Things leads to a good rating in ILP(No need to read, better experience this on your own)

In this thread I shall be discussing how to get good rating in ILP.

First of all let me tell you that rating in ILP matters. Well, it doesn't have the power to ruin or make one’s career but it certainly can affect after coming out of ILP training. It’s entirely different ball game when it comes to allocating to project. TCS random number game again takes the center stage over merit when it comes to allocation of project. A lot of unseen factors come into play when it comes to allocation in project. There will be interview conducted for each project in which candidates will be selected based on their skill, merit, ILP rating, willingness to work for company, attitude and how far one lives from the office. An important role is also played by the RMG(kind of HR) whom under new associates are tagged. It is the job of RMGs to find project and manage associates in the initial stage. So in this entire world of uncertainty the only thing that can help you to take project of your own choice is the ILP rating. Besides these, there are some good projects in which they only take trainees having more than 3 rating.  Coming back to this rating thing, it will be awarded after the completion of training at ILP. A rating of 3 out of 5 is considered as average which is awarded to everyone and 4 is considered as better and 5 is phenomenal. I shall come straight to the facts what you should do to make your 3 months at training at ILP worthwhile.

1.       First of all if one is a non IT/CS guy, forget it. The chances are very bleak until one is extra-ordinary. Anyone with computer background will find learning core concepts easily and they can score very well in internal tests. The only exception is the mainframe domain in which things are more or less equal for everyone. So it’s a fair game in mainframe as everyone is at the same level.

2.       Second, one needs to be sincere and take this training seriously. Students need to leave their college care free attitude and should focus on behaving professionally. This “behave professional” or “be professional” term is going to come across many times in ILP training. So my suggestion is to develop a very optimistic idea about this term as it is going to be used every time one makes a mistake.

3.       Always dress very carefully. Dressing sense is very important in professional world. One should wear different shades of shirts and some occasional ties and clean shoes. The dress should always be proper,well ironed and clean. The dressing sense should not be very eye catching. One should follow a good dressing style with complete consistency. The Monday to Friday look should be completely consistent. This is easy to say very hard to follow daily activity.

4.       Be helpful. It doesn't matter whether you are introvert or extrovert, helping others comes naturally or not to you but you should have helping nature in ILP. The whole ILP is based on the idea of sharing knowledge and helping each other. Help each and every one just like you help your friends. And it should come naturally to you. It should not be like that you are helping others just to get a good rating but it’s a part of good team work and I will say one needs to develop this in real life too.

5.       Seating arrangement in ILP is again very important. There will be people from all over the country predominantly from south. So one need to interact with them despite of all those language barriers. One should try to make new friends, talk to everybody and appreciate the good things about others too. The training leads always keep a notice of these activities. Just make sure one should never have a fixed seating position or a fixed group. Try to interact with everyone during this training. Give it a chance and I think you will yourself like it.

6.       Biz-skills:-These are very important classes. They are really very smart people. They will interact like friends, tell their own stories but one should not get too much involved with them as they are very professional and one should understand that they are just doing their job. One should try to interact in their session, actively part in their sessions and should come forward to speak when given an opportunity to speak. It is worth mentioning that the biz-skill lead takes a written note of one’s every activity in the class room. So coming to classes at proper timing, use of English language in the training campus, pronunciation of words, body language will be noticed in the record too. Try to follow a simple routine but with pure consistency.

7.       In ILP soon trainees will be divided into smaller groups of size 6. Being a SPOC(Single Point of contact) of group increases the chances of getting noticed. A spoc is person who is directly responsible for the outcome of a project in a group. A spoc in a group is selected after initial training by common voting and discussion. One should have already done something good in order to be selected as a spoc. Always remember it’s the group which chooses its spoc its not the other way around. As a spoc one need to manage the work, divide the work for each person and take responsibility for the entire group in times of tough situation. At times, spoc needs to praise team members, convince them and most important of all listen to every team member.

8.       There may be 3-4 occasions of presentations where one can have to present his module, project etc to the whole classroom. So prepare for it and plan for it. Always try to make presentations as interactive as possible. Try not to be boring and one more thing always have one feature that will differentiate your module from others. You have to think it by yourself. As this one thing will help you to create an impression among others.

9.       Last and the most important, be optimist. Being overly optimistic is like a being a fool and no matter how hard a fool can try he will always come to find the fools end. So be wise and again think about it. Being optimist for me it to be realist, being practical and behave in the best possible way no matter whatever is the situation. There may be times when there are different opinions in a group over something. One should to be calm, reasonable and bring the objectives and goals of the group into picture rather than going for his personal opinions.

All the best for your training at ILP, I wish it was worth once reading.

Note: I have written a blog about my life in TCS as a fresher. I hope it helps.
http://mylifeintcs2.blogspot.in/

Training of two and half months @Trivandrum

Training at Trivandrum:

 For me, training in Trivandrum was overall a great unforgettable experience. It was more like a paid vacation for me. I never learnt so many things in such a short stint plus I was getting money for training and learning new things for the first time. Simply this thought makes me happy. Let’s go through all the details of training:-

In the first day they will allocate the hostel based on a random order. A single room is usually shared by two people. One is not allowed to choose a hostel but one can freely choose his/her room partners. The allocation of room generally depends on FCFS. If two persons want to change rooms or do things like that it generally depends on one convincing power. The food and stuffs are little costly but the faster one gets accustomed to this will be better.  There will be induction/briefing classes on the first two days of joining TCS, which are usually very boring. My advice to you to be attentive in these first two days as they say lot of rules and regulation about company which can be very useful. There will a online test of 20 minutes conducted and trainees are allocated their stream(java,.net,mainframe etc) based on the combined marks of ASPIRE and this test. FYI as a stream, Java and .Net are the preferred ones.  Moving ahead of the two days of boring lecture let’s move on to the course and training. The training will be divided into two groups: Business and Technical.  So there will be a biz skill leader and a tech skill leader in every class of size 40 approx.

There will be one class monitor or class captain for each class. They can be selected on basis of leadership quality, voting or simply by ignorance. My advice please doesn't go for it. It is a complete clerical job and will add a lot of extra burden. There is a representative for every group of 6 trainees called Spoc. Spoc is someone who leads a group during the entire training. One can learn and experience lot of management skills and leadership qualities by being a spoc.

Coming to class structure, a lot of attention and care is given to form groups and subgroups. The basic idea of putting trainees into groups is to help them learning team spirit, enabling competition between different groups and sharing of knowledge.  

The class of 42 is divided into two blocks-A (24) and B(18). Then every block is divided into team of 6 trainees. Every team of 6 trainees is formed by 3 subgroups of 2 partners. And the criteria for selecting these two partners in a subgroup in (descending order of priority) are: one should be of IT/CS and other non tech. One should be male other should be female. They should belong to different places like one from north and other from south. So guys a lot depends on your luck:-P

 The biz skill training will be new to everyone regardless of the stream. My advice to everyone just try to enjoy the biz skill classes. Be interactive, mix with all people, talk to them, ask questions, sometimes try to interact with biz skill leads, exude positive attitude and confidence; and most important have fun. You will also get a good score in this section just by doing these things. The marks in biz skill classes include sections like behavior, written and speaking skill, dressing sense, interactions with others and lot of trivial things we never notice. 

In technical section, you will be first introduced to the stream (JAVA,.net)  and after one month of basic training  there will be a project given for each group. The quality of training depends on the tech lead one will get. It will be entirely his will he want to take classes or not. Literally, there is no one to monitor him. Mine first tech lead was the coolest one. He left us on our own as his only reason coming to Trivandrum was to enjoy one month paid vacation after a hectic project.  The workload will be relatively less during the first two-three weeks. So enjoy these week-ends cause once the project gets started everyone has to come on both Saturdays and Sundays. The presentation of the project really matters and this is the most crucial part of the training. After all the hard work for two and half months the last week is a luxury. There will be no work, less attention of biz skill and in my case there was no tech lead too. After the training, a rating is given to every associate. The rating basically differs from 3-5. The general rating is 3 while 4 is considered as very good and 5 is phenomenal. 4 rating is generally given to 3-4 guys in a class of 40 trainees while a rating 5 is given to one two guys for the entire batch(500-600).  During the last week of training people will be allocated their base branch (Bangalore,Chennai etc). This allocation basically depends on three choices filled before training and luck. My sympathy to those who gets Chennai as their base branch :-P

 So this was all about technical details of training in Trivandrum , besides all these things, enjoy the new place, a different climate, interact with new people, squander your first month salary, do party and simply enjoy life.

Note: I have written a blog about my life in TCS as a fresher. I hope it helps.
http://mylifeintcs2.blogspot.in/

ASPIRE@TCS and Pre-joining formalities

1.     ASPIRE:-The next phase of TCS starts with a one-two month (May-June) online course called ASPIRE which begins after successfully passing out of the college. This online study portal will consist of some technical sections (JAVA, Database, Software Engineering, etc), communication skill section and last, and the worst - Know Your TCS(KYT) section. There will be assignment and quizzes based on each and every section whose answer is available online at various forums. My suggestion: - whether you study or not, try to give quizzes just by yourself (the only exception is KYT section). There is a reason for that.

2.     Let me tell you one more thing, even TCS delivery team (the top management level) knows that solution of every assignment and quiz is available in internet and one can easily find it but still they are very serious about ASPIRE. So, there is possibility that they can increase the question set or can come up with some new idea.

3.     Pre-Joining Formalities:-This is the most hectic and cumbersome part of joining TCS. There will be a long list of documents and affidavits which you will have to submit on the day of joining at TCS. I was like most of novices who knew nothing about affidavits at first but after going through all that pain,I am a veteran in this field, thanks to TCS.

I am not going into the details about documentation as I don’t want to remember my lousy days but here are some of the important suggestions:-

1. Most importantly, first,be serious about it. We all have been accustomed in college to always work at the last moment. But these processes take time. Apply early for your passport, UID card, pan card, voter id card, have your Birth Certificate ready(in English), a dozen photographs, collect all your mark sheets(from 10^th class to 8^th Semester) and passing certificate of college. Have at least five-six photocopies of each document including two attested copy. 

2. Read TCS documents carefully. One can also search in internet and forums. Take help from seniors and friends (who are careful, usually the BT’s).
3. Get ready to make some affidavits and dully fill your service agreement-surety paper. 

Interview Process@ TCS

Hi everybody,

Since there are so many guys out here who join TCS every year. So I thought about writing this blog.This blog will give idea about what going to be the upcoming days are like if you have recently joined TCS or it is coming to your college. Every year like this will be like 2012-2013 this software giant is recruiting thousands of employees As a matter of fact the requirement of employee is increasing every year. TCS is currently the biggest software firm of Asia. It has outsmarted some of the prudent rivals like Infosys and Wipro in terms of market values and earnings. It clearly shows that there is something in this software giant especially about its marketing policy and I hope its something you should learn or at least look at with respect. So in spite of the meager salary you will have something to smile about.This blog is divided into five parts.
1. Interview in TCS
2. ASPIREand Pre-joining Formalities
3. Training at Trivandrum
4. Things leads to a good rating(No need to read, better experience this on your own)
5. TCS-As I see It

Interview at TCS:-TCS visited my college campus back in the September 2011. There was a great buzz in college campus as the expected figure for recruiting came to be 250. So every guy/girl from non-IT CS background was thinking whether to apply for or not. So if you are a non CS/IT guy/girl having the same pandemonium, I want to make few things clear. First, you will get a job security which really matters in these days. It will give you a good opportunity to try for off campus jobs with a peace of mind.  It gives you a stint of 2-3 months to prepare for all the alternate options before the training period and I have seen numerous guys making a good use of that. But once the training period starts it gradually becomes more difficult to do preparation for other exams. Besides all this, people see a lot of opportunity in software industry as there are numerous requirements and options. So one really don’t need to be a tech geek to make a good mark in IT service based companies.
So coming over with placement pandemonium, let me deal with some facts. In my college and during my time, the criteria for eligibility in TCS were: Eligible for written if you are above 60% through out.2. Direct eligible for PI if you are above 75% through out. Luckily I belonged to later one so I faced the interview directly. The interview was like 10-15 minutes.

1.Written: - The written exam was around 40 minutes in which there were questions mainly from quant section. The difficulty level was quite good. The question keeps repeating every year and is available in internet.

 2.Interview: - The interview was really very simple. I think a major emphasis is given on speaking skill, some basic knowledge of C++, Java and database. One should try to explain the concepts rather than just telling definition or writing programs; and remember the way one speaks matter too. A long list of hobbies which include reading newspaper, novels, solving SUDOKU, playing cricket, chess, writing dairy or anything interesting you can explain(defend) always help. These things act as a filler; both for you and the H.R. My experience:-After interview we were told results at night on the same day. 201 students were selected from my college campus and there was a state of “euphoria” in my entire college campus .After placement in September, my joining date was 23^rd july2012, so it was like whole year. Now, It’s up to the person, how one can utilize this period. There is a saying that good time flies very easily and I have seen this happening in my final year. So my only suggestion:-Don’t go frivolous after placement.