I had appeared for the Bharat Electronics Limited written test for Probationary Engineers on July 1, 2012.
The paper was similar to GATE pattern & there were no general knowledge questions.
120 questions were departmental questions & 30 aptitude questions.
In order to clear the test completing the paper is not necessary as there are 150 questions to be completed in 120 minutes it is impossible for anyone to finish the paper hence the paper somewhat becomes an MCQ paper with choice, as to which questions I will attempt.
There were 50 vacancies in Computer Science & as the 1:3 rule 150 students cleared the written test from all over India & I was fortunate to clear it.
The interview date was September 18, 2012 in Bangalore.
BEL was extremely professional in the sense that I was asked to report at 8:30am, they did start the verification process exactly at that time. After the verification I was asked to go for my interview.
There were three members in the interview panel. The interview was short unlike BARC where it was one & half hours. Here it was about 15 minutes.
These were the questions asked.
HR: So what does your name mean?
HR: Was it difficult to find this place?
(The interview was not held in any BEL office but in a place called Dodda Gubbi in the outskirts of Bangalore City)
Me: Yes sir, especially in an unknown city had it been Kolkata it might not have been so difficult but in an unknown state it was.
HR: So what was your final year project?
I explained it.
HR: What do your parents do?
Me: Sir my father was a government servant he retired this year, my mother is a home-maker.
HR: So as your father is retired any pressure on you for employment as such, that you will be the earning member of the family?
Me: No sir I am fortunate that way, there is no such pressure & we are financially well-off & right now am sitting here just for myself.
HR: What are the subjects you like?
Me: OS,DBMS,Theory of Computation, Data Structure.
HR: What are the methods for inter-process communication?
Me: Answered about the memory sharing & message passing stuff, the critical section problem with memory sharing etc.
HR: What is priority scheduling?
Me: Answered about the priority levels & pre-emption may be possible or priority only during process selection by short term scheduler.
HR: What is business tier in J2EE?
Me: I only knew the partial answer & my concept was not clear about it hence I said sir I did it in one of my semesters but I don’t exactly remember now. This seemed the better option than giving a haphazard answer.
HR: Did you apply for any other PSU?
Me: Yes sir, I had applied for BARC & cleared the written test but unfortunately couldn’t clear the interview.
(The HR was impressed that I cleared the BARC written test as only 38 people all over India had cleared that & for us general category students that number is half ie., 19)
HR: What are your other options other than BEL?
Me: Sir I have job offers from TCS & Accenture which I got during my campus placements.
HR: In case you get all three which one will you chose?
Me: Sir, definitely BEL.
HR: Why because of the pay package?
Me: Sir if I say not at all because of the package I will be lying, pay is definitely one of the reasons, but not the primary one. Before my interviews in Accenture or TCS I had done a little bit of research on the kind of work that they do & had done the same for BEL. The work at BEL has intrigued me more like the R&D of Tablet PC or Encryption. If I selected & if I get a chance to work on tablet pc, I don’t think there can be anything better than that for me. Learning the technology & the working atmosphere will be a big learning experience for me.
HR: Well we are not too sure that if selected whether you will be placed in tablet PC, you might get signal processing or encryption.
Me: Sir, I am more interested in R&D and like the question you asked me in OS, I knew the answer but If you ask me to apply it in real life systems I will not be able to & now I want to learn to do that.
(The HR smiled at my answer)
HR: Well thank you then.
Me: Thank you sir.
I don’t yet know whether I have been selected or not, the results will be out after a month, but am narrating my experience to help any future candidate appearing for the BEL interview.