Krishna Bharadwaj

Today ( yesterday) was a great day in my life. I got placed in National Instruments. One of the companies I had in my mind for quite sometime.. I'm very happy about it. :-)

The recruitment process of NI was simply the best. I had heard this from many of my seniors, I just saw that myself today. The process had a written round (subjective, basically code snippets), followed by 2 rounds of technical interview.

NI has 65 employees in India (Bangalore) office. 12 of them had come for the recruitment process(around 20% of NI's strength in India was in BMSCE ;) ). The ppt began at around 9:30 and lasted for around 30 - 45 minutes. Many of us were happy to know about the products NI has developed over a period of time. We all were very happy to look at the way NI guys interacted with themselves and with others too. Many of them were BMSCE pass outs. This was something which we could hear quite often " I would love to work with those guys", Even I said that a couple of times :)

The written round started, I saw the question paper. I found it way too difficult. There were 16 questions, numbered from 0000 to 1111 (yes, binary) and there were many questions where logical AND (&&) were also used to indicate that the answer of question no 'X' is considered if answer of question 'X-1' is correct. I just went through the questions quickly. The first question which i could solve was the 13th question i guess. Time limit was 45 minutes. There was enough time for us to think. Some of the problems were very interesting. I took my time to analyze the code snippets by taking certain inputs and considering some cases. The part B considered a problem statement. We had to write code for that. It was a simple problem. I took a lot of time. I wanted to make sure that I don't go wrong in this, because this code had a lot of value when compared to other problem previously solved. I had left 3 questions unanswered.

After I come out of the room.. I see others discussing the answers. This is when i started feeling low. Everyone comes up with a different solution and tries to prove that others have done it wrong :P I had left 3 questions already, over that all this.. I was really depressed. Went to kamat with subramanyam (colleague now ;) ), had some juice.. and came back. The number of wrong answers were ever increasing. I gave up. This is the best part, I started playing tennis in formals!!

The results were out by around 1. I went near the placement office from the tennis court, Just to see if i was lucky enough. 28 were shortlisted for the interview and I was one among them. We had interviews from 2. First round of interview got over at 2:45.. Then we had to wait till everyone finishes their interview. It was 6 by the time all 28 were done with it. The results of first technical interview was announced at 7. All the shortlisted candidates were asked if we would like to have the interview today itself or the next day. Most of us were ready for today. Then came one twist. We were told that each interview will last for 1 and half hour. Half of them said tomorrow, while the other half including me were stressing it on having it today itself. After sometime, everyone agreed upon having it today itself.

Girls and those who stay far off were given priority. I just realized that my interview will be from 11 to 12:30. I was excited about it. In the mean time, Pizza's were ordered for all of us. First batch students had pizza's during their interview :P while the rest of us had it before we went for the interview.

My turn came, I was confident because of my previous interview which went really well. This time it was a different story. I was asked questions on permutations and some array related problems. I was very slow in doing it and i did a lot of mistakes. They asked me to use a better approach for solving the problem. After the interview, I realized how good it is to have a mentor who is technically very good. Basically, the interview was spoon feeding, which was the same for most of us. Even a complex problem seemed simple after they taught us how to do it. I liked it a lot. I was asked how i'll be going home. I replied "bike". They asked me to leave since it was very late and I was told that the results will be announced the next day. But thankfully, it was announced on the very same day. I was one among the 6 who were selected. Subramanyam Shastri and Chetan G were also selected. I'm very happy today though I'm finding it hard to believe the fact. I'm very proud to be a part of NI. I just wanted to write all this today itself. Its 3:31 AM. Microsoft GTSC will be visiting our campus tomorrow at 8:30am. I better sleep now :)