Just a few days back I was in the job hunt(Since I was not been placed in the campus interviews because of kinda stuffs happened between me and the placement officer of SJCE), no wonder I has to try through off campus and was busy posting my resumes here and there to find the right career path(God!! Sometimes I even used to forget the positions that I had applied for)though I had few offer letters from Symbol and prodigy technovations (where I did my M Tech internship)and I was just not satisfied with them.
Guess what???My resume was been shortlisted in cypress semiconductors for the Post of Electronic/Electrical design Engineer. I didn't even knew when I updated my resume at the cypress job portal and I didn't even knew the post I had applied for in cypress, until I had a telephonic interview with them. It was great experience to have a telephonic interview with the "c pressed" guy. Initially, the "c pressed" guy called me and told me that my resume was been shortlisted and he asked me to specify a suitable time for the telephonic interview with him(Its a great honor when u specify the date and the time of your interview). I was been told that, the telephonic interviews will be followed by 2 to 3 rounds of "wolf pack" interviews and an HR interview. I told him that I will be fine with next Monday anytime between 11am to 1pm as I used to woke up at 10am during vacations(Keeping in mind that interviewers won't like specific timings, like 2pm, 3pm etc).
Expecting a call on that Monday morning at 10am(Woke up a bit earlier that day, 9am), I started researching on cypress semiconductors in Google. Found few interesting stuffs like Psoc, touchscreen blah blah on their website. It was 2pm and I didn't get a call from them. Now that makes a fresher to think. My brain started working at a nerve speed of 2Ghz(Was that cypress call a prank one?? How about calling TV9??). I was bit tired to refresh myself I decided to watch "Zindagi na milegi dubara" and went to the theater. The next day, it remained the same posting resumes on honeywell and tektronix sites( I had a call by tektronix a month back regarding interviews).
After a week, the same cypress guy called me at 4pm and asked me that whether I will be available for an interview with him on Thursday ie 21st of July, 2011 at 3 pm. I said it will be fine. I asked him what will be the patten of interview??(Just to know what are they concentrating on). With the old interviewers tone he said, Basics of electricals and electronics, basic C, mu P, control systems.I was terrified listening to that. Who will remember all those electrical topics after 2 years?? Can you?? I started to look for those text books in my bedroom. Prepared mu P, control systems, a bit of C and seriously no DSP( I had worked on FFT's, wavelets, sampling n all. So thought no need to refresh on them).
The next day, the "C pressed" guy called me at 3.25pm and the interview was started
CPress: Introduce Yourself.
Me: Sir, my name is....blah blah.. Pursued my blah blah...Did my internship at .....Family background...
CPress: What all subjects you studied in engineering??(He had my resume with him so I had to be precise)
Me: Automotive electronics, DSP, control systems, 8085 mu P, Power electronics, transforms, AC/DC machines, C. I said I had learnt C# .NET during my internship.
CPress: Do you know what post you are applied for??
Me: Application programming( I actually didn't knew the post that I had applied. Thought sometimes bluffing works. Bad luck it didn't)
CPress: No. You had applied for Electronic design engineer post and we are looking for electronic/ electrical guys and not computer application programmers.( "Me: F*CK man!! You said interview will be on basic electronics your pitch was high when you said Basic C")
Me: Sir, basically I am an Electrical engineer and mastered in Industrial Electronics. You can ask me on electronics too.(Intended him to ask on C and .NET)
CPress: Ok sushanth. Lets start the interview.( Me: WTF! What were you doing till now??)
CPress: Tell me about your projects.
Me: My M Tech project was on crack detection in a gear using wavelet transforms. Explained all the analyzing procedure.
Cpress: I am not interested in analyzing. Tell me how you extracted the signal from the gear unit?? what is the signal actually??(I remembered my Prof asking this question to me. "What is signal"?? and I was prepared 4 it)
Me: Signal is a kind of information. Signal which I had captured is a analog signal which is sampled to make it discretized(digital form).(On a true note, I didn't knew how they captured signals in my company. I was given with the digital signals. But I had an idea about how to capture signals). I explained him the procedure.
CPress: To which port you connected the device to your laptop. (It deserves a double F*ck).
Me: Probably USB port. I am not sure with that.( I had been to tektronix during my internships. I had seen my manager connecting his laptop to oscilloscope- DPO 7000, using USB port).
CPress: Do you know the speed of USB.
Me: No, sir.( I have to add Sir's on all answers which Ended up with NO).
CPress: Do you know SPI, UART??( Idiot!! I didn't put up embedded systems in my resume)
Me: UART- Universal asynchronous receiver transmitter. SPI- Serial peripheral Interface.
CPress: Explain them??
Me: UART - rx, tx data. SPI - MOSI, MISO.( MASTER SLAVE I/O was all what I was knowing). Added few more on it.
CPress: What is I2C??? Where do we use them SPI, UART, I2C??
Me: Inter Integrated Circuit. I heard I2C is used in Aerospace domain( in gyroscopes). SPI in automotive electronics. UART - I had connect my laptop to my tv once using RS-232 port.
CPress: Had you worked on embedded systems??(Thank god he asked)
Me: No, sir. But I had studied a bit on them and I like to work on them.
CPress: Tell me Ohm's law??( finally basics started)
Me: Current carrying conductor b/w 2 points is directly proportional to the potential difference b/w 2 points.
CPress: Kirchoff's voltage law??
Me: In a closed loop, the Voltage is directly proportional to sum of currents.(Which was wrong - Correct answer is Sum of voltages in a closed loop is equal to zero. I didn't knew it)
CPress: Then I will give you a parallel circuit with 3 resistors. Can we apply Ohms law KVL to it same time.
Me: Yes. We can.( I knew something was wrong with KVL, since its been 2 long years for me. I didn't recollect it)
CPress: What is a transformer??
Me: Its a device which amplifies or reduces electrical signals like voltage and current without the change in frequency.( I mugged this one during my engineering days. It was the only question which was asked to us during vivavoce. Bad luck, he got a prob with this one too)
CPress: Without the change in frequency???Had you heard about frequency transformers??
Me: No, sir. I didn't heard about FT.( VTU didn't covered Frequency transformers in the syllabus. After interviews, I googled and found that they are developed in the year 2004 by ABB).
CPress: Kinds of transformers??
Me: Power transformers, distribution transformers.
CPress: Suppose I have a 230 V i/p and I need 6v output?? Is it possible??
Me : Yes sir. Its called step down transformer.
CPress: Is it possible to increase output to 400 V?? Is yes how?? How to design??
Me: (F*Ck design) Yes. It is possible. Step up transformers with number of primary turns less than secondary turns. Secondary side magnetic flux increases, which increases secondary current and hence the secondary voltage.Design?(In a low pitch)
CPress: OK. What is frequency??
Me: Some event occurring number of times a sec.(Remembered Cycles/sec)
CPress: Do you know AC/ DC machines?? Its been mentioned in your resume.( Me: I decided to keep them out of resume from now on).
Me: Yes. I read about them during my engineering. I don't have in depth knowledge about them as of now.
CPress: Difference between AC motor and Induction motor.??( Me: brum...brum....lol)
Me:(Loser!! I just said I don't know.) Kept quite.
CPress: What is a structure??
Me: A structure is a collection of one or more variables, of different data types, grouped together under a single name. Structures are similar to arrays with the only difference is that is can hold different data types.(I was been asked this question in all the interviews that I had attended in Bangalore)
CPress: Where can be structures used?? Explain with an example?
Me: (Thank god he started asking questions on C) For example College. College is a structure with students, no of students, class room sections holding different data types.
CPress: What is 8085??Its been mentioned in your resume
Me: (Awesome Dude!!) Sir 8085 is a microprocessor.
CPress: Then what is the difference between 8085 and 8051??
Me: 8085- microprocessor. 8051- Microcontroller.
Microprocessor- general purpose. Microcontroller - Specific purpose
Micro controllers will have timers and blah blah...
CPress: What is PC??
Me: Personal Computer
CPress: PC in microprocessor?? What does it do??
Me:(Kal nan magane..Program counter andidre nim appan mane gant hogoda) Program counter holds the address of the next instruction to be executed.
CPress: How many bits does 8085 have??
Me: 8085 is a 8bit processor.
CPress: Sushanth. Don't feel bad about my views. I felt you are good at programming skills rather than analog and digital electronics. You had worked on .NET , Matlab and LabView. Its better you choose your career with them. Its nice talking to you. Thanks for your time.
Me: It really was a nice interview. Glad to talk with you. (TAk.....ting ting ting..)
That's all folks!! It was a 45 mins telephonic interview(Exactly 47.26 mins). CPress, some how felt that I am not good at analog and electronics stuffs. Probably, he is right. I could have prepared a bit better. But as u all know, how difficult it is for an Electrical (BE) engineers to remember electrical and electronics topics after 4 long years, that too in this computer programming world which wants the engineer to be good at programming skills. Trust me, It really was a good interview as I was been refreshed on electronics stuffs.
People who are trying for cypress semiconductors, make sure you had done your basics right. Keep your resume limited. Only put those subjects in which you are good at. They don't have lots of openings on Application programming. All the best fellas!!
