A Non-CS student’s debut to the IT world (IBM ASE Interview Experience 2021)
Hello all! I am prathyusha, a final year Engineering student majoring in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Andhra Pradesh. You are in luck if you are a Non-CS student like me aspiring to build a career in the IT industry. I am sharing my IBM interview experience, hoping it will give you insights into preparation for any of your (virtual) interviews.
The hiring process for all the IT firms mostly remains similar a few deviations here and there, but many start with an Aptitude & Coding Assessment followed by a Technical Interview and an HR Interview. This varies based on the hiring practice followed in a particular firm.
So coming to my IBM interview…
I applied for the role of Associate Systems Engineer. It was an Offcampus opportunity. After an initial resume screening, the 4 round hiring process started. Each round was Eliminative.
Round 1: Coding Assessment
Platform: Hackerrank
Difficulty Level: Easy to Moderate
Platform: Hackerrank
Preparation:
- 1 question with 30 mins time limit
- Practice questions on Hackerrank or Leetcode
- 7 test cases were given (5/7 test cases passed)
- Prepare topics like String conversions, Regex, Lists, and data structures basics
Round 2: Cognitive Ability Assessment
Platform: Congnify
Preparation:
There were a lot of walkthroughs on youtube to teach how to solve these game-based questions. They also covered tips on how to score well with minimum time.
These were different kinds of games to test the fast response of candidates. A series of 5 games have to be completed in 15–20 mins. The efficiency of the answers determines the score.
Round 3: English Language Assessment Test
platform: MapTQ
Preparation:
General Verbal Ability tests like Grammatical errors, Synonyms, antonyms were asked. The test has to be completed in 12 mins.
*A Webex meeting to give Cognitive Ability Assessment and English Language test will be shared to take the tests. Everyone has to join that meet and take their tests keeping the camera on.
Round 4: Interview
Platform: Webex
It took a week to receive my interview mail. My interview was scheduled for 27th November 2021.
Preparation:
I read about the company. I looked up IBMs’ recent posts and my interviewer on LinkedIn. Knowing my interviewer is a Sr. Analyst, not a developer, was kind of a relief. I believed I would be mostly posed with HR and situational-based questions, most common in any IBM interviews. But I didn’t want to gamble my luck, so I revised everything I mentioned in my resume. I watched an insane number of Interview experiences, which helped immensely.
Interview Questions I was asked:
- Tell me about yourself?
- Explain your projects?
- What were the difficulties you faced while doing these projects?
- What are the lessons you learnt while you worked on these projects?
- Why do you want to join the IT sector being a Non-CS student?
- What are your strengths?
- What are your weaknesses?
- You are a team leader, and your teammates don’t work. What action do you take?
- You are a team member, and how will you motivate your teammates to work?
- Lessons learnt from your failures?
- You are given tasks having high & equal priority with the same deadline. How do you manage to complete them?
- You have failed to achieve deadlines, and your manager is disappointed in you. What will you do?
- What is your biggest failure, and what did you learn from that experience?
Resources:
There were a lot of tutorials for Cognitive Ability Assessment on Youtube you can check them. For the interview as well, many students who got selected as ASE, shared their Interview Experiences. (You can also find a youtube video on my interview Experience below). A few of my friends also got asked about Computer Networks fundamentals and a fellow ECE classmate of mine was asked about her favorite subject and then the theorems and formulas in it.
Thank you for reading till this end. I hope this helps you with the upcoming interview. All the best. 😇✨✌
Links:
Peace,
Prathyusha.
