My name is Aiswarya Padma B and I'm a fourth year Applied Electronics and Instrumentation student from College of Engineering, Trivandum. I wanted to share my interview experience with IBM so here I am!

I had recently applied at the IBM Careers Portal for their summer internship 2019 role. But unfortunately, they didn't find my application and resume satisfactory for the role.

Later, during the month of August 2019, I applied again for the Associate Develeper role. This time, I was bit more confident than the last time I had applied as I had worked out a lot of problems and prepared for the same. Then, we got a notification from our college placement cell that IBM was recruiting on campus for the same role.

The recruitment process consisted of 5 rounds.

1. Cognitive Games - About 500 students attempted this round from various departments of our college, and about 450 students cleared this round. This round was further divided into 7 sectional games, where each game had to be played for 3 minutes, and the students with the highest scores would be selected for the next round.

2. Psychometric Test - This round was the trickiest and most confusing of all the 5 rounds. We were given a set of 80-100 questions, all of which we had to answer sincerely, and it tested our memory, our decision making skills, self-confidence asn various other behavioural parameters that could be assessed by a machine. Among the 450 students who appeared for this round, only about 100 students cleared it.

3. English Assessment Test - This round mainly focussed on our vocabulary and grammar. We were again given a set of 50-60 questions and the students with the highest scores were selected to the next round. About 60 students cleared this round.

4. Coding Assessment Test - This round was the game changer round as we all knew. It carried the highest weightage in the whole process as the role we were all interviewing for was that of an Associate Developer and hence, we had to ccrack this round to be taken forward. It was a 30 minute test, where all of us were given different questions from topics link Arrays, Linked Lists, Strings, Graphs, Trees and so on. Luckily for me, with my preparation I was able to crack my test. 17 students were selected to the final interview round.

5. The Interview - Interviews were conducted in the next day. My interview lasted for about 1 hour. I was asked about the latest technologies, my interests, and the projects I had done. I was also given two coding questions to be written out on a paper. After the technical part, I was asked to talk about myself, my extra currciular activities and my achievements outside of my academics. Around 3 pm that day, the whole process ended and we were told that the results would be emailed to us within a week.

I was a bit flustered after the interview because it was kind of hard and I wasn't very good at explaining things about myself when I was given a chance. And it was because I got nervous as soon as I entered the interview room.

I waited anxiously for the results. A week went by, and then two. I had almost given up hope when one rainy night, at about 11 pm I got an email saying I was selected. I was so surprised and happy at the same time. My efforts had finally paid off.

A few things I learnt after this whole process is that getting nervous is never a good thing. Be calm, communicate clearly and most of all, respect your interviewer. Positive attitude and hard work will always pay off at the right time. Never become demotivated in face of failures. Like they say, failures are the stepping stones to success.