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Interview with Inductis

Things change, they end. And so did the on-campus recruitments. I started applying for offcampus then and finally got the first call from Inductis - a management consultancy firm that's towards the Data Mining in a sense that it analyzes data for its clients. I was called up for the post of Programmer Analyst. They hire only IITians as consultants.

The complete recruitment process was telephonic. In all, I had 4 rounds with an employee of higher designation each time. Was fun, it being my first telephonic interview. For now, the post-interview status is SELECTED. Following are the interview details:

Round 1 - with Mr. Prashant

1) 10th percentage and rank
2) 12th percentage and rank
3) Current GPA and rank

This is a kind of elimination round for people who do not cross a certain limit and for those who do not remain consistent with the resume that those people have.

Round 2 - with Mr. Anupam

1) Tell me about yourself
Ans: From academic qualifications to extra-curriculars, about parents and their profession, technical and social achievements, leadership skills to people skills, I covered everything.
2) Why Inductis?
Ans: Best place to be in for a long-term goal (4-5 years down the line) of doing an MBA, close to home, large number of Inductis Alumni get MBA admissions, compensation
3) Why not IBM?
Ans: Negation of the above points
4) Cross questioning at various points during the first question such as how do you manage the crowd when you compere on the stage (I told them that I've compered a couple of times)
5) A puzzle - You have 100 doors in a row that are all initially closed. you make 100 passes by the doors starting with the first door every time. the first time through you visit every door and toggle the door (if the door is closed, you open it, if its open, you close it). the second time you only visit every 2nd door (door #2, #4, #6). the third time, every 3rd door (door #3, #6, #9), etc, until you only visit the 100th door. What state are the doors in after the last pass? which are open which are closed?
Ans: Solution: You can figure out that for any given door, say door #42, you will visit it for every divisor it has. so 42 has 1 & 42, 2 & 21, 3 & 14, 6 & 7. so on pass 1 i will open the door, pass 2 i will close it, pass 3 open, pass 6 close, pass 7 open, pass 14 close, pass 21 open, pass 42 close. for every pair of divisors the door will just end up back in its initial state. so you might think that every door will end up closed? well what about door #9. 9 has the divisors 1 & 9, 3 & 3. but 3 is repeated because 9 is a perfect square, so you will only visit door #9, on pass 1, 3, and 9... leaving it open at the end. only perfect square doors will be open at the end.

Round 3 - with Mr. Amit Das (IIMB guy)

1) HR questions very similar to above with more cross questioning which required better justification of all the skills that I portrayed.
2) A puzzle - You have 10 lions and 1 sheep on an island. A lion, if it eats the sheep would get converted to sheep and thus could be eaten up by another lion. Lions are intelligent and would eat the sheep only if they're sure of not getting eaten up by other lions on becoming sheep themselves. If this is the case, how many lions would be left in the end?
Ans: Solution - If in the worst case, there's only 1 lion left, it would eat up the sheep since it doesn't have to get worried about getting eaten up by any other lion. In case of 2 lions, none would eat up the sheep first since it is sured of getting eaten up by the left over lion as explained earlier. In case of 3 lions, one lion would definitely eat up the sheep since 2 lions do not eat the sheep as explained earlier. If the chain continues, lions wouldn't eat the sheep if they are even in number but one of them would eat up the sheep if they're odd in number. This could be understood as follows - there are 10 forces acting on the sheep and each of them in an equal and opposite way. They cancel out the effect of each other and thus do not eat the sheep. The state is in equilibrium.

Round 4 - with Director, Inductis Analytics Department

1) HR questions once again. A lot of them to check the consistency and other things
2) Estimation question - How many cars are there in Ambala (my native place)?
Ans: Solution:
- Estimate the population
- Remove the people who are below poverty line
- Calculate the number of families out of the remaining since it would be easier to average the number of cars over families. Assume that each family has 4 members on an average
- Divide the families into 4 categories - low income, lower middle-class, upper middle-class and rich class. Divide them such that it forms a pyramid with low income being the largest in number
- Assume the number of cars as 0 in low-income, 0.5 in low middle class families, 1.5 in upper-middle class families, 2.5 in rich class. This would give out the number for private cars
- Next, assume that there are 10 major taxi stands, each with 200 taxis. That makes 2000 as the number of taxis
- Next, assume that there are 10 major organizations who hire cabs etc for their employees. Each of them keeps 100 cars that makes it another 1000
- Total everything up to give a number

Main things that they looked for

1) Consistency across various interviews
2) Problem Solving skills
3) Extra-curricular participation. They were keen to know the interests etc
4) Orientation towards MBA
5) Kind of impression and knowledge that one has about the organization. Do go through the recruitment brochures that they have on their website
6) Communication skills, leadership abilities, ethics and integrity
7) How true is an individual? They asked me if I've heard of any Inductis puzzles and I did tell them about the ones that I read over the internet

Some links that might help for puzzles:
http://www.techinterview.org/
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/riddles/intro.shtml
http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/career-discussions/12028-help-puzzles-asked-inductis-interview.html

Time taken to write this post: over 1 hour

posted by AK-84 @ 4:56 AM