii) Use your common sense. If in a problem the height of a mountain is to be calculated and you get the answer as 15 km, you can straight away reject the answer because the highest peak in the world is only 9 km high. Then you can recalculate the problem.
When I was writing for Ivega in a question about averages, they gave the ages of children, their average age etc and asked the age of the father. I calculated fast and got it as 7 years, which was ridiculous. I laughed at myself and solved it again. I got 35 years.

viii) You should always have an eye on the options. If there are ridiculous answers, you can reject them and easily near the right answers.

ix) Many students start solving a problem. They struggle, struggle and don’t get the answer, then decide to leave the question and go for the next one. Thus they lose 5 to 10 minutes easily. To avoid this one should anticipate the time a problem may consume. If you think some problem may consume more time, you skip it. It can always be answered at the end. Again this anticipation comes by practice.

3.2 VERBAL
In verbal, you should always have a look at the options. If they ask the antonym of ‘beautiful’ and say you don’t know the meaning of it. You can look at the options that may read
Ugly
Smart
Handsome
Good looking
In the given options, if you know that choices 2, 3 and 4 mean same thing, then you can blindly go for the first one.




3.3 PUZZLES

Solving puzzles doesn’t come naturally to all. There is no particular rule to solve the puzzles, but there is an approach which can be mastered only by solving numerous puzzles. For the inexperienced ones, I suggest just three things to do while solving a puzzle i.e., just concentrate, concentrate and concentrate. If you don’t understand, read the puzzle three to four times and focus on it. Here you may lose your time in the trade off.