Musings of a Software Engineer v2.0

I had my second round of interview at CapGemini TME Office at Atlanta. It was a great office, looking very much like my old office at Kanbay, but the difference being everyone had their own private cubicles unlike at Kanbay. The interviewer Mr. Micheal talked to me about the pros and cons of having a common space for everyone. Anyway coming to the interview aspects, it was everything about behavioral aspects of a consultant. I was kind of under-prepared for this kind of an interview and add to that the candidates whom I met during my wait time, most of them from GaTech! That kind of put me off to a defensive stand, come on everyone would be afraid to meet top notch engineers, consultants from a top-notch College. And it took me quite a long time to get into the "good" mode that is needed to do an interview well.
Well coming to the experiences part, I really think that it depends at least 50% on the interviewer that impacts your performance during an interview. The first round was not all that great, the interviewer had my resume, he had a list of questions, almost four pages long and I was all done in 20 mins! isn't that too long and it was kind of mechanical, routine nothing that exciting to make me talk a lot about my experiences. I think I did well on that. I was asked a series of questions and all of these were behavioral. They tested you as a team leader, as a motivator as a problem solver. They test your team leadership skills more than what they talk about your academics. questions like tell me a situation when you had too little time to a lot of things, tell me a time when you went through a lot of stress and how did you cope it. I think I did fairly well.
The second round was the one I liked the most. It was one of the best interviews I had and I have had interviews with almost 10 different people and it was a really great interview. Again, I was tested on the very same things - leadership, motivation skills, commitment, learning ability.
I think I did well. I am not sure if it is often the case, but this is the first time I have been walked out of the interview till the exit door by the interviewer himself and he appeared to be very impressed.
Irrespective of the result, I think I had a terrific experience of getting interviewed at CapGemini, especially my first round of interview with Spencer Lentz and the final interview with Micheal. Both were amazing people with great interviewing skills. I hope everyone of my friends would get such a great interviewers for their interview.
If anyone reading these posts need some light on CapGemini interviews please leave me a message at krishnabhargav@yahoo.com!