INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRE

- Prepared by Abhinav Agarwal (& CERP batch 2014-18)

Disclaimer: The processes and questions included below refers to the placement session for UPES
Chemical Engineering with specialization in Refining and Petrochemicals batch (2014-18) and are
bound to change partially or wholly for forthcoming batches. Following material is for your reference
purpose only and is supposed to give an idea about placement processes and types of questions
asked. It is advised to refer the full material of your core courses.
The online tests may include sections from quantitative reasoning, logical reasoning, verbal
reasoning, psychometric aptitude and technical courses.
In every interview, questions were asked from resume, internship, minor project, major project and
RISE project. It is suggested to have strong hold in these areas prior to the commencement of
placement session.
PHILLIPS CARBON BLACK LIMITED

Process: Online Test  Psychometric Test  Presentation followed by Personal Interview

1. Questions regarding the presentation.

2. Questions on major project, a brief description of topic and what you plan to do.
3. Question about internship: work done and then pump designing.
4. Tell us about your family.
5. Do you have any plans to go abroad for higher studies? Why not? Are you not inspired by your
brother?
6. What is your passion in life?
7. Why should we hire you?
8. Tell something about food grade carbon.
9. Explain the types of distillation and differences between them.

EXXONMOBIL
Process: Online Test  Group Discussion  Interview at campus  Interview at Bengaluru
1. All types of distillation
2. The types of flow and the equations which describes them.
3. How does a refrigerator/AC works?
4. How is heat transfer taking place inside this room?
5. Define heat transfer in terms of dimensionless numbers and tell their significance?
6. Tell me about your family background?
7. Who is your inspiration?
8. What are your hobbies?
9. What are your weaknesses and how are you planning to improve upon it?
10. What are some team skills that one must have?

Most questions were about major project (Zeolites Synthesis for LAB Manufacture)
1. Describe your project.
2. Draw structure of a zeolite?
3. What is meso-porosity?
4. Describe the mechanism involved in the reaction of benzene and mono-olefin in presence of the
zeolite?
5. Describe the industrial method of manufacture of LAB?
6. What is the size of the LAB molecule?
7. What are different types of surfactant?
8. Other catalysts used in the manufacture of LAB and their mechanisms?

*The rest was from resume. He gave different situations and was expecting their solutions from
chemical engineering point of view.

RELIANCE INDUSTRIES LIMITED

Process: Online Test  Personal Interview

HR Questions (Profile | Manufacturing)

1. Tell me about yourself, your family background, and about your interests and hobbies
2. Would you still work for us if in case we post in Kashmir?
3. Where do see yourself 5 years down the line?
4. You parents are from business background so why don't you join them rather than opting for
a job?
5. Why should we hire you?
6. Do you stay in touch with latest news?
7. What are your influences in life?
8. What makes you stand out of the crowd?
9. What kind of job you would you like to have?
10. What are your aspirations in life?
11. What do like to do apart from studies?
12. What is your father occupation?
13. What about your siblings, what they are doing?
14. Why you have chosen Chemical Engineering?
15. What are your views about global energy scenarios?
16. With such high CGPA, where do you stand in your class? Why are you not opting for higher
studies?
17. Where do you see yourself in 3 years?
18. Why not your dad's business?
19. Questions about the interests I have written in my CV, in details.
20. If we will send you to a remote corner of any plant how you would look after your family?
21. Are u planning to go for higher studies? Why not with this pointer?
22. What if we offer you the job and regarding certain reasons if we cancel it at the time of joining?
23. What suits you better - a technical profile or a managerial profile?
24. How has your journey from your place of birth to Dehradun been?

Technical (Profile | Manufacturing)

1. What is Reid vapor pressure?

2. What is LMTD?
3. Why does water remain relatively cooler in a clay pot and not in other utensils?
4. What are the factors we take into consideration while designing a Pressure Safety Valve?
5. Why is MAWP taken 5% in excess of Design pressure?
 6. What is Schedule Number?
7. What is Cv for a control valve?
8. Given an ambient temperature of air, can you cool the liquid stream below the ambient
temperature?
9. If you are given with length of cooling tower, inlet water temperature and ambient
temperature. What else you will require to determine the temperature drop?
10. What do you understand by wet bulb temperature?
11. Can you explain role of relative volatility in a separation process?
12. Have you ever heard of TLV (threshold limit value) of a system?
13. Do you know about control system in refinery?
14. Tell me about the process of cracking.
15. What is a thermoplastic?
16. What are all the products of a cracker plant?
17. What is the impact of shale on the feedstock in refineries and petrochemicals?
18. Do you know about process control?
19. Difference between heavy crude and light crude.
20. First thing you will do if you have to install a pump to pump water from a 20 m deep well.
21. P&I diagram, 5 things you can gather by looking at a PID.
22. Cavitation.
23. What are petrochemicals, name some of the petrochemicals other than ethene, propene?
24. What is a centrifugal pump? Describe its characteristics and effect of speed and density on H-
Q curve
25. What is NPSH and cavitation? How to avoid it?
26. Why are we using two distillation units instead of one single unit?
27. What is the significance of numbers printed on the water bottles?
28. What are heavy/light/sour crude.
29. Why does the golf ball has dotted structure on it
30. What are your favorite subjects?
31. Reynolds Number- Fundamentals, physical significance, expression and discussion on
derivation, applications in chemical engineering.
32. What is the basic difference between a 3-star and a 5-star AC? (Followed by discussion
involving components)
33. Discussion on ozone layer depletion (causes and effects) and international norms for
protection of ozone layer.
34. Explain the working of an air conditioner.
35. Questions related to my internships, minor projects, major projects, RISE Project

Profile | Techno commercial (Petrochemical Business)

1. Explain the manufacturing of polymers from crude.

2. Market share of polymers.
3. Competitors of Reliance.
4. What is a polymer?
5. How are polymers formed?
6. Products of Reliance.
7. Tell me about yourself/describe yourself?
8. Skills needed for a guy to excel in sales?
9. What is Logistics?
10. What is petrochemical?
11. Explain Manufacturing of petrochemicals.
 12. Explain manufacturing of polymers.
13. Application of polymers.
14. Are you risk taker? Give me example when you take risk
15. What you have learned in internship?
16. Give some examples of polymers.
17. Tell some polymer manufacturing companies in India.
18. Tell some of the petrochemical plants in India.
19. What will happen when you burn a plastic bottle?
20. Manufacturing and application of polypropylene, polyethylene, PVC?

Special comment- Prepare your CV well. If you are not confident about the things in your CV, you are
wasting your time in the interview.

TechnipFMC
Process: Online Test  Group Discussion  Case Study  HR and Technical Interview
HR Questions

1. Tell me about you and your family members.

2. Why did you choose chemical engineering?
3. Where do you think you stand in the class? They even asked are you satisfied with your CGPA and
reason for less pointer (in case if it is low).
4. What kind of a person you are. (Basically asking your strengths and your personality)
5. Do you have any preference for location?
6. What are your hobbies?
7. Remuneration expectations and industry preference.

Technical Questions

Questions that they asked were mostly from the case study provided, except for a few questions about
internships and area of interest. Some of them were
1. How does pressure changes after the reaction? What conditions do we prefer in the reactor?
2. Effect of duty on reboiler and condenser by increasing the number of stages.
3. Explaining the points for optimizing the process I had mentioned during the case study
evaluation.
4. Types of reactor and differentiation.
5. How to physically increase the size of reactor?
6. How to find the value of optimum reflux?
7. What are the impacts on process if process operations done at low pressures/high pressures
or temperatures?
8. Heat Exchanger networking concepts.
9. Applying LeChatelier Principle on some practical situations.
10. Effect of increasing/decreasing reflux ratio on process dynamics and economics

Only thing that was required was fundamental knowledge of subjects like mass transfer , heat
transfer, fluid mechanics, different equipment like pumps, fired heaters, distillation column etc. It is
advisable to prepare fluid mechanics and mass transfer especially distillation and basics of heat
exchangers. The important thing for TechnipFMC is that they want core engineering people and not
for marketing or managerial positions. So comprehensive study of chemical engineering subjects is
must.

Wipro ENU
Process: Online Test  Technical Interview (Skype)  HR Interview (Skype)
Technical Questions
1. Introduce yourself.
2. Tell us about yourself, the curriculum that you've gone through and your areas of interest.
3. Give an outline of refinery unit operations from crude oil till products. Describe in detail the
flow of crude oil in the refinery. Also, the operating variables of each process.
4. What are ejectors?
5. How to create vacuum in a column?
6. What are packings?
7. Tray tower vs packed tower-When to use what?
8. Define weeping, flooding, channeling?
9. Types of pumps, compressors, reactors, heat exchangers, storage tanks?
10. Performance Curves?
11. Steps involved in designing a heat exchanger?
12. What are the various instruments used for measuring pressure, temperature, level and fluid
flow in a plant?
13. Which controllers does a DCS utilize?
14. What utilities and process instruments were used in the plant you did your internship?
15. What are steam traps? What are its types?
16. How does a compressor works?
17. Types of flow measuring devices
18. All the laws of thermodynamics
19. Advantages of shell and tube heat exchangers?
20. Types of distillation? Azeotropic distillation?
21. Orifice meter working and principle
22. Why gases are stored in spherical tanks?
23. Wet and dry steam basis?
24. Which is the most economical unit in a refinery?
25. Cascade control system.
26. Controllers PID etc.
27. Various Unit operations in the Fertilizer plant.
28. Various factors which affects the Distillation column.
29. How can we increase the pressure of Distillation column?
30. What is NPSH? Talk about its significance.
31. How to calculate NPSH?
32. McCabe Thiele method.
33. About ASPEN Plus if I had anything on it.
34. Tell us about your internship. Describe how you used the simulation, if any. A complete and
thorough description of the intern and related project
35. What is boiling point?
36. Talk about the modes of heat transfer, with examples.
37. Explain minor/major/RISE projects.
Be through with the basics of every subject. Lead them to the place of your strength. Do not beat
around the bush. They are looking for specific ChE terms in your answer, otherwise they won’t look
convinced. They were really interested in simulation. If you have knowledge of different software,
and simulators, be prepared to hear questions about it. Also, take a before-hand experience of a Skype
interview.

HR Questions

1. Sell yourself to Wipro.

2. If you get rejected what can be the reason for your rejection, analyze it.
3. Why Wipro?
4. Do you know some seniors here and what do they say about Wipro?
5. About family.

Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories

Process: Online Test  Group Case Study  Personal Interviews
Questions were mostly asked from the resume, internships and projects. Some common HR questions
were asked too! Tell me about yourself in 5 sentences

1. How will you bring down the concentration of 90% NaOH to 10%?
2. How will you control an exothermic reaction?
3. What is MSDS? Make MSDS of this apple device and this room.
4. What percentage of oxygen in air leads to asphyxia?
5. How will you separate two components with same boiling point?
6. How will you dry wet solid cakes? Mention few methods.
7. What are the different solvents used in the chemical industry?

Jubilant LifeSciences
Process: Online Test  Group Discussion  Personal Interviews
Technical
1. Questions from heat transfer (design and types of heat exchanger and basics of heat transfer)
2. Questions from fluid mechanics (pumps).
3. Distillation (McCabe Theile Method).
4. Questions from projects undertaken in college
5. What is the difference between extractive and azeotrophic distillation?
6. Differences between CSTR and PFR.
7. What is yield and selectivity?
8. How to control the reaction rate?
9. Working of heat exchanger.
10. How to design a heat exchanger?
11. Reynolds number and its significance
12. Explain about your Major Project in detail.
13. Difference between specific heat and Latent Heat.
14. Difference between Distillation and Extraction.
15. What is distillation? (Principle and brief about design)
16. Why we need to do refluxing in the former?
17. Effect on distillation column if we remove condenser?
18. What all safeguards were employed in the plant?
19. What is reflux ratio?
20. Explain about McCabe Thiele method.
21. What is bubble point and dew point?
22. What is an azeotrope?
23. What is extractive distillation?
24. Explain your internship
25. Question on simulation on Aspen Plus
26. How to optimize the H2S removal process?
27. What is pitch? Triangular & Square Pitch?
28. Types of tube arrangement? When and where they are used?
29. What will you do if concentration of bottom product increase in overhead section?
30. Tell me how a CSTR is different from a PFR?
31. Which is better and in what conditions, Fluidized bed or fixed bed reactor?

HR Questions

1. Brief us about yourself, start with your family members, academics and achievements.
2. What are your strengths and weaknesses? Explain why you think those are your strengths and
Give an example where you showed these characteristics.
3. As my grades were lower than in school, I was asked why there is a dip in my grades.
4. What two things you would like to change about UPES
5. How would you coordinate and lead a team if given the job?
6. Specify the preferences – Documentation/Designing/Plant Work?
7. Talk about your family.
8. Your role model and source of inspiration.
9. Walk us through your CV.
10. What are your strengths and back them up with some example
11. Best thing you like about UPES.
12. Tell me about your internships and projects.
13. Tell me one good experience that you had during your internships.
14. Are you nervous?
15. What are your interests and hobbies?
16. What are the places have you visited so far?
17. Pointing to a portrait of Rani Laxmi Bai, do you know who she is?
18. is there logic behind everything, if yes, what would you say is the logic behind God almighty?
19. One place where you want the college to improve
20. How will your friends describe yourself?