Placement Stories

SPE VIT
SPE VIT
Nov 5 · 3 min read

Are Thoughts About Placements Panicking You?

SPE VIT, is glad to help you relieve you from the horror of placements with mini interviews of former SPE Members placed in various companies.

Engineering! One of the most widely available options of career management and development in India, due to its factor of variety of courses offered in abundance in many prestigious universities. After four years of courses, studies, and training students usually look forward to this main event that defines their training and their value.

“PLACEMENTS AND INTERVIEWS”

“Success doesn’t come to you, you go to it!” That’s right! Usually engineers today have the difficulty in cracking most of these interviews, thus preparing before handed can make things pretty easier for young aspiring engineers. Here are few questions that we have asked our seniors about their experience in placement interviews and here are some advices that you could take to improve your skills both with respect to personality and attitude as well as in the technical side. We have searched through some of the FAQs in interviews and asked about it to our seniors through a survey. Hope you find this article helpful and enlightening. GOOD LUCK ENGINEERS!!!

Interview of Mr. Parv Rastogi — Graduate Trainee R&D, at Schlumberger.

1. Were the interview questions as tough as an engineering student panics about from the beginning of his program?

“No. Not all the questions were tough. Most of the questions that were asked to me were related to the core subjects of my branch. Therefore, you need to have a strong base of your concerned field. It’s just the important fundamentals that the interviewer tries to gauge.”

2. How well was your preparation on par with the interview?

“Preparation wasn’t that great. I did fumble with some of the questions as I couldn’t recall some of the concepts/formulas.”

3. From the range of 1 to 100 rating and 100 being the highest (in percentage), how many questions were technical related?

“85% Technical and rest 15% HR based.”

4. How much did your grades (CGPA) weigh for the interview?

“Grades did weigh a lot. In the case of Schlumberger, out of the total 800–900 applicants, only 51 were shortlisted for the interview purely on the basis of CGPA. For my branch 9.3 was the cut-off CGPA.”

5. Did the interview test your managing, quantitative and qualitative skills?

“Yes. I was asked a few aptitude & logical reasoning questions along with few situation based management questions. All questions were of medium level, not very difficult to answer.”

6. Were the institute’s courses and extra-curricular academics help your preparation by any means?

“Yes, my student chapter’s co-curricular activities did interest my interviewer.”

7. Did the 1 credit course of soft skills that were given for 8 semesters really help you out with your interview?

“No. They didn’t, in my opinion.”

8. How much duration of preparation you will be apt for facing the interviews with confidence?

“1 day maximum.”

9. Do you think that the core engineers (Mech, EEE, Civil & ECE) get opportunities that are on par with the IT-based sectors, and is it okay for the students to prioritize core jobs over IT?

“No. The market is sound for the CS/IT sector but has condensed for the core branches. But yes, if you are good enough, you can easily land into a core job. Having studied a core branch for 4 years, there is no point in shifting to IT sector unless you’re actually interested in it. Most students just join IT sector because it pays more, has surplus jobs and therefore is easy to get into.”

10. Which rounds in the interviews you think have to be more concentrated on?

“Personal Interview (you need to sell yourself to the company, make the best product of yourself) and the technical round too.”

11. Did any of your other achievements like additional learning and research papers give you a hand during the interview?

“Yes. They add in a special cachet to your profile distinguishing you from the crowd.”

Stay tuned, for more interviews!

Written by

SPE VIT

Society of Petroleum Engineers Student Chapter, VIT Vellore, is a non-profit organisation working to bring to college students an industrial exposure.

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