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1000projects is looking for engineering graduates with good programming and analytical skills for our internal team.  Following are the additional skills/expertize required for individual positions: 

• Java/ .Net/ PHP/ any other programming language knowledge
• Embedded Systems, VLSI, MATLAB, Robotics, AutoCAD, DIP, DSP, Communication Systems and Power Electronics. 

Please send your latest resume to info.1000projects@gmail.com.  Please mention following details in the subject. Applications without these details in subject won’t be considered. 1. Engineering branch 2. Percentage of marks 3. Your current location  Please mention following in the email body.  1. Any special achievements with programming contests yes/no 2. Any special achievements with college seminars/ technical events yes/no 3. Short description on short term and long term goals

I’m a Lead software engineer working for a MNC, we’re expanding at more than 50% head count every year and I visit major colleges in India for recruitment to do group discussions tests and technical interviews. The reason that we do group discussion ahead of interview is simple. We can test more candidates by spending short period of the recruitment team’s time.

Group discussion is one of the filtering criteria we use to filter the students who are not good at soft skills. I usually see candidates’ doing quite few mistakes even those who are good at communication skills because of unawareness of what is being really tested at this round of screening.

On the other hand, I also see candidates who are average at communication skills but do well in group discussions with their clarity of thought, involving others more and most importantly listening to others ideas, I’ll talk more about these two categories below.

 

Preparation for the Group Discussion:

By the time campus recruitments are started in your college, you need to keep track of the current affairs i.e. follow media so that you’ll have the context of the group discussion topic that will be given and that helps presenting your views as part of discussion. Not all times a topic from the current affairs will be given but most of the times that is what companies choose the topic from. 

We’re done with what you need to do before campus placements. Now consider you’re through the written test and have to do group discussion in one of the campus placement or you may be filling in some other job screening and you’re about to involve in a group discussion round. Keep a pen and paper with you for the group discussion.

Keep yourself cool, that is the most important thing that you need to make sure so that you can involve in the discussion better with better presence of mind. Prepare few sentences on how you want to introduce yourself to the judge group; just be honest don’t try to be over smart, probably the guys sitting as judges are smart enough to find if you’re overacting.

I don’t like mentioning these things as part of this article, but trust me, few people do these things and judges will have negative impressions on these guys already even before actual discussion is initiated. 

On the group discussion day:

Now that introductions are over, someone from the judges team will announce the rules of the discussion like how long discussion is going to be, and if you would get time to write down or prepare yourself your points or any other rules, that would depend on the particular company’s rules but most probably these would be told to the candidates.  Then the topic of the discussion would be revealed. 

I want to explain what you need to do after this with an example group discussion topic or scenario. 

Topic: Is China a threat to Indian software industry?

Start noting down your points:

You need to write down two things here. Number one, which side you want to stay on the topic. Number two, what are the supporting points that you want to mention for the side you’ve chosen. Remember if ten persons are participating in the group discussion, few of them are going to choose one side and rest will choose the other side. 

Consider there are two candidates Candidate A and Candidate B. I want to give an example of how one would write down the points and what is good and what is not so good. 

Candidate A: 

1. India has proven record on the software projects delivery and customer satisfaction. Indians have the matured software delivery processes and experience people who can deliver better quality projects, and this experience is built over the years so they can carry on the good work and take opportunities and move forward.
2. Most importantly India has the talent pool or to say directly more young percentage of people compared to China. This talent is the biggest positive for it to continue deliver the good work.
3. Indian companies can compete with any other country in the world when it comes to pricing. It’s still pretty cost effective the reason that will keep driving interests of many or all software clients that they currently have.
4. India has more young people who are good at English and that will not change much. China is catching up on this but next generation of Indians will continue to improve in this area. 

Candidate B: 

1. Chinese are hard workers than Indians.  They have better growth than India.
2. If you take example of Olympics, they won in more events than India. India is at the end of the points table and China is at the top. This is an example that Chinese can win big way in whatever that they will concentrate on.
3. They have strong roots in foreign countries than Indians and can take most or complete percentage of market.
4. They’re just best. 

Consider Candidate A, his points are close to the topic and have supporting facts for each of the point why the candidate is thinking the way she/he is thinking. Where is Candidate B has some irrelevant facts to the topic and little one sided on the topic where Candidate A admits the few facts about the other side. This example outlines how you want to write down the points. 

Though writing down and content and relevance of the candidate about the topic is most important, candidate B can still do few good things and improve chances of getting through this round. 

Actual discussion:

I’ll discuss below about what to do and what not to do in the actual discussion. 

Consider the judges asked the candidates to start the discussion. Try to initiate the discussion. You’ll listen this everywhere, but it’s not always easy as one of the candidates will quickly pick up and start the discussion. If you can initiate then it’s well and good.

If you could not don’t worry about it. If you did not initiate, the candidate who initiated will be either at the side you chose or at the other side. When the voice of the guy or the pitch goes little down, pick up from there and start with either you agree or disagree with what that candidate chose and explain why did you choose the option that you chose, mention all the points that you’ve wrote down.

Feel free to look at the paper while talking about it where you listed down your points; try to look at all the other candidates at the same time. Mention your points. Now if you did not get chance for that also and three or four candidates have started discussion and they’re only discussing with out giving a chance to you and others, you can raise your hand to give an indication that you want to explain the points that you’ve briefly.

Once you get chance, mention your points. Now that you’re involved in the discussion, listen to others politely, give your points. That’s what is required when you’re really executing a project when you’re an employee. Everyone will have different thoughts on an issue and different ideas. The team’s aim it to arrive at the best idea at the end of the meeting, not defending your idea. As long as you agree with others points, acknowledge them.

If you don’t agree with them at all, try to convince them politely and with good facts that you know about that particular point. Remember that if you speak for three to four times, then that is normally fine in a 10 minutes group discussion when 10 people are doing it. Don’t stretch yourself so much and defend your thoughts completely. 

In between care for the other candidates, if you see someone is trying to say a point and others are not allowing it, if you think you can involve and get a chance for that guy, do it. Use words like Sorry, I apologize to intervene to grab the opportunity with less damage to their discussion. 

When candidates are asked to conclude by the judges, try to grab the opportunity if there is no big competition from others to do it. Sometimes a candidate won’t get chance to give his point till the end from the start of the discussion, then judges might want that candidate to conclude.

In that case, judges are giving that candidate a chance to tell his point and at the same time testing him briefly. May be that candidate did not get chance because all other candidates are overly aggressive and ignored to give chance to other candidates.

In the conclusion, if you got the opportunity, try to consolidate all other candidates’ points briefly. Try not to repeat the points that you mentioned from your points list. Just explain team’s points briefly, mentioning them briefly is very important, try not to prolong the conclusion itself. 

So far we discussed about what to do in the group discussion and how to overcome the odds that you would generally face in the group discussion. Now I’ll talk about what not to do. Consider there is a candidate who is pretty good at communication skills. But if he tries to over involve in the discussion, and defend his point in a rigid style, it won’t work out. It’s not a speech. You’re not the leader or superior of the group. You’re expected to tell your point and listen to others points and acknowledge them.

I’ve seen many candidates who think the more you talk in the discussion, you’re displaying your skill of communication more and the chance of getting through the group discussion is high. No, that is not true. You’re expected to listen to others ideas, if you’re defending your idea, try to listen to others and then take one or two points in what they’re saying and explain why it could be probably not the case in the real world, stuff like that is more important than blindly arguing and mentioning your point one sided.

This is about the candidates who are over involved. To keep it simple, keep the discussion as discussion. On the other hand, few candidates won’t talk at all or would not try to give their point. They’ll just talk for once and sit idle. Try to talk at least three to four times and show confidence, clarity of thought, be concerned about others expressions etc. 

All this stuff came out of my experience.  I involved in group discussions myself and also acted as a judge for many group discussions. The above mentioned challenges and solutions will help one to improve in doing the group discussions. You can probably come across many suggestions on how to do a group discussion on the internet, but these points help you to do better in the practical scenarios, I hope it helps. Finally, keep it simple, and you’ll get through it. All the best.

Success of Apple iPhone has made many other companies to imitate it in terms of the services like excellent hardware and the operating system level. The success of Apple iPhone has made different competitors to develop a similar packages and software’s  There are few important features available with Apple iPhone that made other companies to develop a similar attributes and few of them are listed as below 

Wireless Carriers 

Wireless carriers can be considered as the key success factor introduced by Apple iPhone and similar technology is also implemented by few other companies like Verizon App Store and T-Mobiles web2go App store. App Store concept is directly imitated from the Apples App Store and these companies strive hard to achieve these functionalities provided by the Apple App store. 

Handset features 

Excellent handset features provided by the Apple iPhone are provided with some other companies like Nokia OVI store and RIM service provided by the BlackBerry App World. Nokia can be considered as the best handset seller across the world and still suffers with some software updates and lacks the global distribution of the applications. 

Operating System 

Operating system features provided with the Apple iPhone are excellent and there are similar operating systems emerged in the market and important among them are Google Android OS and Windows mobile OS. These two vendors has good market in terms of operating system but lacks a independent devices and thus Apple iPhone can be considered as the best among all these alternative service providers. 

As per the above discussion, it is clear that success of Apple iPhone has made many other companies to imitate its style of working and operating system features. Apple iPhone can be considered as the best choice among all these service providers in terms of Operating system services, excellent hardware support and App store facilities.

Apple iPhone has recorded success since it was emerged in the market due to its sophisticated and highly enabled technical aspects. Apple iPhone has many successful factors in terms of the quality of service provided for its Hardware, Operating system and good App store facility. Different companies are trying to imitate the features provided by the Apple iPhone and still iPhone has its own market and strategy to introduce latest technical aspects and shares the top position in the mobile market.

Apple iPhone works on the iOS operating system which provides rich user interface and navigation facilities to the end users and also the simple hardware features makes the user to use the mobile in a simple and convenient manner. Apple App store provided a wide range of applications that can be downloaded and used by the user. A separate Software Development Kit is provided to the third party developers, such that they can develop the application and place across the App Store with the approval of Apple. App Store can be considered as the key factor of success to Apple iPhone and iPod and this feature was imitated by many other competitors of Apple. 

App Store 

App store is the facility provided by the Apple iOS and third party software developers can develop the required Apple iPhone softwares and utilize them. Different Apple iPhone applications can be browsed or downloaded using this App Store and the services can be of free of cost or chargeable based on the application required.

A separate software development kit is available with the Apple iOS, where it provides some APIs to develop the required software components and allows the third party developers to develop and distribute the required applications.

Applications that were developed are subjected to the license agreements and approval of Apple is required to or distributes any application across the iTune store of App store. Thousands of applications are available with the App store and the users can download them easily and they need to pay for the paid applications available with the App store.

Developers are provided with the standards SDK to develop the applications for iPhone and iPod based on their requirements and should get the approval of Apple before selling them or using them.

Third party applications are made available with the App store and its count is around 3, 00,000 by the end of year 2010. Whenever a user or enterprise wants to develop and application and made it available on the Apples App store, they should use the SDK provided by the Apple iOS and place a request for the Apple approval.

Apple will make all the third party applications available in the App store and the users can download the applications by paying few bugs to the Apple. Recently Apple has launched many App Stores across the country and it is considered as the best successful innovation from the side of Apple.

Refer to IOS Seminar Report:

Apple IOS Seminar Report

 Apple iPhone Operating system provides excellent software features and it runs on the operating system known as iOS, also known as iPhone Operating System. Apple iOS runs on the concept known as Darwin Operating System and a separate Core Animation component is made available with iOS that was originally taken from MAC OS X. Motion graphics interface is provided with iOS and it supports many software updates and patched from Apple and also can support third party software tools. The memory requirements of iOS are less than half a gigabyte and supports excellent software patches in the operating system. Following are the important software components available with iOS and they are discussed in detailed as below 

User interface 

A rich user interface is provided with the Apple iOS and can support good touch sensibility and provides ease of use to the end users. Most of the software functionalities are available to the users; even they are on some call or listening to the music. User defined web pages and web clips can be developed using this rich user interface available with the Apple iOS. Sophisticated interaction techniques are available with the interface and users can drag and drop the items very easily and scroll feature provided with the interface are excellent in nature . 

On Call Options 

Apple iPhone provides a variety of on call options and all these options are made available through the excellent iOS features. Some critical features like audio conference, call hold, call diverting and call merging are possible with the iOS features. Whenever a user receives a call, the touch sensibility is automatically shutdown due to the proximity sensor and thus an option to provide battery life optimization is provided in this on call option. Visual voice mail is another excellent feature provided by the iOS, where the users can view the list of voice mails received with out contacting the voice mail center every time. Support to the video calls is provided with the iPhone from the latest versions iPhone 4 and thus video recording of the call is also possible with this implementation. Custom ring tones can be created using the iOS and a software tool known as Apples Garage Band Software. 

Multimedia 

Multimedia options provided by Apple iOS are un-comparable and it provides excellent and latest multimedia options similar to that of iPod. Typical multimedia items like songs, videos and small gadgets can be managed and played as per the required sequence with the multimedia feature provided by Apple iOS. Users can watch the digital videos, TV programs and some other video events using the wide screen and multimedia features of Apple iPhone. Users can download, upload and view the email photos and videos with the multimedia software provided by the Apple iOS and thus Apple iPhone can be considered as the best multimedia options in this context.

Internet options 

Best internet options and connectivity are provided with the Apple iOS and provides a web browser known as Safari. Users are provided with excellent internet options with the feature of the operating system Apple iOS. Internet access is locally available when the iPhone is with the range of WI-FI and also GSM based net access can be provided to the users. A maximum download rate of around 7.2 Mbits per second is provided to the users who access the internet with Apple iPhone and iOS. Larger files with a size more than 20MB can’t be downloaded in this case and can be directly opened with the Safari browser available with Apple iPhone. Typical web applications like Google maps, Yahoo, YouTube and weather forecast web services are provided by the iOS and user can make use these feature in a convenient manner with the rich user interface available. 

Email and text features 

Apple iPhone and iOS provides an excellent set of email and text message features to the users. Different types of text and documents can be uploaded to the email like word documents, PDF and multimedia files. Push mail option is available with Apple iOS, where the users can simply configure the settings such that all the email is received in the text message. POP3 and IMAP features are supported with the email feature of iOS. 

 There are many factors that made Apple iPhone a successful mobile technology and application provided and the main key factors can be considered as its support for excellent Hardware, sophisticated Operating system and the rich user interface provided to the end users and they are explained as below. 

Hardware features of Apple iPhone 

Apple iPhone holds excellent Hardware features when compared to its competitors and important among them are listed below 

Input and Screen features 

Apple iPhone provides a convenient and simple display options to the end users in the form of input and screen features. It provides a wide screen up to 3.5 inches and this makes easy to select the desired options and view the pictures and videos more clearly when compared to small screens. A clear and perfect liquid crystal display is provided with this 9 Centimeters screen and it’s scratch resistant. Single and multi touch sensing are provided with the touch screen and motion control can be considered as the excellent feature offered by Apple iPhone.

Bare finger or multi-finger inputs can be captured by the screen as the screen is designed based on the capacitive touch sensor technology. The basic resolution provided by Apple iPhone in its first three releases is up to 320 X 480 at a dpi rate of 163 and in its fourth release iPhone 4, the resolution has increased by double and now it is up to 640 X 980 at a dpi rate of around 326. The main touch and gestured features of Apple iPhone as purely based on the sophisticated technology known as FingerWorks, which was basically used across their application iGesture Game mode guide.

Apple iPhone touch screen is prevented from the high electrical conductivity and this is based on the technology known as Capacitive Styli. Hardware user interface of iPhone has only few buttons and thus the maximum navigation to the features and applications of iPhone are done based on the touch screen. Sensor based display is provided with the Apple iPhone and there are three important sensors that accomplish this task [3]. To disable the touch features of the phone when it was bought near the face proximity sensor is used and thus the power is also saved in this process. Display brightness and adjustments are done based on ambient light sensor and a power saving feature is enabled in this sensor. Orientation of the screen is provided by a 3-axis accelerometer sensor and the users can change the display orientation as per the convenience.

 Audio features 

Audio and output features of iPhone are unique and it provides an excellent audio output to the users when compared to most of the competitors. Apple iPhone provides a speaker, microphone and a loudspeaker to enjoy the audio related features. A unique feature known as noise cancellation is provided with the iPhone 4 model and a separate microphone is provided to accomplish this task and it is placed across the left side. Users can switch the placement of speaker and microphone using this feature. A separate 3.55 MM TRS Connector is provided with the Apple iPhone, such that headphone can used as a substitute of Bluetooth and can be used while driving. 

Battery features 

Battery features of Apple iPhone are excellent and it provides an in-built rechargeable battery. In general the battery used in iPhone is not user replaceable and a separate USB based charging facility is provided to iPhone such that it can be connected to a computer or Laptop to be charged. The original capacity of Apple iPhone can be retained even after 400 full charges and it utilizes 80% of the battery life. The stand by of the battery placed in Apple iPhone can support almost 7 hours of video recording, 5 hours of WI-FI usage and almost 10 hours of browsing. 

Camera 

Camera built in with Apple iPhone has excellent resolution capabilities, which make the iPhone unique when compared with its competitors. A fixed focus 2.0 Mega pixel camera is available with Apple iPhone and can be used to capture the still and digital photos. Few features like optical zoom, video recording and flash are not available with the Apple iPhone and still users can use these features with some software updates. Location data can be embedded with the photographs taken using iPhone and geocoded photographs are possible with the software implantations. Apple iPhone 4 introduces 5.0 Mega pixel cameras and has a unique feature like a backside illuminated sensor that can be used to capture the photos even in dark light conditions. Two cameras are provided with the Apple iPhone and second one can be used to capture the VGA photos and also allows the SD video recording. 

SIM and Storage features 

SIM and storage features of Apple iPhone are unique and initially an internal memory of 4GB to 8GB is provided with the basic release of Apple iPhone. External data storage facility is not available with iPhone and all the required memory is saved in an internal flash drive. A separate SIM ejection tool is available with Apple iPhone and it can be inserted or ejected easily using this tool.

Water contact indicators 

Apple iPhone holds the facility to indicate few signals, whenever the phone is in contact with water or any other liquid. Color of the liquid contact indicator is changed from white to red, if the iPhone is in contact with any sort of liquid and thus can be treated as water resistant equipment. 

All these excellent hardware features make Apple iPhone unique and master in the market. Apart from the above mentioned hardware features, there are many chip level features to be covered and these features make Apple iPhone an excellent option to be choosen in the latest mobile technology and it support different varieties of application which were actually supported by the Apple iPhone Operating system. Apple iPhone provides special hardware features to support the latest updates and patches to the existing iPhone operating system and the features of iPhone OS are as discussed below

Apple iPhone was introduced by Apple Computer Inc in the year 2007 and till now there are many changes to the previous versions and most of the customers are really happy with the services provided by Apple iPhone. Initially Apple had made some design changes due to the competition of Motorola and its services were discontinued for a period.

Two important versions of iPhone were launched by Apple and they are 4GB model and 8GB model and users are provided with latest features like 3.5 inches screen,Bluetooth,WI-Fi, monitor sensors and in-built camera and music player. iPhone provides support to the web based applications like Google maps, Youtube and Weather and the unique feature that made Apple iPhone more successful is its visual voice system, where the users can listen to the messages.

Apple iPhone has made its success on the reports with in one year and it was recorded as the third best selling mobile in US and shared majority of the market with in one year. Apple iPhone has introduced a separate Software Development Kit (SDK), to avoid the unauthorized softwares to be installed in their mobiles and created many employment opportunities to the software professions to join their iPhone Development Program in US.

All the required software programs are created quickly and the developer are provided with the perfect design aspects of the required applications and thus developers are successful in creating the iPhone softwares with in few weeks rather than killing months of time. There are some key competitors to Apple iPhone and few of them are listed below 

• T-Mobile
• Verizon
• Nokia
• RIM 

Most of the competitors listed above have similar set of unique features provided by iPhone. Apart from the huge competition in the market iPhone was recorded as the successful mobile vendor due its unique and incomparable features like excellent hardware, successful App Store which provides the few excellent features like downloading the itunes from their handsets and superior Operating system support. A detailed discussion of the success factors and App store provided by Apple iPhone is done in the later sections.

Mobile applications and mobile technology is under sophistication these days and there are many service providers and vendors in the market that support the latest mobile technologies and application. The main success of any vendor purely depends on the range of services provided to the customers and the ease of usage that was embedded in their applications.

Mobile technologies are ever changing and there exists a heavy competition among the service providers and most of the companies are offering latest and unique features with their application to share their own space in the competitive market and fetch the require profits among the competitors. The main success factors of Apple iPhone are investigated in this report in terms of its services and the physical attributes like Hardware, Operating system and rich user interface provided by Apple.