Placed in Accenture

The placement season is on in my college and three companies for computer students have visited as of yet, viz., TCS, Accenture and Wipro, in that order. All three of them are IT giants, both nationally and globally, so the choice of company was not too important, but still I chose to go with Accenture. Also, as the IT industry is facing recession, it affected the total number of students picked from our college, which declined to almost half the previous year’s value.

The selection process was a 4-stage process:

1. Written test (English + Quantative Aptitude + Logical Reasoning)
2. Group Discussion [GD]
3. HR Interview
4. Technical Interview

The written test was quite easy and was one that could be cracked by any average engineering student. Still, out of 212 students, who appeared for the test, only 101 were selected for the GD round.

There were 8 groups for GD composed of an average 12 students per group. My group had 12 candidates and the GD was taken by a cool dude by the name “Zain” (read it Zen). Zain was very strict in terms of GD rules, but was open to topic of the GD as he gave us the chance to come up with the topic. Failing to come up with a good topic, he himself assigned us the general topic of Olympics. My performance in GD went well and I was short-listed for the next round.

Next was the HR Interview. Out of the GD round, 66 students got the green card to move further. About half of those 66 were told to give Tech Interview and the rest of them would give the HR Interview (including me). My HR Interview also went fine. I was asked general questions like, “Introduce yourself”, “Why Accenture”, “Your hobbies”, and so on… After this interview, I was cleared for the next round of interview.

After about 2 hours of waiting, I was called upon for the Tech Interview. As I entered the room, the interviewer was carefully reading my resume and application form. He first asked me my favorite subject. After I had given my answer, he deliberately asked a question out of my favorite subject. And all he asked was just ONE question. It was “From the moment you switch on your PC to the time when you see the login screen of the OS, tell me the complete process going on behind the scenes”. As a MCP and MCTS, and a huge follower of Linux, I was able to answer the question correctly and in detail. After my answer was over, he asked me to go. I gave him a skeptical look, but he confirmed that it was the end of my interview. (Just one question…)

After more than 2 hours of more waiting, Zain got into the conference room, where all of us students were sitting and waiting for the result, and announced the result. As he spoke my name in the final selected students, I gave a huge sigh of relief, after apparently the most tiring day of my life.

A total of 31 students were finally selected from NIT, Jalandhar, and 8 (inclusive) from my CSE branch.

I got back to my home from college at about 9:30 PM. It was the time to celebrate! 🙂