Xoriant Interview Experience

There were five rounds in total.

Group Discussion -> Online Test -> Technical -> HR -> Managerial

Round 1: Group Discussion

• My number was second last in the registration list so I think ours was the last group that gave this round it was also smaller in size (there were 7 people instead of 10)  lucky for me.
• Most of them agreed on the topic of “women empowerment” so I also agreed with it.
• After that discussion began there was a pair of boy and girl who were co-operating in pairs speaking about how women need support, why do they need it.
• I basically spoke on gender neutrality and how women should not be put in such a position in the first place.
• When I was making my point the moderator made a remark, “Don’t talk about impractical things in the discussion” (I thought he was speaking to me).
• But since I was in the flow of my own conversation I accepted his remark and continued with my own point.
• After that, at the end when everyone made at least one point and the conversation was almost over the moderator asked us to say for 20 seconds on “Black is black”.
• I had my doubts about the topic but as soon as others started speaking in their given order, I realized that we have to say about, “Anything related to black colour and explain about it in one or two sentences” (Being last in the end helps a lot I think since you are mostly never the one to speak first but don’t try to be dead last as the moderator can start discussion from your side).
• As everyone was speaking negatively about black(eg: black money, corruption etc) I decided to go with the positive side and talked about how people in Japan wear black colour bands or clothes to peacefully protest against injustice.
• After the GDs were and the result was announced my name was called in the very end (What can I do, I was already dead last in registration list).

Round 2: Online test

• It had 7 sections: Aptitude, Java, C++/C, Database, Hashing and two coding sections.
• The aptitude and coding sections were a breeze. They were simply too easy.
• But the other sections were simply dreadful, they all had questions on synchronizing/multithreading. Many questions were also multiple correct answer type. I made an educated guess and moved forward.
• After the test was over my name was called third this time (from the beginning).

Round 3: Technical

• I asked for permission went inside. The interviewer asked me to sit. I sat down (the same old routine of every interview if for some reason you don’t panic). He picked up some of the papers that flew away (the fan was rotating at full speed) and sat down a few seconds after me. He looked at my resume, asked my name and introduced himself.
• He asked me to rate my self in data structures, OOP, and python (gave a 7, 6, 8 to my self).
• After that, he gave me two lists asked me to write a code in python to merge common elements. I first wrote a  single line intersection function code, so he told me don’t use any extensive library function. So, I wrote a single ‘for’ loop code with one ‘if’ condition.
• After that, he asked me to write a code the uncommon elements in the same lists, I used two loops, he asked for one, so I removed the common elements from original lists and joined them. He was not satisfied but went ahead and asked another question.
• He asked me about multiple inheritance. I gave a bookish definition as an answer.
• He then drew this :

• And asked me what will be the value of C.a if  ‘a’ is a class variable. I haven’t done any oop concepts in python so and he understood that asked whether I have done any oop concepts in python I replied with a no.
• After that, he gave me a puzzle to solve :

• As you can see in this problem we have 3 boxes (labelled as “orange”, “apple+orange” and “apple” from left to right) where the label given below every box is incorrect (all labels are dearranged). You are allowed to select only one box from which you can pick up a fruit only once without looking into the box. I gave a partially correct answer to this question but by the time I got out I realised how easy it was. just choose the one labelled “apples+oranges” and then you can simply figure out the other two on the basis of the fruit that comes out.
• Then he asked me to tell something about my final year project. I told him what the project is mainly about, which technologies are going to be used etc.
• Then He asked me whether I have any questions for him. I asked the cliche question “Tell me something about yourself”.
• This marks the end of the Technical round.

Round 4: HR round

• Same basic manners while entering the room there was only one guy for HR. He was the same person who took my GD.
• He asked me would I like some water. And then asked me how I feeling. I said I was a bit confused. He asked why was I confused.
• I talked about the part where he prompted me in the middle of the GD and said not to talk about impractical things in the discussion.
• He took some time and remembered what he said at that time and said what he said was meant for the whole group, not just me. He said the whole conversation was not going anywhere as no one was talking about any solid facts related to the topic.
• Then the whole interview started he asked me to tell me about myself.
• Then he wanted to know about my final year project. I gave a similar type of answer as I have given in the technical round.
• My project was an undertaking project by Company A.
• He counter-questioned me by asking why not go for Company A instead.
• I talked about the difference between company A and Xoriant and how Xoriant suites me more than company A. I also talked about the various unique things I noticed about Xoriant when I went to their site online about their partners, field of work etc.
• I told that I want to work in different fields in Xoriant which are not provided by the company A.
• He told me that it is not necessary that you will be shifted into a different field even if you join Xoriant.
• He further added to his point by talking about a practical scenario.
• The scenario was something like this: One of our clients is Citi bank for which we develop various software. When a project has to be assigned to a software company the bank holds a meeting with representatives of various software vendors (eg: Wipro, TCS, Xoriant etc) where the problem is discussed and the client asks for some solutions. Suppose for some reason the client doesn’t like you very much and had a good relationship with the Wipro’s representative. When you gave a solution the client rejected it. And when the same type of solution is given by that Wipro’s representative, the client accepted it.
• Then he asked me a question what will you do?
• I gave a few answers as I will come up with a better solution or I would use someone’s reference to prove that my solution is better etc.
• But he was not convinced with them. So we moved on to some other practical situation or problems.
• He talked about how people steal the ideas from their best friends or how some people complain about how they get lesser salary bonus than their friend.
• He asked me why do I want to join Xoriant even after so many problems will be there.
• I gave an answer according to the ones that I read online about questions “Why do you want to join our company?”.
• The HR was not convinced and told me to go out take a break for 15 minutes and come back to give him an answer if I really wanted to join the company.
• So I went outside realised that I have been inside for nearly 2 hours. Looked at my phone for all chat messages (replied to them also). Talked to all the other candidates about how they are doing. Searched for some answers on the internet (but none of them were convincing).
• But just before entering the room once again it clicked in my mind.
• He was busy filing papers at that time so he asked me to wait for five minutes while I was sitting on the chair. He urged me to have some sandwiches kept on the desk. I had a quarter piece of sandwich and drank some water. By that time he was also done with his work.
• I started by saying that even though I would face such problems I still want to join Xoriant because I will face them even if I join some other company. They are some common problems that exist in any corporate industry and are not a special case for Xoriant. This also doesn’t have anything to do with the reason I want to join Xoriant.
• He was convinced this time and continued to talk about the first scenario (the Citi bank one).
• He told that the guy who was facing such a problem didn’t give up and started to work even harder. Along with that he also took various steps to develop a better relationship with the client. He sent a facebook friend request to the client, tagged him in some of the office party photos and called the client occasionally and asked him about his family etc. He also worked hard and finished every assigned task before time.
• The result was that the client was really impressed and even gave a letter of recommendation for the person.
• When HR asked him why didn’t he gave up or came to his manager for help, he replied by saying that problems like this will occur no matter where I go. So, it’s better to face them now than to regret about it later.
• That marked the end of my HR round. HR asked me if I have any questions for him. I asked about the functional shift procedure followed by the company.
• He asked me to report tomorrow at 3 pm at Xoriant’s office for the final Managerial round. I asked him what is this round is about since I haven’t heard about it before. He said it is a mix of technical and HR round which is taken by the senior employees of the company with more than 20 years of work experience.
• I thanked HR for all the knowledge he bestowed upon me and that how useful they will be in near future.

Round 5: Managerial Round

• I reached the office by 2:45 pm and got my guest id. I was 2nd in line to give this round.
• Entered the room sat down, showed the same manners as I have been showing in previous rounds.
• The interviewer asked me to tell me something about myself (I am getting bored of this question now).
• After that, he asked me some questions about the mini-projects that I mentioned in my resume.
• He also gave me a practical scenario where I devised an algorithm to solve the client’s problem but the client is not agreeing with me.
• He told that it is a practical problem so there are no correct answers to the question he just wanted to know about my approach.
• I answered by saying I would develop a better relationship, I would get someone’s reference, I would use influence.
• But he was not convinced with all these answers. When I was not able to give any more answers he responded by saying that I should have asked the client what is the problem with my algorithm.
• He said many of the problems can be cleared by knowing the client’s requirements or what the client desires from the software.
• He asked me a technical question about which python package I will use to parse an HTML page. I didn’t know the answer to this question so I simply nodded and said that I do not know the answer to this question.
• Then he asked me about the electives that I chose in my final year and why did I choose them.
• I replied by saying that I always have an interest in these subjects since I heard from my friends who went for internships about their application in industry.
• He asked me whether I have done any internships. I replied by saying I haven’t done any.
• He then drew a road cross section with traffic signals and asked me how I would solve this problem using AI.
• I told that we will assign some sensors to get the data about the no. of vehicles going through a particular direction and the use a regression model to change the signal timings accordingly.
• He asked me what I will do about the excessive amount of data that is collected.
• I responded by saying that the data will be collected on the weekly basis at the end of the week separate regression will be generated for every different hour of the week. This data then will be used kept for future use.
• This marked the end of my Managerial Round.
• The interviewer asked me if I have any questions. I asked him to tell me something about himself.

This marks the end of the whole interview process. The no. of candidates for every round is as follows:

GD->Online test->technical->HR->Managerial

248->65->30->9->8

In the end, only 3 candidates got placed in Xoriant.

This was my placement experience if you like this post please share it with your friends so they can also reap the benefits.