TECHNICAL QUESTIONS FACED BY MS SCHOLARS IN THE INTERVIEW

Technical Questions in the second round:

[1] What are the current trends and areas of focus in IT?
My Ans: Talked about emerging trends of S/W Engg and ISO 9000 stuff (gave vague ideas about them as I don't know much nor do I care

About these topics myself ;-)).

Then mentioned the proliferation of O-O methodologies and their usefulness in speeding up development process, code re-usability, ease of maintenance, ease of bug fixing.

Thirdly, mentioned the work going on in High-Speed N/w - FDDI, ATM, Fast- Ethernet (100Mbps). Told whatever little I knew about ATM in response to another question.

[2] What is Micro-Kernel architecture?
My Ans: This is a developing area in OSs where instead of building the kernel as a single monolithic structure starting from scratch, it is built as a set of layers. The micro-kernel provides only the bare bones like Device-drivers, rudimentary file system support etc. on which, depending on the intended area of application of the OS, it can be customized to provide various higher level OS features like Multiprocessing, IPC, etc.

Personal Questions in the second round:

1. Tell us about yourself, your background.
2. What does your father do currently?
3. Your performance in schooling, B.E.
4. Your +/- points.
5. Why do you think Wipro should take you?
6. What qualities do you have that make you a person suitable for going into the IT industry (a corollary to the previous question).
7. What do your friends opine about you.
8. When do you think you will complete and be able to join?
9. How can you assure that you will join by that time?
10. Anything you want to know about us.
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a) Describe the memory management policies in Unix. How is paging implemented? How page faults are handled?
Seems to be a favorite question for these chaps ---- Maurice Bach.
b) Write a macro in C for swapping two nibbles in a byte. -Use the shift operators and be careful while defining temporary variables (if you do so), as you have to write a macro. Otherwise it is pretty simple.
c) What is the CPU-scheduling policy in Unix? - Round robin scheduling with multilevel queues.
d) Difference between short term, long term and medium term scheduler.
-First two should be peaceful. The last one is also known as swapper. (See Taenenbaum and/or Peterson)
e) Name various page-replacement policies. Which can be implemented both with and without pre-emption? - See Peterson.
f) Describe the Sliding window protocol. What is its advantage over stop-and-wait? - Saves bandwidth. (Taenenbaum please)

2ND INTERVIEW (Both personal and technical interleaved)

a) Tell us something about yourself.
b) Aren't you going for higher studies abroad? Why?
c) Rank and CGPA. MSites do not have ranks but still they wanted to know my approx position in my batch.
- Shady question. It is your job to convince them that for MS, grades do not hold any meaning.
d) What is re-entrant code? --- Non-self modifying code. Can be shared by many processes simultaneously. Gave e.g. of text-editors like 'vi'.
Counter Q: But then no code modifies itself. What does 'non-self modifying' mean? ---- I don't know for sure.
e) Diff between compilers and interpreters. Some fundaes about how to link code in different files.
f) What would your friends tell us about you if we ask them? Standard question for everyone.

Second interview: (fully personal) --- This was more interesting;-)
a) What did you feel about the ppt? --- Wasn’t very impressive so gave some shady answer.
b) Have you heard of creativity? -- Ya.
Have you heard of Bernard Shaw? -- Ya.
(Then he rattled off some quote of BS regarding creativity)
What do you say? --- I put some shadiest fundaes regarding visionaries and Leonardo da Vinci conceptualizing Helicopters in his time!

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NOTE: If any other company has offered you a job previously after your BTech/BE or if you have even slightest of work experience then make it a point to mention about it. It is a major plus point. The interviewers will be definitely interested in knowing that some other company also found you good enough to be selected.
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Personal Questions asked:

a) Question
1. Tell me about urself, family background.
2. Btech projects and M.S. projects
(Spend more time here, even if u have not done much work; create a good impression)
3. Significant achievements in life.
(May be paper publications etc.)
4. Why did u leave ur previous company (If u were working)?
5. What do u expect from a company? (Like how shd be the work environment etc. etc.)
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Technical Questions asked:

1. Explain your project
2. What are your areas of interest in Appli Prog?

Personal Questions asked:

1. Introduce yourself
2. Why do you want to join INFOSYS?
3. Do you have a passport?
4. Have you taken GRE/TOEFL?
5. Will you go abroad?
6. Which prog is better - MTech or MS?
7. Which prog do people prefer - MTech or MS?
8. Why?

Personal Questions asked:

a) Which other companies are you applying to?
In interview:
a) Question
My weakness, kinds of friendship, family details
b) Response
They are impressed if one presents papers.
I have presented conference papers in the national level.
Generally most of the companies ask about the project. Regarding other technical questions, they put questions on the courses I did.

B) Personal:

i) Tell us something about yourself. (This has to be there)
ii) Strengths and weaknesses (This question also disguised in various forms is always asked).
iii) Why should we hire you?
iv) Can you describe your project in short?
v) Why did you take 2-1/2 years to complete (My case!)
vi) If given the job when can you join? (Caution: Don't think that if you give some unreal early deadlines they will offer you the job.
Always play safe and give a deadline by which time you are sure to complete and join. Asking for extensions is the worst scenario).
Tips:

Be confident, frank (But need not give away information, which may weigh against your case), free (use first names while addressing them, so be alert when they introduce themselves) and cheerful (attend an interview with a positive frame of mind). Remember you are IITians and you always have an edge. That may sound arrogant, but it’s true.