It was the year of 2020, when Hitachi Vantara came for college placements. This article will focus mainly on the entire Hitachi Vantara interview experience and process. It will not be a storytelling version.
Elimination Round
It was a simple online assessment, but a lengthy one. It had multiple sections. Each section was dedicated to a particular technology domain. Web Development, Cloud, DBMS, ML/AI, etc. These were few of the topics, I don’t remember them all. All of these sections were MCQ based. And 2 programming questions. These are not textbook questions. You need to have a good understanding of these domains. You also need to be skilled at building things to answer correctly.
Technical Discussion
The next round was a Technical Discussion round. It was around 45-60 minutes. The interviewer was a seasoned professional. He asked me questions on topics I mentioned I was confident in. Questions from Java, Operating System, Networking and some coding. He also asked me if I read any technology related books. I had recently read Head First Java(I recommend this to everyone).
Tip: Never try to stall the interviewer. Time is very precious. If you don’t know something, just mention “I can’t recall at this point of time” and move on.
Managerial Round
This was the final round. The interviewer was one of the Assistant Vice President’s of Hitachi Vantara. I remember his name, Venu Achanta. He was very calm and cool. He asked me a couple of numerical questions, which I didn’t answer correctly. But that is not the point, these rounds are for checking how you’re tackling a problem. To figure out your thought process behind it. And how do you respond or react to a situation you didn’t anticipate. Next he asked about my college experience, I had mentioned about Student’s Chapter. This experience helped me crack the interview. He asked me some leadership questions, how do I resolve a conflict, manage a team etc. Later he asked me feedback about the hiring process. And that’s it.
Overall I would suggest try to get as much real life experience as possible in solving problems. Rather than mugging up bookish knowledge. Try to learn new things and things which are outside of course curriculum. You never know which experiences will help you get out of a jam.
