Photo: mahesh harilal

FACE THE CHALLENGE: Campus recruitment by IT companies tests engineering students in critical and logical reasoning and also in puzzle solving. It is now common for all companies to assess students' knowledge of C and C++ also.

Get job-ready! Fast! Because the good thing may not last long. You may not be treated as freshers in a few months from now. In the last few months, 80 per cent of the big recruiters among the IT companies have completed their rounds of campus recruitment. With the advent of 2006, fourth-year engineering students who are yet to find placement have started worrying.

Their worries are not misplaced, HR trainers who help students prepare for recruitment tests say.

For those ending the third year of engineering or entering the last semester, the recruitment tests are relatively the easiest. Freshers get a slightly tougher test.

But if you are one year out of college and once the next batch of students sit for their final examination, they turn freshers. The previous batch is treated on a par with ``experienced candidates," says Ramesh Narayanan of Productivity Reach.

Trainers like him say that the next four months are crucial for the fourth-year engineering students and 2005 passed-outs.

Of every 100 students, over 85 students fail in the aptitude test conducted by big recruiters such as Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, Cognizant Technology Solutions, and Caritor. And the challenge now is bigger.

There is a distinct shift in IT companies' aptitude test assessment practices, with many of them preferring to test engineering students in critical/logical reasoning and puzzles. For example, a big Indian IT multinational prefers to ask only 10 puzzles in its recruitment test, with a 90 per cent cut- off. Any one getting less cannot get a place.

"The aptitude tests may have mere paper-pencil mathematics, say in the basics that one learnt in Class XII. They also test English comprehension and usage. The technical knowledge is tested in the technical ground. Invariably, the recruiters would like to focus on a few skills. Many of them concentrate on the projects that students do in their fourth year. Or, they test students in their area of interest," says Mr. Ramesh Narayanan.

But more interestingly, many big IT companies have started asking students to solve problems in C and C++ languages. Dr. Jayanthi, a psychologist-turned-recruitment trainer reasons: These two languages are important for students from different domains to enter application areas in Java, J2EE or .NET. Sridhar, a teacher in electrical and electronic engineering in a suburban engineering college, explains the reason why companies choose to test students' computing aptitude in these two areas: "Students from almost all branches of engineering learn C language. So it provides a common area for testing all candidates. And an extension of C into object-oriented programming is C++ and these are used in the graphic user interface areas."

Also C and C++ lend themselves to tests easily. One can ask theory questions about practical problems. An in-depth knowledge and skill levels in these two languages will also help the companies gauge the students' ability to write programmes for device drivers, which today have universal applications.

But recruitment trainers have some warnings for students. Though students learn C and C++ in BE/B.Tech, the approach is not serious enough. The questions in the aptitude test are fully application-oriented — as applied to situations in industry context that need solutions demanding an analytical and creative capability. That is why over 90 per cent of students who sit for aptitude tests by recruiters fail. Nearly 1,500 students the other day took a test of an IT solution provider, hardly 60 made the grade.

Trainers also note that students need at least 45-60 hours of focussed training for aptitude tests, computing skills, group discussion personal interview. Because the problems asked in these tests are not about studious learning. It is about applying the right technique to answer puzzles, analytical questions or those in logical reasoning.

Next week: Model papers

of Aptitude Tests

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