[jkdas]

Interesting thread

The same stuff is happening to other fields too. I know of a case wherein the trainee nurse fainted during an operation. On further investigation, she reveals that she has never been to a hospital and all they got was theory is classrooms and passed exams with that.

[SPIKE ARRESTOR]

Samurai, can you post an experience of a candidate whom you selected after a similar interview, sorry if I have missed it here, that would be interesting.

How do these candidates get to you - from newspaper ads or online portals?

Spike

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by SPIKE ARRESTOR

Samurai, can you post an experience of a candidate whom you selected after a similar interview, sorry if I have missed it here, that would be interesting.

Selected candidates rarely made any gaffe, answered most things correctly. If they didn't know, they said they didn't know, but never about basics. Selected candidates never give me any material to post here.

Originally Posted by SPIKE ARRESTOR

How do these candidates get to you - from newspaper ads or online portals?

We co-ordinate with campus placement officers at all the local engineering colleges.

[drsingh]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06...ng_procedures/

Worth Sharing. So much for "curiosity".

So Google has begun hiring people before college to mould them in their thought process and skills needed at work.This is the only approach that works in the long run,this is what we have to do in the Medical Field .train paramedical/junior residents on the job as they are totally inexperienced for specialised tasks out of college.

[Samurai]

Damn, looks like they too have come to the same conclusion I came to many years back.

I don't give aptitude tests or puzzles. They are complete waste of time. I try to find out whether they have ability to learn. And yes, they got to have curiosity.

Here I have explained my techniques, they rarely fail: http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifti...ml#post2814486

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Damn, looks like they too have come to the same conclusion I came to many years back.

I don't give aptitude tests or puzzles. They are complete waste of time. I try to find out whether they have ability to learn. And yes, they got to have curiosity.

Here I have explained my techniques, they rarely fail: http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifti...ml#post2814486

Most of the group buy companies(Indian "software" houses) have the same aptitude test in every college.
So once they go to one college, esp an NIT with people from all over India, regional networks get into operation.
States like UP which have larger number of quota due to high population are usually the first ones to spread the question paper. But by bribes, and friendships and blah blah, by the time 3-4 colleges are done, the same aptitude question paper is sent to all colleges before the company comes to campus.

This has been happening for over 10 years, and since people who get job in such companies often have used such papers, new methods are devised. For example, score 95%+ you are out. Score less than 70% you are out.
So people deliberately score around 85% the safe score.

In our college, a frustrated individual, put the paper on the notice board. Guess what happened, Company raised a hue and cry, and hired just 5 people instead of the herd of 20-50.

Now all these company people know everywhere its cheating, and its all a sham. But since they do not want to admit it they had to put up a show of hypocrisy.

So what does the whole thing teach you? How to game the system. Thats all. Great for politics, but useless for creating anything worthwhile.

[amitk26]

I think the malice is deep rooted call it my prejudice but I have observed that students who score very high percentage perform quite poorly in these kind of interviews as their sole motto in student life seems to score high in exam.

Coming to software I think root cause is that no IIT / IIIT and famed indian colleges offering CS / Electronics / IT related courses tie the projects to open source development till date and whatever these institutes do is ofter repeated by state level colleges.

So most of the project work done as final year project is quite irrelevent and students don't learn to see big picture and how their work will become part of big zig-zaw puzzel. So they may develop some web application without ever knowing how it can be used.

Last year I went to IIT-Roorkee for pre palcement talks and while interacting with students encouraged them to take up the laundry list items of open source projects as final year project rather then doing something in isolation but I do not think there were lot of takers for this idea.

[drsingh]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

Now all these company people know everywhere its cheating, and its all a sham. But since they do not want to admit it they had to put up a show of hypocrisy.

So what does the whole thing teach you? How to game the system. Thats all. Great for politics, but useless for creating anything worthwhile.

Slightly offtopic. But all these entrance tests in India, be it for private placement or pg studies in reputed institutions are tests of exclusion.There are too many people of a similar ability applying for these positions.its just arbitrary. Be it medicine.engineering.UPSC.Army. etc.etc.

I have seen many doctors working as junior residents in their chosen speciality and then having to take admission in a different speciality according to 'rank' in pre PG exams.
Their 'interest' and experience carries no weightage. No interview (exceptions are there). The tests are theoretical knowledge based with "bait" questions designed with controversial answers. These questions are best left alone.The people who attempt these are negatively marked hence 'excluded' from the pool.

[motorpsycho]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Damn, looks like they too have come to the same conclusion I came to many years back.

I don't give aptitude tests or puzzles. They are complete waste of time. I try to find out whether they have ability to learn. And yes, they got to have curiosity.

Everyone prepares for the Apti test , they go to classes or the college themselves conduct the apti classes.

The product we are dealing here is due to the system, which gives emphasis on "How" rather than "Why"
The teachers are more inclined to teach the students on how to solve a problem rather than teaching them to apply. And one can't blame them, the way the exam question papers are set they have no choice.

[bluevolt]

Some of my observations responsible for the sad state of fresher engineers/software engineers IMO.

1. No stress on reading books during the whole semester. Professors as well as students are more comfortable with Power point presentations which are 'enough' for students to secure good marks in internals/externals. Book bank provided in a semester contains third class books which are meant to be thrown in a trash bin.

2. The way practicals are conducted in colleges is really sad. Students just cut copy paste their programs/projects from internet/seniors and even purchase live projects from sources. During practical examinations students simply use their pen drives to copy the programs(even the brilliant students do the same even though they can code without any reference-habit of shortcuts you know)

3. Professors are least bothered to check out the 'practical' performance of every single student in lab and they are comfortable discussing issues with intelligent students only. They don't care if a below average student is not able to complete a program.

4. Chalta hai attitude followed by teachers/students and this has now become a bad habit.

5. Professors/lecturers are comfortable with conventional method of teaching i.e. mark the attendance, complete the syllabus and forget it. no follow up from teacher's end.

6. Some so called brilliant students who score 80%+ marks don't know how to dual boot a system or install basic sound and video drivers. Those students just get 80% by means of cramming and no understanding at all.

and there are many more which are already covered number of times in this discussion going on in this thread.

Both teachers and students are responsible for the overall mess.

[Mik]

I think its unfair to blame just teachers and students for this mess. Companies are to be blamed too. When they come on campus, they always declare a cut-off marks which then becomes the target for every student. So all the curiosity and learning goes out of the window and 4 years are spent just maintaining that safe percentage.
In my college, the sole aim of most students was to remain above the elusive "sixty percent". People studied with just that in mind and during campus recruitment, most companies used this cutoff as a hygiene factor. Out of the 20 companies on campus, only two didn't have any cutoff and were open to everybody.

P.S: I never cared for a sixty. Was too involved in pursuing my own stuff. Yes, got through one of those two companies.

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by Mik

I think its unfair to blame just teachers and students for this mess. Companies are to be blamed too. When they come on campus, they always declare a cut-off marks which then becomes the target for every student. So all the curiosity and learning goes out of the window and 4 years are spent just maintaining that safe percentage.
In my college, the sole aim of most students was to remain above the elusive "sixty percent". People studied with just that in mind and during campus recruitment, most companies used this cutoff as a hygiene factor. Out of the 20 companies on campus, only two didn't have any cutoff and were open to everybody.

P.S: I never cared for a sixty. Was too involved in pursuing my own stuff. Yes, got through one of those two companies.

Fully agree in my organisation there was no cutoff system few years back.In the name of system improvement HR introduced all these concepts couple of years back . Most of these HR folks were lateral joiners from elsewhere so brought in malice. In the name of removing the subjectivity and bringing in more objective criterion now in a way rote learners have an advantage over a more well rounded student.
This is how exactly industry few years back industry promoted fudging of resumes by refusing to accept candidates with any gap in employment.
It is so common in Indian context for students to have a gap year for trying out various competitive entrance tests that this requirement was ridiculous.

[null]

Slightly off topic, but another reason for this issue I think is due to the degradation of quality over the recent years. Most of these colleges now claim to be autonomous - means they conduct their own evaluations and declare results. You meet a fresher and ask his college performance, it is always 80%+ or even 90%+. You ask them about something specific, they know it partly. E.g. Do you know linklists? yes. do you know graphs? no! Basically, they are made to mug up a portion of the subject just to gain marks i feel. So, ones with 60% or 70% are eventually hopeless because they never bothered to even know about linklists!

Without a uniform evaluation mechanism in place, it is becoming very difficult to gauge the candidate based on their academics to start with.

Another observation during our attempt to hire people for my friend's start up: Irrespective of their capability, one of the first questions asked, by most of them, was how much salary are you paying. When asked, what are you expecting, the answers were always in tune of 15k and above (many said 10K though). The point is about their focus on salary more than a job or rather an opportunity to gain experience or expertise.

In a nutshell, out of the 60 odd we spoke to, and picked up 12 based on their attitude and hunger to learn, only 3 continue to remain after 7 months now with my friend.

[vasoo]

During my college days, the ratio of engg students to other graduates was even less than 1:10 and only those who cleared the entrance exams could make it into good govt run colleges. Now it is almost 4:6 with mushrooming on pvt engg colleges who calls themselves "world class" from its first year of operation. It is quite natural that the quality suffers when quantity increases.

Another issue is with the expectation of employers for the candidates to be "employment ready". They tends to look at employees as "resources" just like machines in a factory. It is quite interesting to note that IT companies are complaining about this more when more than half of the recruits does not even have a CS or ECE degree. What do they expect ? That they will start writing production ready code from day one ? Spend some money and efforts on training and then complain if they are not picking up or fire them. Dont expect engg colleges to make every graduate to be ready for 100% of the employers in the country.

Good companies will invest in its employees for a long term, don't see them as cash cows from day one.

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by Mik

When they come on campus, they always declare a cut-off marks which then becomes the target for every student. So all the curiosity and learning goes out of the window and 4 years are spent just maintaining that safe percentage.

There is a logistical reason for that too.

I recruit for Software developer positions, and in my opinion best "level 1filter" for such positions is to have students write a very basic "working" code.
If a school has 80 PCs with net connection, 80*number_of_slots is the max students that can take the test (say 160).

And with that, there has to be some criteria for bringing number of applicants down to 160. Objective filters like GPA, JEE rank (in case of tie) are used in that case.

Unfortunately, outside of IIT / NIT / BITS etc number drops from 160 to 10 - 20 in such a simple test.

Problems could be as simple as "write an implementation of percentile function or GPA function or function to read first N lines of file". In test, students have to write code that compiles as well as passes test cases. Google is accessible during the test.