Cricket to AI: Campus recruiters riddle IIT candidates on off-syllabus topics to pick the perfect employees
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. It’s time for riddles at IIT campus placements! Here goes: There are X number of people standing in a circle. The first one kills three, the second one kills four and so on.
Who would be the last one standing? That’s the question a financial firm asked students at a campus placement at one of the oldest Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in India. And it does not matter if you do not follow cricket. Your interviewer can ask why there are 11 players in each team in one of the most popular games in the country.
This season, interviews at IITs are going beyond mere aptitude tests and technical rounds. Recruiting companies are changing tack and are grilling students over multiple rounds of out-of-the-box questions to find out if they have the right fit for the high compensation on offer. "To truly gauge a candidate’s potential, we place a high value on their presence of mind and critical thinking abilities.
In this pursuit, we often ask unconventional questions such as why a cricket team has only 11 members or how the candidate would design an airport within the city in Bangalore," said Chetan Yadav, head and senior vice president of HR at Cashfree Payments, one of the recruiters at the IITs this year. The payment startup toldMint that debate-based questions or “guestimates" help them analyse the candidates and their ability to think "creatively, challenge conventional wisdom, and embrace change." High-frequency trading firms, consulting companies, startups, public sector enterprises, and banks are on the prowl on the IIT campuses, offering annual salaries that range from ₹15 lakh to few crore rupees. Of the 23 IITs in the country, the first-generation institutes started their
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