New Test Pattern of INFOSYS

Quantitative Ability – 10 Questions 35 Minutes

Reasoning Ability – 15 Questions 25 Minutes

Verbal Ability – 40 Questions 35 Minutes

Sectional Cut-off – Yes

Negative Marks – No

Test Details:

Quantitative Ability – This is a new section introduced by Infosys this year and it clearly indicates that Infosys is looking for candidates’ with good Problem Solving and Analytical skills. 10 Questions and 35 Minutes to solve so expect time consuming, higher difficulty questions. The focus was more on Numbers and Advance concepts like Permutation and Combination, Probability. Few questions from topics like Time and Work, Time Speed and Distance were also seen.

Along with this there were one or two Cryptarithmetic Questions. These questions are usually time consuming to solve. Since there were options given for these questions it makes these questions solvable with-in the available time.

Reasoning Ability – Similar to older Infosys pattern we have seen questions from Data Arrangement, Data Interpretation, Data Sufficiency, Syllogism, Visual Reasoning and Puzzles. Earlier there were sets of 5 questions in each set and now it was reduced to 2 or 3 per question set and this makes it time consuming to solve. Apart from this we didn’t notice any change in the difficulty level of the questions.

Verbal Ability – Infosys is probably the only company which stresses a lot on Verbal Ability and they continue to do the same by retaining the same old pattern for this section. 40 Questions testing almost all the areas of Verbal ie) Grammar, Comprehension, Vocabulary and Critical Reasoning, 10 Questions each.

Expected Cut-Off:

Quantitative Ability – 6 to 7 Marks

Reasoning Ability – 10 to 11 Marks

Verbal Ability – 20 marks

Our Recommended Strategy:

Quantitative Ability – Focus on getting 6 Questions correct by choosing the less time consuming questions and attempt it with-in the first 15 Minutes. We have noticed 3 to 4 very easy questions which can be solved in less than 5 minutes. Once you are through with this then you will have close to 20 Minutes for the remaining 4 questions and out of which even if you get 1 question correct you will most likely clear the expected cut-off. Hence the key here is to identify the 6 less time consuming questions.

Reasoning Ability – Attempt Individual questions first, like questions from Syllogism, Data Sufficiency, Visual Reasoning and Puzzles. Because these questions will not have common data to be solved and each question might take a maximum of 2 minutes to solve and a majority can be solved in less than a minute. You can easily solve 9 such questions with-in first 15 Minutes. Now you will be left with Data Arrangement and Data Interpretation type of questions and we recommend to solve data Arrangement at the end because there is high probability of getting it wrong compared to Data Interpretation. Hence out of the remaining 10 Minutes even if you get 2 to 3 questions correct you will comfortably clear he expected cut-off.

Verbal Ability – Attempt Sentence Correction or Error Spotting and Vocabulary first, ie) with-in first 15 Minutes try to complete these 20 Questions. Next go for Reading Comprehension and here if you find a lengthy passage then you will get 2 to 3 direct questions hence read the question first and try to find the answer from the passage. Don’t try to read and understand the passage completely. You can comfortably attempt only the direct questions with-in 5 minutes and take a chance in the other type of questions since there is no negative marks. Don’t waste your time in inference type of questions. If you get a short passage better attempt it at the end because the questions will be tougher. We have seen at-least one passage in Infosys lengthy hence you can attempt that first. Last type of question is Critical Reasoning here try to attempt 5 to 6 questions with-in 10 Minutes. By now you would have attempted close to 30 questions in 30 Minutes and with an accuracy of 85% you will comfortable clear the cut-off and you still have 5 Minutes left to attempt the remaining questions.

Overall Infosys test is the most perfect test to identify the right talent. I am not a big fan of Adaptive Tests which is practiced by Wipro, Accenture and Cognizant because it doesn’t test the candidates decision making skill which i feel is a very important skill a candidate should possess. Linear tests conducted by Infosys and TCS tests the candidates decision making skill by giving a mix of easy and difficult questions carrying equal weightage. Now it is left to the candidate whether he chooses easy ones and solves it with-in the given time limit or he chooses the difficult ones and complains about time availability. Hence understand the objective of the tests so that you can easily tame it.