Cognizant came to our campus and conducted the hiring process in 2-3 stages, Cognizant is known as one of the prominent and well known service based company.
The eligibility criteria they had set was:
- 10th Grade cutoff: 6 CGPA
- 12th Grade cutoff: 60%
- College current cut-off: 6 CGPA
- Branch: CSE, IT, ECE, EEE
JOB TITLE: There offered various job titles , I chose Data Scientist job title
JOB ROLES: They were offering 3 roles – GenC, GenC elevate, GenC next. At 1st batch GenC elevate and GenC next was offered and on next batch GenC and GenC elevate was offered.
ROUND 1 (SKILL BASED ASSESSMENT): Next was our skill assessment test, It was conducted on the software platform MSB, where many companies have conducted their online assessment tests, there was some technical issue in the test so it was re-conducted.
The test was divided into 4 parts, time duration of 3 hours and each section having its own time constraints and hidden internal cutoffs:-
-
MCQs(20 minutes): (aptitude, logical reasoning, English, programming and CS subjects (OS, DBMS))
- Resources I used for preparation: GFG aptitude series is best, and it would be more than enough if you can complete that, it is more off on Goldman Sachs’s aptitude test level, indiabix is also good for beginner but it is very easy, rest their MCQs part is quite similar to other companies’ aptitude test , I have created a GFG aptitude series cheatsheet / major takeaways , you all can check this out if somehow it can help you
-
Coding/programming (40 minutes): 2 easy but lengthy codes, one question that I got was based on 24hr time to 12hr time format conversion
- Resources I used for preparation: Hackerrank problem solving , GFG cognizant company tag coding problems
-
Coding/programming (60 minutes): 2 moderate but lengthy codes, question that I got was, extract years from given text
-
SQL Query commands (40 minutes): 2 query (took time to analyze multiple tables which were connected through various joins)1 easy, 1 moderate
- Resources I used for preparation: Hackerrank SQL for beginner, SQLzoo for sharp SQL preparation, for learning prefer any good crash course video on SQL as per your choice
Overall review and my performance: I believe I did well in MCQs, completed 1 Moderate level coding problem and 1 SQL query problem, overall it was of moderate level, I could have done better, main difficulty element of the test was its time duration and length of assessment which made me exhausted, but it was very adventurous to give the whole test with so many different sections evaluated at once, Personal advice would be to try completing at least 1 question from each section (coding and SQL) to be on safe side, and in MCQs section, try to complete English portion within 5 minute, work on your paragraph reading ability, If you would have learnt CS subject then it won’t take much time.
ROUND 2(TECHNICAL INTERVIEW): I got shortlisted for GenC next role’s technical interview, result was announced after almost 1 week, at this time they had shortlisted ratio of 1:3 for GenC next and GenC elevate role’s interview respectively, few GenC Next candidates got swapped to GenC Elevate position during technical interview.
I started preparing:
- Read about all GFG cognizant interview experiences (OnCamps and OffCampus both) to get an idea about questions being asked.
- Revised my CS subjects grip and projects and used tech stack in it, and also how to put myself to them like introduction, about achievements.
- Knowing about the company, visited company’s website to check their goal and achievements.
On technical interview, what my interviewer asked me:
First of all I didn’t had any separate HR round, few of the questions which are usually asked in HR round were asked to me in the technical round itself, so it’s good to be prepared beforehand, The interviewer was very kind person, at first he asked me for the identity proof (in my case my college library card) and then proceeded asking questions
- Introduction (where I included- brief about my education, current CGPA, internship, projects , about your domain interest and any special achievement)
- Anything you know about cognizant
- Why cognizant
- Internship experience , role, tech stack used
Then they asked about the skills and languages which I mentioned in the resume, following were the questions asked to me as far as I remember:-
- C language – Headerfile, Is main function necessary, Can program compile without main function ( answer- yes, it will, but since there is no function so nothing would be execute), Datatypes- int char etc., Extern static global, Pointer, Arrow, Void pointer , Null pointer, token, literals, string literals, if else, nested if, why for loop, for loop structure, palindrome string, control statements(if else, switch case), getch or getchar, sprintf (“s”printf = string print, something like this), declaration vs definition of variable (answer – int x vs x = 10 or int x = 10), how negative number are stored in memory.
If they say write script or show script that means you have to write code
- C++ language – Datatypes, Array, linkedlist, Sort, Array what type of memory storage (contiguous), static use (lifetime explain), pre-aggregation, post-aggregation diff, ques – a= 2, a*a++ = ? answer = 4,queues, identify circular linkedlist (end next pointer to first node), modular programming, call by value vs call by reference, copy pointer vs reference pointer(similar ques/ object pointer), pointer vs function, namespace use (using namespace std/string n all), shallow copy vs deep , hashing mean and use plus how we use it (no code just concept), break
I was asked to code sorting with no specified algorithm or any time complexity, on the video conferencing platform with IDE provided, while sharing my screen with the interviewer
Tip: select language and remove the given template, write on your own.
- OOPs – What is oops, Polymorphism types, runtime (overriding) and static (overloading), Abstraction, Pure virtual vs virtual, inheritance.
- DBMS -Normal forms, Indexing and why we use, Clustered vs non clustered indexing.
- SQL – Datatypes, Table vs fields, Right join, Constraints (including keys and check constraint), all keys, joins, self-join use, truncate vs delete, union vs unionall, group by, primary key
I was asked to perform Right Join on the video conferencing platform with IDE provided, while sharing my screen with the interviewer
- Python – Datatypes, Operators in py (relational, bitwise, logical, assignment…total 6), file handling (read, readline readlines, modes- r,w,rw), swapcase() function (upper to lower n vice versa), lstrip – for leading spaces, list vs tuples, break, PYTHONPATH
As I had mentioned Data Analysis, ML and Deep Learning Regarding projects, so they asked me questions about Pandas, Numpy basics as:-
Then after being asked about the Udacity scholarship for cloud native architecture which I did, I said I have experience in Docker and Kubernetes and explained them the importance of it with relative to the growing IT industry.
Then they said they are done with the interview, I can leave now and results would be provided to TPC of my college and thereafter if being selected HR would contact me
My experience and performance: My interview was scheduled for 10:30am – 12pm slot, but for no reason it got delayed to 2:30pm which made me very tired. I believe I answered at least 75% of the questions right, I got bit nervous too in between but my interviewer made me feel okay and also when I was giving wrong answer he also provided with correct answer or improved answer that I found a great gesture.
Tip: Try not to rush out to give answer, be little calm and speak out your answer in steady pace, wherever you have doubt about the question ask politely to repeat or ask for doubts and also keep talking in between to demonstrate your thinking process while solving.
Review: Overall I found the interview was of moderate level, the number of questions asked were more but the questions were comparatively easy
Resources:
- I would suggest properly go through Interviewbit Interview questions for each CS subjects and languages (C, C++,Python , SQL, DBMS, OOPs, OS, Python) and also the tech stack used you have used in your projects or internships
- GFG cognizant interview questions and experience
- For CS subjects learning, I was learning from GateSmashers (Its Hinglish YouTube Channel)
To my surprise there was no separate HR round, not because of the fact that I might had answered well, but that might be the trend for the campus, since my friends who were also participating in the placement drive said they also had no separate HR round.
So we had more off document verification round which was named HR round, conducted after 2 days of technical interview, where the HR asked me to show my Identity proof, PAN card and college identity proof (library card in my case), 10th grade result card, she asked if I had any doubts regarding company, she recited few lines of declaration for me and asked for confirmation about my consent to work in company and after that I was allowed to leave.
Suggestions: Overall Be confident and prepare well to stood that confident, also try to not stop to service based company only, if possible try preparing for product based company too
After almost 1 week I got shortlisted for the role and got offer for the GenC next role.