Placement Papers - Alcatel Lucent
Alcatel Lucent (NOKIA Corp) Interview Experience - VIT University - Vellore, January 19, 2016
Posted by :
Anil Kumar Jat
(35)
Hello all,
I am Anil Kumar Jat, B.Tech (ECE), VIT University (Chennai Campus).
Alcatel-Lucent (now owned by Nokia Corp.) visited our campus (Vellore) on 19th Jan 2016. The selection process was little different from other companies. The selection process took 4 days (tests + interviews).
Selection Process:
1) Aptitude Test.
2) 4 Technical Interviews.
3) 1 HR Interview.
(CTC: 6 LPA for B.Tech).
Aptitude Test:
We had test on 14th Jan 2016, the day when Nokia owned Alcatel-Lucent. There were 2 tests. One AMCAT including Quants, English, Logical Reasoning and Technical (different section for CSE and ECE streams). Except technical section overall paper was easy. But in technical section they asked questions from counters, semiconductor devices but surprisingly no question from networking.
Second test was all about snippet programming. Two questions to solve in one hour. It\'s all about luck to get at least one easy program. We were given 2 choices JAVA or C++. I choose C++, because I had no idea about JAVA.
Don\'t panic in this round. See the demo how to write the code and start the test only when you are all clear with the instructions. You just need to write the logic use the variables declared in the given function so that it would take the inputs itself. No need to give any input by yourself.
Now there were two shortlists of students first for Bangalore office and second for Chennai office. We had PPT on 19th Jan 2016. As I said this company was owned by Nokia so there were no sign of Alcatel-Lucent. It was all about Nokia then. The students in the first list had (4 technical interviews+1 HR) and others had (2 technical+1 HR interview).
I was in the first shortlist, so I got interviewed for Bangalore office.
Technical Interview 1: This was the easiest interview which I attended in my final year. Now the questions which were asked to me,
1. Tell me about yourself.
2. Why do we use modulation. (Most appropriate answer is to reduce the antenna size. Higher the frequency lower the antenna size).
3. What is your final year project. As it was UWB antenna using CPW feed so he asked me why CPW feed not the others.
4. Write the program to get Fibonacci series. ie: 1 1 2 3 5 8.
5. Is it your first interview or you have attended any other process as well. I said many including Cisco so he asked why I got rejected in Cisco as I was able to answer the questions he was asking. I told him the reason that it was my first interview so I panicked.
6. He asked me a puzzle "You have 3 jugs - 10 litre, 7 litre and 3 litre. 10 litre jug is completely filled. Now measure 5 litre using these three jugs. (Hint: try to get combination 9 0 1 respectively)
7. Do you have any question for me. (I asked him one)
The interview lasted for an hour. I was sure that I would make it to the next round.
Next two technical interviews were on 20th Jan 2016.
Technical Interview 2: This interview included the following questions-
The first question he asked that what did the last guy discuss with you before you came here. I said everything he was discussing. There was no way of lying because his next question was based on the same. If I would have lied, he would have surely caught me.
1. You are given a signal sampled at 20 ms interval you have amplitude data stored in an array of length 10,000. Calculate the time period. I stuck in the code, but I explained the logic. He was impressed because I was the only person to answer this question.
2. The next thing he said to me was "If you discuss this question and solution with anyone I will make sure you don\'t make it to the next Round". And I think, he meant it because I was the last candidate to get interviewed in the 3rd round.
3. The new mobile product is about to launch in the market. How would you do testing to make sure it should be released for the customers. I wrote the key tests to perform, then he asked precisely how will you test the memory. (I said I don\'t know sir, probably using some tools).
4. What is your final year project and why did you choose it. I said I didn\'t have good job offer that\'s why I chose it to make sure I would be able to manage project as well as placement activities.
5. Which offer do you have and why do you want to join us. (He was impressed with my answer, it seemed he never expected this kind of answer)
6. How would you design a system at the transmitter side to calculate propagation delay for a packet from any other receiver. (Step by step, he increased the complexity of it as I was able to answer each case).
7. What do you know about interrupts. What happens when any interrupt arrives. As I answered he asked me to explain how the process takes place in ISR (Interrupt Service Routine). Again I said " as it wasn\'t in our syllabus I don\'t know the answer.
Again at the end, he asked me if I had any question. The interview lasted for more than 1 hour.
Interview 3: As I mentioned I was the last guy to get interviewed in the third round. I got the most dangerous panel this time as the others were saying. But I really liked this interviewer because coincidentally we both had the same area of interest. So it was just a cakewalk for me. It was the same interviewer who asked one of my friend to draw waveforms for all sounds produced by some musical instruments as it was mentioned in her resume as her hobby. So just don\'t put anything in your resume what you don\'t know. One of the panel member asked one of my friend to write the code for Snake game as it was mentioned in his resume as a project.
So now the questions-
1. Tell me about yourself?
2. What is AWGN. Explain how it affects communication?
3. Tell me the mathematical representation of Gaussian Filter?
4. What will be the Fourier Transform of Gaussian Filter. As I was unable to do the integration he told me the answer and why it is useful in digital communication.
5. What is DSSS, explain. (It was one of my projects specified in my resume)
6. As I did internship in BSNL, he gave me the population of 4 major city in my state and asked me to provide landline numbers including STD code and make it 10 digit number. I gave one example for each and discussed more facts about it. This question made me more comfortable with him.
7. Why did you design E-shaped patch antenna instead of using simple micro strip patch. (I answered).
8. What is impedance matching and why do we need it?
9. What is the standard impedance of TX lines. What do we do when the impedance is not matched?
10. What is the VSWR when impedance is matched?
11. All the questions related to the Smith Chart.
12. Circuit diagram of low pass filter, it\'s frequency response.
13. Puzzle-1: Hexagon with squares on its each side. What will be the length of wire to cover it.
14. Puzzle-2: Three circles with same radius attached with each other. Length of wire to cover it. I got stuck in it so he helped me by giving the same problem with 2 circles and 4 circles which I was able to solve. Then he asked me to infer the solution for three circles. This time I tried it correctly. That was it. This interview lasted for more than one and half hour.
As I came out of the interview room the other guy in the selection team asked to leave me. I was disappointed to see that coming. But as I was about to leave my first interviewer stopped me on my way and said "You are still in the game. We will inform you the next schedule letter. Be prepared for the next round. I was surprised that he remembered my name. I was really happy to hear that from him.
The next shortlist was announced on 26th Jan 2016. Again lucky day for me. It was just like a gift for me on the independence day. Overall 8 students were selected for the next interview.
Technical Interview 4: It was conducted on 1st Feb 2016.
The questions asked-
1. Tell me about yourself?
2. What are your favourite subjects (I answered Computer Communication, Digital Communication, Analog Circuit Design, and Microwave Engineering).
3. What is the difference between router, switch and hub. Explain with an example?
4. Why do we use modulation? As I answered to reduce antenna size, the next question was, how it relates to antenna size?
I said that it should be 1/4th of wavelength.
The next question was why 1/4th of the wavelength. This time I stuck an just made him clear I didn\'t know but put my view on it. As this time I mention about standing waves. He asked question on it.
5. Do we need standing waves. I said no. He asked me to justify it. I explained the reason behind impedance matching and gave which was to avoid standing wave.
6. Then he asked me about both AM and FM. I explained both with the examples. He even asked me about the ranges of AM and FM. He asked me to compare there bandwidth requirements and justify that the longer the frequency the lesser is the traveling distance. I explained with red and violet coloured lights.
7. Explain the steps to convert Analog signal to Digital Signal (Sampling, Quantizing and encoding).
8. In sampling, why the Nyquist criterion is followed?
9. Types of quantizers and the problems which occur in quantizers?
10. How the encoding takes place. At start it just didn\'t click in my mind but then he helped me by giving some extra time. I tried to avoid it, but he intentionally stuck on the same question and suddenly I was able to recall the concept based on the hints given. He just smiled and continued to ask questions.
11. Now he asked me to sort some given dates (DD/MM/YYYY) in the best possible way with minimum iterations. I presented a solution, the general solution of comparing year then month if the year is same and so on. But he refused to accept it because it had a large no. of iterations. Then I asked him for some time and he gave it and went out of the cabin. This time I was able to solve it within 2 minutes. As he came inside I explained the logic, he was very much satisfied with the solution. This was the last technical question he asked me.
12. He asked me about my family background. He was surprised to know that I studied in Hindi medium upto 12th standard and still I was good enough in communication.
13. Do you have any question for me. I asked the same question which asked all the previous interviewers. He answered it briefly and he was happy that I asked him this question.
14. The last question he asked was "Would you like to join this company?". NOW, this was the question I was waiting for.
Finally the interview came to an end which lasted for more than 1 hour. He said "Very well done. We will get back to you maximum by tomorrow.
The next List was announced on 3rd Feb 2016. We all 5 were surprised to see that it was final selection list not a shortlist for HR interview what we were waiting for.
HR Interview: After few days we had telephonic HR interview. Just a formality which lasted for 9 minutes. Questions asked were-
1. Tell me about yourself?
2. Which project is your favourite in B.tech?
3. What is the goal of your life?
So this was it Initially we were supposed to have 1 technical and 1 HR interview but it turned out to be 4 Tech and 1 Hr interview. Quite easy interviews. If you know the basics you can make to the final selection. Sometimes the interviewer just asks some question to check your pressure handling capability. They won\'t ask you directly about your strength and weakness. So just try to be yourself. Just don\'t try to fool the interviewer if you are not a good liar.
I am Anil Kumar Jat, B.Tech (ECE), VIT University (Chennai Campus).
Alcatel-Lucent (now owned by Nokia Corp.) visited our campus (Vellore) on 19th Jan 2016. The selection process was little different from other companies. The selection process took 4 days (tests + interviews).
Selection Process:
1) Aptitude Test.
2) 4 Technical Interviews.
3) 1 HR Interview.
(CTC: 6 LPA for B.Tech).
Aptitude Test:
We had test on 14th Jan 2016, the day when Nokia owned Alcatel-Lucent. There were 2 tests. One AMCAT including Quants, English, Logical Reasoning and Technical (different section for CSE and ECE streams). Except technical section overall paper was easy. But in technical section they asked questions from counters, semiconductor devices but surprisingly no question from networking.
Second test was all about snippet programming. Two questions to solve in one hour. It\'s all about luck to get at least one easy program. We were given 2 choices JAVA or C++. I choose C++, because I had no idea about JAVA.
Don\'t panic in this round. See the demo how to write the code and start the test only when you are all clear with the instructions. You just need to write the logic use the variables declared in the given function so that it would take the inputs itself. No need to give any input by yourself.
Now there were two shortlists of students first for Bangalore office and second for Chennai office. We had PPT on 19th Jan 2016. As I said this company was owned by Nokia so there were no sign of Alcatel-Lucent. It was all about Nokia then. The students in the first list had (4 technical interviews+1 HR) and others had (2 technical+1 HR interview).
I was in the first shortlist, so I got interviewed for Bangalore office.
Technical Interview 1: This was the easiest interview which I attended in my final year. Now the questions which were asked to me,
1. Tell me about yourself.
2. Why do we use modulation. (Most appropriate answer is to reduce the antenna size. Higher the frequency lower the antenna size).
3. What is your final year project. As it was UWB antenna using CPW feed so he asked me why CPW feed not the others.
4. Write the program to get Fibonacci series. ie: 1 1 2 3 5 8.
5. Is it your first interview or you have attended any other process as well. I said many including Cisco so he asked why I got rejected in Cisco as I was able to answer the questions he was asking. I told him the reason that it was my first interview so I panicked.
6. He asked me a puzzle "You have 3 jugs - 10 litre, 7 litre and 3 litre. 10 litre jug is completely filled. Now measure 5 litre using these three jugs. (Hint: try to get combination 9 0 1 respectively)
7. Do you have any question for me. (I asked him one)
The interview lasted for an hour. I was sure that I would make it to the next round.
Next two technical interviews were on 20th Jan 2016.
Technical Interview 2: This interview included the following questions-
The first question he asked that what did the last guy discuss with you before you came here. I said everything he was discussing. There was no way of lying because his next question was based on the same. If I would have lied, he would have surely caught me.
1. You are given a signal sampled at 20 ms interval you have amplitude data stored in an array of length 10,000. Calculate the time period. I stuck in the code, but I explained the logic. He was impressed because I was the only person to answer this question.
2. The next thing he said to me was "If you discuss this question and solution with anyone I will make sure you don\'t make it to the next Round". And I think, he meant it because I was the last candidate to get interviewed in the 3rd round.
3. The new mobile product is about to launch in the market. How would you do testing to make sure it should be released for the customers. I wrote the key tests to perform, then he asked precisely how will you test the memory. (I said I don\'t know sir, probably using some tools).
4. What is your final year project and why did you choose it. I said I didn\'t have good job offer that\'s why I chose it to make sure I would be able to manage project as well as placement activities.
5. Which offer do you have and why do you want to join us. (He was impressed with my answer, it seemed he never expected this kind of answer)
6. How would you design a system at the transmitter side to calculate propagation delay for a packet from any other receiver. (Step by step, he increased the complexity of it as I was able to answer each case).
7. What do you know about interrupts. What happens when any interrupt arrives. As I answered he asked me to explain how the process takes place in ISR (Interrupt Service Routine). Again I said " as it wasn\'t in our syllabus I don\'t know the answer.
Again at the end, he asked me if I had any question. The interview lasted for more than 1 hour.
Interview 3: As I mentioned I was the last guy to get interviewed in the third round. I got the most dangerous panel this time as the others were saying. But I really liked this interviewer because coincidentally we both had the same area of interest. So it was just a cakewalk for me. It was the same interviewer who asked one of my friend to draw waveforms for all sounds produced by some musical instruments as it was mentioned in her resume as her hobby. So just don\'t put anything in your resume what you don\'t know. One of the panel member asked one of my friend to write the code for Snake game as it was mentioned in his resume as a project.
So now the questions-
1. Tell me about yourself?
2. What is AWGN. Explain how it affects communication?
3. Tell me the mathematical representation of Gaussian Filter?
4. What will be the Fourier Transform of Gaussian Filter. As I was unable to do the integration he told me the answer and why it is useful in digital communication.
5. What is DSSS, explain. (It was one of my projects specified in my resume)
6. As I did internship in BSNL, he gave me the population of 4 major city in my state and asked me to provide landline numbers including STD code and make it 10 digit number. I gave one example for each and discussed more facts about it. This question made me more comfortable with him.
7. Why did you design E-shaped patch antenna instead of using simple micro strip patch. (I answered).
8. What is impedance matching and why do we need it?
9. What is the standard impedance of TX lines. What do we do when the impedance is not matched?
10. What is the VSWR when impedance is matched?
11. All the questions related to the Smith Chart.
12. Circuit diagram of low pass filter, it\'s frequency response.
13. Puzzle-1: Hexagon with squares on its each side. What will be the length of wire to cover it.
14. Puzzle-2: Three circles with same radius attached with each other. Length of wire to cover it. I got stuck in it so he helped me by giving the same problem with 2 circles and 4 circles which I was able to solve. Then he asked me to infer the solution for three circles. This time I tried it correctly. That was it. This interview lasted for more than one and half hour.
As I came out of the interview room the other guy in the selection team asked to leave me. I was disappointed to see that coming. But as I was about to leave my first interviewer stopped me on my way and said "You are still in the game. We will inform you the next schedule letter. Be prepared for the next round. I was surprised that he remembered my name. I was really happy to hear that from him.
The next shortlist was announced on 26th Jan 2016. Again lucky day for me. It was just like a gift for me on the independence day. Overall 8 students were selected for the next interview.
Technical Interview 4: It was conducted on 1st Feb 2016.
The questions asked-
1. Tell me about yourself?
2. What are your favourite subjects (I answered Computer Communication, Digital Communication, Analog Circuit Design, and Microwave Engineering).
3. What is the difference between router, switch and hub. Explain with an example?
4. Why do we use modulation? As I answered to reduce antenna size, the next question was, how it relates to antenna size?
I said that it should be 1/4th of wavelength.
The next question was why 1/4th of the wavelength. This time I stuck an just made him clear I didn\'t know but put my view on it. As this time I mention about standing waves. He asked question on it.
5. Do we need standing waves. I said no. He asked me to justify it. I explained the reason behind impedance matching and gave which was to avoid standing wave.
6. Then he asked me about both AM and FM. I explained both with the examples. He even asked me about the ranges of AM and FM. He asked me to compare there bandwidth requirements and justify that the longer the frequency the lesser is the traveling distance. I explained with red and violet coloured lights.
7. Explain the steps to convert Analog signal to Digital Signal (Sampling, Quantizing and encoding).
8. In sampling, why the Nyquist criterion is followed?
9. Types of quantizers and the problems which occur in quantizers?
10. How the encoding takes place. At start it just didn\'t click in my mind but then he helped me by giving some extra time. I tried to avoid it, but he intentionally stuck on the same question and suddenly I was able to recall the concept based on the hints given. He just smiled and continued to ask questions.
11. Now he asked me to sort some given dates (DD/MM/YYYY) in the best possible way with minimum iterations. I presented a solution, the general solution of comparing year then month if the year is same and so on. But he refused to accept it because it had a large no. of iterations. Then I asked him for some time and he gave it and went out of the cabin. This time I was able to solve it within 2 minutes. As he came inside I explained the logic, he was very much satisfied with the solution. This was the last technical question he asked me.
12. He asked me about my family background. He was surprised to know that I studied in Hindi medium upto 12th standard and still I was good enough in communication.
13. Do you have any question for me. I asked the same question which asked all the previous interviewers. He answered it briefly and he was happy that I asked him this question.
14. The last question he asked was "Would you like to join this company?". NOW, this was the question I was waiting for.
Finally the interview came to an end which lasted for more than 1 hour. He said "Very well done. We will get back to you maximum by tomorrow.
The next List was announced on 3rd Feb 2016. We all 5 were surprised to see that it was final selection list not a shortlist for HR interview what we were waiting for.
HR Interview: After few days we had telephonic HR interview. Just a formality which lasted for 9 minutes. Questions asked were-
1. Tell me about yourself?
2. Which project is your favourite in B.tech?
3. What is the goal of your life?
So this was it Initially we were supposed to have 1 technical and 1 HR interview but it turned out to be 4 Tech and 1 Hr interview. Quite easy interviews. If you know the basics you can make to the final selection. Sometimes the interviewer just asks some question to check your pressure handling capability. They won\'t ask you directly about your strength and weakness. So just try to be yourself. Just don\'t try to fool the interviewer if you are not a good liar.
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