There are three steps.

The first is a call interview with a manager of the group for which you are applying.

Then, there is a technical interview, also by phone.

At the end, a face-to-face interview is scheduled for the place where you will work, though another location is also possible.

Call interviews are quite easy. In the first interview, they look mainly at your communication skills. They ask about your motivation, if you are open to coming to the workplace, and what you know about the company.

I applied for the Control Systems stream. The last stage was the on-site interview, following two HR rounds and one technical round.

Technical Round: The questions were divided into clear sections, similar to the telephone interview. They expected thorough knowledge and correct answers for most questions. I don't remember all of them.

• Find eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a 2x2 matrix.
• Find the maximum area of a rectangle under a curve. You have to write the expression for y from the equation of the curve. Area = x*y. Differentiate, equate to zero, and find the value of x for which the area is maximum. Then take the second derivative and check if it is less than 0.
• Write a recursive function to determine the factorial or Fibonacci numbers.
• Write pseudocode for any sorting algorithm.
• Write an algorithm to draw a section of an arc if the topmost point is (y,0).
• Some inheritance questions.
• They gave me a snippet of code that copies one string to another and asked what the function does.
• Find the bug in a piece of code.
• Pointer questions, such as *++q and ++*q.
• Draw the responses of differently damped systems for a 2nd order linear system.
• What happens if there are zeros in the system?
• Lead-lag compensators.
• Lyapunov stability.
• Controllability and Observability.

HR and Manager Rounds:

• How are you with working in teams?
• How would your supervisor describe you?
• What do you think your supervisor thinks your main weaknesses are?
• Can you handle multiple responsibilities?
• What is your preferred supervision style?
• If you could not do any control systems at all in this role, how would you handle it? Would you be okay with it?