“Amrendra Pratap Singh” who was interned at “Samsung” talks about his interview experience and some other tips to prepare for placement season. Check out what he says about the placement season.
His Interview was taken by Unsaid Talks Interviewer: “Riya”
Profile offered: Research Intern
Job Location: Noida
Branch and Graduation Year: COE- 2023
CGPA cutoff: 7
Interview Difficulty Level: On a scale of 1 to 10, I will rate it somewhere around 7.
Here are the questions we asked Amrendra Pratap Singh to know about his interview experience.
Question 1: Introduce yourself to our readers.
Answer: My name is Amrendra Pratap Singh. I am from Jharkhand. My branch is COE. I started my placement preparation in 3rd year actually on the advice of a senior. I was very consistent with DSA, so before my interview, I really had command over DSA. Also, I have built some basic projects in web development.
Question 2: Was there any internal CGPA cutoff? If yes, then how much ?
Answer: Yes, there was a minimum CGPA criterion of 7.5
Question 3: What was the procedure of the placement that took place? (Shortlisting criteria/ coding or aptitude test/ number of interviews)
Answer: There was an initial coding assessment and 1 technical, and then an HR round for me. 12 students cleared the coding assessment and appeared for the first technical interview. After this 4 were directly sent to the HR round and 3 students were called for one more technical interview. Ultimately 6 students went to the HR round and all were offered roles. I was lucky enough and was sent directly to the HR round after my first technical interview.
Question 4: Tell us about the written/online test. (Aptitude, Coding, Test Platform, etc)
Answer: The online assessment round was conducted offline. There was a question on recursion. In this, we had to pass the given 50 test cases. Only those students were selected who cleared all the test cases. The time given was 3 hours. The platform was their own.
Question 5: Tell us about Interview Round 1 including the questions that were asked.
Answer: My interviewer was quite friendly. He first asked me which brand of mobile I had. I told him that I am using a Xiaomi device right now, and he asked why not Samsung. To this, I answered that I am currently using it for budget reasons. He then asked me which mobile device would I buy if I had plenty of money. So I answered that I would buy a Samsung Note, but then he told me that Samsung had discontinued the Note series. Then I said that I would purchase the S series model, and by chance, the interviewer had the same model. He then asked what features would I want to include in this phone. I didn’t expect this question at all. It took me a while to answer this, and I gave some generic answers that security or camera could be improved. The interviewer was not impressed by these answers. Later, I told him that I would include a custom yoga app that takes picture of your yoga pose and gives you the accuracy of your posture, this was my capstone project idea also, so I could explain it well, and the interviewer finally got satisfied with this answer. Then I was asked 5-6 C input-output questions. These were really tough, and I was able to answer only 2-3 questions. The interviewer had deep knowledge of C. Then a few oops questions were asked, and after that, he moved to DSA, starting with a simple linked list question and then moving towards trees and graphs. He was mainly looking at my problem-solving ability.
Question 6: Tell us about the HR interviews(if any) specifying the number of rounds and questions asked.
Answer: The interviewer mainly wants to know about my background and asked me questions like if I’m comfortable relocating. Basic situation based HR questions were not asked. I feel Samsung really focuses on your 10th,12th, and JEE score. It was a very short round.
Question 7: What were the key factors of your selection?
Answer: I was confident in DSA. Moreover, I believe a good command of DSA and 3-4 decent projects in the resume are enough to crack any company.
Question 8: What are the things students should focus on in order of priority?
Answer: CGPA is very important. Even having a CGPA of 8.9, I could not clear the cgpa cut of 7 – 8 companies, so try to maintain a good CGPA. Another thing is to practice DSA and make some decent projects. These things are enough to get you placed at a good company.
Question 9: According to you, what role do extracurricular activities as well as participation in societies play?
Answer: I highly recommend participating in societies. I myself was in Mudra in my 1st year and in the Econ club. These things improve your communication skills which play a key role in interviews, especially in the HR round.
Question 10: Were there any companies you got rejected from after appearing for their interview? If yes, then tell us about your rejection story and what do you think were the reasons for your rejection?
Answer: Before Samsung, I faced rejection from 4 companies, i.e., BYJUs, Editorialist, Blackrock, and MakeMyTrip, and in all these I failed to clear the final round. In Blackrock, I felt that the company was a little biased toward the Mumbai location.
Question 11: What message would you like to give to your juniors regarding the stress they go through during placement season?
Answer: I believe that one should never lose hope. There are a lot of companies that visit Thapar and eventually, all get placed. Also time flies quickly in college and one should make sure to make a lot of memories.
Question 12: How can we contact you? (LinkedIn Profile Link/Contact No./etc.)
Answer: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amrendra-singh-3123b7224