Campus Interview part-7

INTERVIEW- TECHNICAL
Usually there are two interviews, one technical and a HR (human resources) . At this stage you are totally prepared and are confident. Let’s see how to fare in the interview.
Dress neatly for the interview, preferably a light shirt with dark pants and dark shoes. You can wear a matching tie. Shave yourself cleanly, take a bath, comb your hair neatly and use a mild deodorant. Keep all your certificates, marks cards and resume in a file and carry your project reports to the interview.
At the interview centre meet the guys who have finished their interview, and ask them what they were asked in the interview. Around 50% of the technical questions that were asked to them will be asked to you. So get to know the answers of those questions.
Enter the interview room with a smile saying ‘may I come in sir?’ go near the chair and shake hands with the interviewer firmly. Generally oldies don’t shake hand and young interviewers prefer doing it. Sit only after they ask you to sit. Sit straight leaning backwards with legs open (don’t cross them). Give a fresh, eager, alert smiling look. Technical interviewers may not ask HR questions, but to start with, they may ask ‘ tell about yourself’, you can tell about yourself in brief (not literally). This will be dealt in HR section. Then they may ask ‘what are your favourite subjects?’ Name at least 2 to3 subjects which you have studied in depth. The questions asked will only be on basics of these subjects. They will surely ask questions about the projects you have done and electives you have mentioned in your bio-data.
The generally asked technical questions are:
Electronics and Communication
Analog circuits
What is semiconductor diode?
How does zener diode work as a voltage regulator?
Explain transfer characteristics of transistor.
How does a rectifier (usually bridged), RC coupled amplifier, oscillator work.
Digital fundamentals
How to realize XOR gate using NAND gates
Half adder, full adder, combinational logic.
Sequential logic, flip flops, RS flip flop, synchronous and asynchronous counters.
Signals - op -amps
what is signal?, convolution, Fourier series etc
opamp, applications, filters, timers etc
Microprocessors
architecture of 8085, 8086 and microcontrollers
functions of pins, interrupts, instructions, interfacing
programming simple programs
Communication
What is AM, FM, multiplexing, TDM, FDM, receivers,
What is PCM, sampling theorem, digital modulation techniques, vocoders, mobile communication (CDMA & GSM).

Computer Science & Engineering
( Example FAQ in interviews)

C, Data structures, C++ & OOPS:

What is dequeue, priority queue, Dangling pointer etc.
Differentiate between Calloc & Malloc, structures & unions, *p++ & ++*p etc
What are: Polymorphism, virtual functions, encapsulation, data hiding etc
Do virtual constructors & destructors exist?
What is the memory used by an integer pointer, float pointer etc.
What are: binary tree, strictly binary tree, completely binary tree, almost complete binary tree, threaded binary tree, etc.
Conversion of expression from infix to postfix & to prefix
Evaluation of postfix and prefix expressions
Given inorder & preorder traversal or inorder & postorder traversal of a tree, build a tree.
Why prototypes are used?
What are inline functions and scope resolution
What are pre-processors? What is their use?
Which is efficient sorting algorithm? Why?

Note: In most of the cases small program code is given & output is asked or to identify the error in it.

Operating Systems:

What is virtual memory? Differentiate between logical & physical memory
What are: demand paging, pure demand paging, page fault, page replacement, page replacement algorithms (LRU, Opt. FCFS etc), thrashing, paging, segmentation, external & internal fragmentation etc
Which technique does DOS (& UNIX) use? (Paging or Segmentation or both….)
What are scheduling algorithms? (FCFS, SJF, RR,…) [IBM]
Why you prefer SJF? Does it have any limitation?(ans: Starvation of longer processes) How do you over come it?( one solution is: by using priority queue with SJF)
What are semaphores and monitors?
What is critical section problem?
What is a process, BCP (Program Control Block)?
What is turnaround time, Throughput [IBM]?
What do you optimize using scheduling algorithms SJF, RR etc?
What is real time operating system, time sharing system, batch processing multiprogramming?
Differentiate Between multitasking and time-sharing system?
What is dead lock? Necessary condition
File accessing technique (direct, sequential)
File allocating techniques (contiguous, linked, indexed)
Free space management (rarely asked)
Head movement algorithms (FCFS, SHORTEST DISTANCE FIRST, SCAN,
C-SCAN, LOOK, C-LOOK etc)

Note: These questions on OS are asked only if you tell OS as your favourite subject.

DBMS:
What is normalization? Why is it needed?
What are insertion, deletion, & modification anomalies?
What is first, second, or third normal forms?
Do you implement it in your project, how explain with example?
What is super key, a key, candidate key, primary key or minimal super key etc?
What is entity integrity, referential integrity etc?

SYETEM SOFTWARE: (rarely asked)
What is an interpreter, differentiate between compiler and interpreter? (MIND TREE)
What are assembler, linker, loader, and dynamic linker?
What are Yacc, Parsing techniques, LR, LL, LALR grammars?



UNIX: (rarely asked)
Expand UNIX, who developed it, when & where?
What is file structure used in UNIX? [IBM]
Differentiate between UNIX & LINUX?
Some commands may be asked.


JAVA & NETWORKING: (Rarely asked)
What is the significant feature of JAVA? (ANS: JVM JAVA virtual machine)
Difference between package, interface, classes etc?
Difference between interfaces & abstract classes?
What is class A, class B, class C, class D addresses? (CIP)
OSI & TCP (IP layer and their function may be asked)
What is routing?
Difference between routes, bridges, & gateways?
What is firewall?
Difference between UDP & TCP?
What is subnet?


Note: question on SS, UNIX, JAVA, NETWORKS, OOPS, C++ are asked only in the pure software companies or big MNC’s or dream companies or if you say it as your favourite subject.






Mechanical related Questions
1) Orthographic views
2) Difference between I and III projection.
3) Difference between Otto cycles and Diesel cycles.
4) What are principal stress and compound stress?
5) State 0th, 1st, 2nd law of thermodynamics.
6) Explain Alumino thermite process.
7) Different types of welding and machining
8) Explain the importance of laser in modern mechanical field.
9) Applications of mechatronics.
[ I feel sorry; I couldn’t add questions from electrical, IT, civil, environmental etc. branches as minorities are always sidelined.
These questions just look simple. They may grill you if your answers don’t look confident or if you try to bluff. If you don’t know, you can say ‘sir we don’t have that in our syllabus’ or ‘sir I am not remembering it’ or ‘I don’t know sir’.
Maintain eye contact with the one you are speaking. While you are speaking give intermediate looks to the other interviewer. When they ask about projects you can spent more time on them, as you will be more comfortable with the projects you have done.
Non-CS students who apply for software companies, should say, they at least know one programming language, generally C; and should be prepared to face questions like what are strings, pointers, header files or simple ‘for loop’ usage programs.
Some software companies ask puzzles in their interview. This is the most challenging job to many people. There are chances that if they solve one or two asked puzzles they may get selected, other wise may get rejected. I have seen many good students struggling with puzzles, with tense and frightened look at the interviewers. Usually the puzzles asked will be simple. So be cool, take the paper and write down the figure representation of the puzzle and analyse it by fully focussing on it. Just forget that in front of you two (or more) enemies are sitting. Many students falter at this stage. One JC student who answered every question fired at him at Satyam interview was finally asked a puzzle.


How do you divide this figure into 7 equal parts?

The boy got tensed, struggled and gave up. He was rejected for not using common sense. By the way the answer was:




So don’t panic, be cool and feel confident. Yes, here a bit of luck is counted.
Speak clearly and convince your answers to them. Don’t rush at your answers and end up stammering, getting confused. Speak slowly and steadily; such are the guys who impress more. Smile in between (if you don’t know the answer) and don’t make too many hand movements. Don’t use complex terminology, which you don’t know. (Practicing mock interviews really helps a lot).
The technical interview may last for 15 to 45 minutes. With good preparation many people find technical interview easy.
If you do technical badly, then there is 90% chance of your rejection, if it was average, then one can do well in HR and get selected.