Cognizant Interview Experience for GenC (On-Campus 2021)

Cognizant Technology Solutions visited our campus virtually this time, due to the ongoing pandemic situation. The entire hiring process consisted of 2 rounds which I will be explaining in detail below. The eligibility criteria were 60% in Classes 10 & 12 and 7.0 CGPA in B.Tech along with 0 no. of arrears at the time of appearing for the process. The total number of eligible candidates who appeared from college was 250+. Since it was an on campus drive, we were also offered a 3-6 month full-time internship at Cognizant before permanent employment which was the most attractive part of this recruitment process.

Round 1(Online Aptitude & Code Debugging Assessment): The test was held on AMCAT, an AI-enabled auto-proctored platform with a webcam enabled throughout the test. The level of the test was from medium to hard level. It was an adaptive test means the level of the next question will depend based on the answer you submit for the current one. The test consisted of the following sections:

• Quantitative Aptitude: 24 Questions (35 mins)
• Logical Reasoning: 25 Questions (35 mins)
• Automata Fix: 7 Questions (20 mins)
• Essay Writing(200 words): 1 Question (30 mins)

P.S: This time they removed the verbal aptitude portion from their test pattern.

N.B: The Automata Fix section was mandatory for CS/IT students. For other branches, they relaxed that portion while shortlisting for the next round.

Tips: Practicing daily for the aptitude, you are surely going to crack it. Taking up courses on various platforms is of no use. Your hard work and determination will determine your progress.

Round 2(Technical Interview): Here comes one of the most nervous situations in a student’s life. Due to the pandemic, this time the interviews were held virtually on the Aspiring Minds Smart Meet platform. There was only one person in the panel in my case. The interviewer was not that strict, and he started by asking me to send my Resume through the chat option. Then he fired his questions(entirely based on what I mentioned in my Resume):

1. Introduce Yourself.
2. Tell me about the internship you did. What projects did you work on in that internship? [I did an internship based on Arduino at Kesowa Infinite Ventures LLP]
3. Difference between Arrays and Linked List.
4. Difference between Linear and Non-Linear Data Structures.
5. Then he asked two true/false statements based on pointers in C. [I was able to answer one correctly]
6. Explain OOPs concept and the four principles.
7. Then he gave the below snippet to answer

Java

class Outer {
  int outer_x=100;
  void test() {
    Inner inner = new Inner();
    inner.display();
  }
  class Inner {
    void display() {
      System.out.println(outer_x);
    }
  }
}

class InnerClassDemo {
    public static void main (String[] args) {
      Outer outer = new Outer();
      outer.test();
    }
}

I answered this one correctly after 1 min of thinking.

Then he gave me 3 quantitative aptitude problems to solve, out of which one answer was given wrong from his side. But I was able to explain successfully what was wrong with his solution. (Maybe he was testing my level of confidence)

At last, he asked me whether I had anything for him to ask. That’s it.

Tips: Prepare very well with what you are going to say to the interviewer and be firm and confident in what you say. The interviewer will catch you easily if you try to fool him and it will definitely create a very bad impression at the beginning itself.

At the end, I was able to crack all the rounds and got placed in the prestigious company. I hope, the above information will clear most of the doubts and will help the readers reading this moving ahead.

Thank You.

Good Luck!!!