Applying to WIPRO Sucks!!!

[rock_ya_baby]

Experiences differ from person to person. I have had fond memories working there. Basically at this org, I did so much RnD, tinkering... Helped me a hell lot. You'll do so many things that may not be your direct responsibilities.

Yes, they pay less. For someone who is just entering the industry, money should not be the prime motivation. Choose knowledge. Such comapies are good for career launch.

Still when I meet some ex Wipro guy in any of my accounts' pojects, we share stories and laugh about the past.

 

[whatsinaname]

The interview methods in India are really archaic and extremely personal in nature. I am not sure why this is done. Some aspects I have noticed:

1. Ask questions about tracks which one has not mentioned in the CV. Then site: this is the current requirement for the profile being interviewed for. (profile mismatch)
2. Ask %'s of 10th, 12th, Graduation, PG; even after someone is carrying around 12-13 years of contiguous experience. Logic is: to check the academic DNA of the candidate. (erroneous comparison)
3. Ask why a certain candidate only worked in 1-2 companies with a experience greater than 8-9 years. (doubting stability vs. growth rate, of the individual).
4. Ask why a certain candidate has worked in 5-6 companies with a span of 1-2 years in each firm. (questioning the stability for attrition). Basically if you have been company-centric or a quick hopper, it will still be questioned.
5. Ask "who else is in family", and if sister is married (if she exists). (creating a vague ethnic profile of the person and trying to assess the financial stature).
6. Ask females if they have plans for marriage or child-bearing. (attrition foresight based on personal attributes).
7. Ask questions to simulate a pressure situation. Basically keep drilling down in theory, and try to catch the candidate on the wrong-foot. (Check the mettle).


Basically the person conducting the interview exhibits an attitude of being grumpy, and that the candidate should be grateful for being accorded this meeting. Else they act, as if they are doing HR a favor, when actually they want the same person for their own business vertical. As if the literal entity is not present, but some aberration of their doppelganger. Interviews with Indians, are not a comfortable situation. Still old-school and bureaucratic.

Wow, this sounds super stressful (and also has questions that are illegal in many other countries). I hope they realise they aren't filming an episode of roadies.

 

[nRiTeCh]

End of the day most candidates has talent for that position but due to such irrelevant questions they get disqualified.
Hell with such I'vewers and their immature off the track useless inquiries.

 

[mitraark]

So moral of the story: be jobless but never ever make a mistake of joining wipro who aren't any pro at any good.
But only pro at churning and exploiting their employees.

Absolutely not. I'm glad to have joined Wipro and go through their 3 months of Training ( basic HR and Technical stuff like UNIX SQL etc. etc. ) which would have cost at least 100000-150000 in any institute. And I got paid for it. And I got to travel in various locations of the country, meet different kinds of people, work with them. Experience world class offices,get used to work culture, appreciate their robust HR management system ( Yes, even with its flaws, kudos to them for managing such a vast company smoothly).. If the public/Govt sector managed to implement even a quarter of such practices there would have been about 100% rise in efficiency.

Having a Job is ALWAYS better than No Job ... just don't get exploited.

 

[manoja2k]

End of the day most candidates has talent for that position but due to such irrelevant questions they get disqualified.
Hell with such I'vewers and their immature off the track useless inquiries.

It's simply a question of demand and supply. If a company needs one person for a position and there are 10 equally qualified guys to choose from then rejection process starts, where as in a vice versa situation selection process starts.

Think of a boom situation where demand exceeds the supply (remember Y2k craze). During this period anybody who could speak in English used to get employed and shipped to USA. Many of my friends fresh from branches like chemical, leather, mechanical migrated to USA during this period and currently are in respectable positions in big MNCs.

Also think of doom period (2001 onwards) when market crashed leaving lots of unemployed IT professional in the market. I remember at that time in USA many experienced Java and DB programmers were fighting for $12/hr jobs (slightly higher than the min. hrly. wage). Also the number of rounds of interview they had to go through for 3-month contractual jobs is unbelievable.

So moral of the story, if the company is desperate to get the people it will break all its policy rules to fill the quota. However if that market desperation is not there then all these stupid rules start coming into play. Depending upon the situation either the process of selection activates or process of rejection activates.

 

[booo]

And I got to travel in various locations of the country, meet different kinds of people, work with them. Experience world class offices,get used to work culture, appreciate their robust HR management system

Can you give some more details?

 

[nRiTeCh]

He joined as a fresher and hence wipro has to hold him for long and so the favour.
Anyways he is one lucky wiproen. 1 in 100 or may be 500.

 

[rdst_1]

It's simply a question of demand and supply. If a company needs one person for a position and there are 10 equally qualified guys to choose from then rejection process starts, where as in a vice versa situation selection process starts.

Think of a boom situation where demand exceeds the supply (remember Y2k craze). During this period anybody who could speak in English used to get employed and shipped to USA. Many of my friends fresh from branches like chemical, leather, mechanical migrated to USA during this period and currently are in respectable positions in big MNCs.

Also think of doom period (2001 onwards) when market crashed leaving lots of unemployed IT professional in the market. I remember at that time in USA many experienced Java and DB programmers were fighting for $12/hr jobs (slightly higher than the min. hrly. wage). Also the number of rounds of interview they had to go through for 3-month contractual jobs is unbelievable.

So moral of the story, if the company is desperate to get the people it will break all its policy rules to fill the quota. However if that market desperation is not there then all these stupid rules start coming into play. Depending upon the situation either the process of selection activates or process of rejection activates.

This is the perfect assessment of the situation. In India, one will always run into such situations because of the huge population we have. Even our competitive exams are designed to reject than select. This was one of the major reasons I never could have survived in the Indian IT Industry and why I never sat for any campus recruitment drives.

 

[superczar]

He joined as a fresher and hence wipro has to hold him for long and so the favour.
Anyways he is one lucky wiproen. 1 in 100 or may be 500.

No, Pretty much any fresher who would join a behemoth like Wipro would broadly get the same/similar experience (good training, an exposure to the methods & models used by a global firm, exposure to global clients and systems - And while Wipro is known to be relatively ad-hoc vs the more process oriented competitors, its not something a fresher should be overty concerned about to begin with)
I am not sure why people are complaining about the salary numbers - Its an informed choice people make at the time of joining
If the raises etc are poor, a qualified and smart individual will have very little trouble switching elsewhere anyway

I have managed a client account working out of Wipro premises and while I cannot comment on the work culture, I can definitely say that their facilities and work spaces are good.
While they won't offer you niceties like bean-to-cup coffee dispensers (probably a pre-mixed coffee dispenser instead), the overall work space is easily in the top 25% bracket in India
As for the work culture, while I cannot comment on it, It cannot be so rotten else they wouldn't be where they are

I wonder why some of the newer lot have this innate sense of entitlement - Every place of work will have its drawbacks, no interviewer you find will be perfect, no workplace will be heaven on earth
But have you looked inwards to even see what you have to offer?

PS: I am not a Software company employee

PS: I see a comment at the start of the thread accusing an interviewer of being biased because he hired an interviewer from his community
Did the poster even consider that he may have messed up his own interview while the other individual may have come across as more qualified? Or are kids these days inspired by the likes of AK.. To find a fictitious underlying reason and villain as the explanation for failing at anything

 

[nRiTeCh]

PS: I am not a Software company employee

PS: I see a comment at the start of the thread accusing an interviewer of being biased because he hired an interviewer from his community
Did the poster even consider that he may have messed up his own interview while the other individual may have come across as more qualified? Or are kids these days inspired by the likes of AK.. To find a fictitious underlying reason and villain as the explanation for failing at anything

BTW if you had ever read the full post you couldn't have missed the stupid silly questions that biased animal was asking. It was no way a technical round ok. He himself seemed to be pretty much junior to me as per his lack of knowledge and common sense if not by age. And he shooted such similar off-track & time wasting no-relative questions to not just me but to also those guys who were pretty much experienced and deserved that job.

And in the end he hired a person who technically was just mere satisfactory and didnt even matched to the JD. But hell yeah he got chosen coz he literally proved here that Santa will always hire a Banta and do a Ghanta!! That sardar i'viewer was the TL of that team for whom the hiring was going on.
Now how I came to know of all this & of that hired person is an insiders story.

Well I didnt messed up my i'view, he did and not just to me but to many out there.
Also I'm not crying here for not getting selected or anything, in fact glad that I got saved rather than working in such organization which only state in their career section that "We are against any gender, disablity and caste ceed religious bias & bla bla bla!!! b*shit" and here then they show their true colors.

Those who suffers, only knows the real scenario and you are not even from IT so may be in your field such crap might not be happening or may be you are always lucky to have a PI rather than a mass drive i'views which is a common scenario in IT. So lucky you!!

 

[Crapmypants]

I wonder why some of the newer lot have this innate sense of entitlement - Every place of work will have its drawbacks, no interviewer you find will be perfect, no workplace will be heaven on earth
But have you looked inwards to even see what you have to offer?

Just because such an environment is common, does not mean we should put up with it.
expecting basic courtesy and maturity is not self-entitlement.
i switched to a lower paying job solely because of the work culture.
what's really sad is that the op's experience is neither a rare exception nor amongst the worst cases of bad interviews.

 

[superczar]

Just because such an environment is common, does not mean we should put up with it.
expecting basic courtesy and maturity is not self-entitlement.

I never said that one should put up with lack of courtesy
However, it is one of the worst kept industry secrets that quality of skilled manpower in India is at an all time low, esp in the IT and ITeS sector
And while you will find junk interviewers every once in a while, most interviewers have to put up with junk candidates all the time

I am not saying that the OP is not skilled enough (I wasn't the interviewer after all)
Just peeved that based on the general tone of this thread, it appears that this one instance got generalised so broadly so as to qualify Wipro as a junk firm and Indian IT firms as mostly silly

 

[asingh]

This is the perfect assessment of the situation. In India, one will always run into such situations because of the huge population we have. Even our competitive exams are designed to reject than select. This was one of the major reasons I never could have survived in the Indian IT Industry and why I never sat for any campus recruitment drives.

A lot of good candidates are lost due to erratic hiring.

 

[manoja2k]

Guys, put things in a perspective.
The walk-ins are for mass hiring situations (keeping the recruitment cost very low). Here once the candidates clear first round are all considered hirable. However because they have to reject a few of this volume the interviewers start looking at other things - fitment to the team profile, client profile, fitment to PM's or TL's ego etc. etc. This type of erratic(?) hiring process is everywhere because it is practical. Look, the feeling is that they may be loosing some good candidates because of that but companies are okay with it. There has to be some return to the recruitment cost. They can't increase their recruitment cost just because some candidates who is slightly better than other candidates is going to be hired. Anyhow most of such hiring are done keeping max of 2 years of the candidate's tenure in mind.
So don't be sentimental about it. Recruitment process will be different for the core or important team hires and it will be more professional.
I usually use the following analogy for such walk-in processes - buying screws and nuts in volume. Buying process is rudimentary. Expectation from the result is below average. Buyer knows that there are going to be few breakdowns while using them, but most of them will do their job as expected.
My company does not put senior resources for such hiring processes. It's a waste of money and time.

 

[rock_ya_baby]

I am glad that I don't have to interview entry level 1-3 year experienced folks anymore. At my present company, we have approx 5 hour interviews with whiteboard sessions. Its too much fun! I was hired in the same way, 1 telephonic interview and later half day in a meeting room with a board and marker.

Hated it when they'd call hundreds of chaps for walk-ins and suddenly call up the panelists. Once I interviewed approx 100 people in a day. 80% guys couldn't get past "how do you assign IP to a NIC". These were the guys and girls applying for L1 networking openings. Thankfully, dont't have to indulge with that anymore! Phew!

 

[ssslayer]

A lot of good candidates are lost due to erratic hiring.

Perhaps it doesn't matter to the hirer and the company he represents?

 

[rock_ya_baby]

Maybe, in interest of fairness. The title should be changed to say "most IT firms in India". Up to the OP.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

If I were given a salary budget of 1 Crore/year to hire software engineers (lets say freshers), I would hire 10 very good ones and give them 10 lakh/year each. My acceptance rate in interviews currently stands close to 3% i.e. to say for every 100 interviews that I do, I would be likely to hire about 3. So naturally, I would go through 300 candidates to hire 10.

Companies like Wipro and Infy would hire 50 freshers with the same salary budget. They would still spend as much (or more in most cases) on the hiring process. They won't care about taking in the best people and their strategy is to hire cheap and hire a lot. Their attitude is like If they get a few good people in the process, good for them. but they don't care about how the work gets done ultimately. For every 10~15 people, there would be 1 or 2 good resources who ends up doing most of the work at the ground level.

Normally, 10 good people are infinitely better than 50 average or below average engineers. I have seen and experienced this first hand several times. Even recently, a mobile related project was given to Accenture Stockholm and they deputed from what I understood 20 resources and they worked for a year to bring it to "95%" completion before their services were discontinued. The same thing was written from scratch by 3 internal resources in about a weeks time.

The services companies know this as well, but they are not bothered about how efficiently to get the work done. They bill clients based on headcount and hours. So, it would be beneficial for them to take in people in quantity than quality.

Companies which make their own products won't do this type of recruiting at all. They would like quality over quantity at all times even if they want them to come cheap and that's because, they will have a positive impact on their business by hiring efficient people. Even if they conduct a so called "walk in" it would not in reality be one because they would do a pre-screening and restrict access to invitees only.

 

[rock_ya_baby]

If I were given a salary budget of 1 Crore/year to hire software engineers (lets say freshers), I would hire 10 very good ones and give them 10 lakh/year each. My acceptance rate in interviews currently stands close to 3% i.e. to say for every 100 interviews that I do, I would be likely to hire about 3. So naturally, I would go through 300 candidates to hire 10.

Companies like Wipro and Infy would hire 50 freshers with the same salary budget. They would still spend as much (or more in most cases) on the hiring process. They won't care about taking in the best people and their strategy is to hire cheap and hire a lot. Their attitude is like If they get a few good people in the process, good for them. but they don't care about how the work gets done ultimately. For every 10~15 people, there would be 1 or 2 good resources who ends up doing most of the work at the ground level.

Normally, 10 good people are infinitely better than 50 average or below average engineers. I have seen and experienced this first hand several times. Even recently, a mobile related project was given to Accenture Stockholm and they deputed from what I understood 20 resources and they worked for a year to bring it to "95%" completion before their services were discontinued. The same thing was written from scratch by 3 internal resources in about a weeks time.

The services companies know this as well, but they are not bothered about how efficiently to get the work done. They bill clients based on headcount and hours. So, it would be beneficial for them to take in people in quantity than quality.

Companies which make their own products won't do this type of recruiting at all. They would like quality over quantity at all times even if they want them to come cheap and that's because, they will have a positive impact on their business by hiring efficient people. Even if they conduct a so called "walk in" it would not in reality be one because they would do a pre-screening and restrict access to invitees only.

Very well said. Cheers!
Beer?

 

[asingh]

Perhaps it doesn't matter to the hirer and the company he represents?

That is the biggest err and fallacy. People forget (on the interview chair), that they are recruiting for their own firm. If they ruin the intellectual DNA of their own company (even if they are hiring for a cross team), the damage is still done. Due to some mental misnomer(s) many stellar gems are lost out, and garbage is picked up. So many times I have walked into companies (I do a lot of client work - per say management consultancy), and scratch my head: how the hell did this guy/girl get here, and insult to injury -at- this position. Mostly I have noticed the ratio of defunct employee is directly proportional to the position in the hierarchy. The top order compromising of: M, SM, AVP, and VP is totally rot riddled and the personnel is incumbent in operative style, as if they are doing a favor (or philanthropy) for the organization, by attending office 22 days / month. This is magnified in magnitude when fresh blood is encountered and their mettle has to be calibrated. Sadly the essence is not gauged but just ductility. LOL.