Placement Tips : Part 1 : Cracking the Aptitude Test

After writing quite a few aptitude tests and having gone through many rounds of interviews, i think i am capable enough of advising fellow bitsians and may be others as well about placements. There are a few things which must be taken care of, if you want to make it really big. Most of the following observations are in bitsian context -

1) CGPA is the first thing, companies look at from your resume. It's always good to be in a top few but you should try to keep it around 9.

2) Don't ever think you should learn each and every thing you ever studied to go through an aptitude test. You should never even try to attempt all the questions. You should always concentrate on the problems which you can try. Don't bother about the ones you never heard.

3) Try to attempt a decent number of problems, concentrate on accuracy rather than speed ( There may be a few cases where speed might be of importance. That you can guess yourself. (It happened to me while writing Oracle Application aptitude test. )

4) Software companies which come to BITS for recruitment, including the biggest names , generally put a significant number of questions about basic C concepts and logic. So learn structural C well. You can practice logical problems as well. These are generally small problems about probability, permutations and combinations, basic mathematics or small puzzles.

If you consider above things carefully, you should easily go through to the next rounds.

Helpful Resources:

1. The C Programming Language : Kernighem and Ritchie

2. http://www.c-faq.com
excellent website for clearing basic doubts about C. It contains a lot of common problems related to C arranged topic wise. It was of great help to me.

3. http://www.geekinterview.com
Contains placement papers of various companies as well problems and their solutions course wise.

4. Puzzles to Puzzle you - Shakuntala Devi
Probably the best book to prepare for logical questions and puzzles.

5. More puzzles to puzzle you - Shakuntala Devi

again a great book !