Cognizant Interview Experience (On-Campus 2021)

First I would like to thank Geeksforgeeks for such amazing resources to learn DSA, OS, NWs, DBMS, etc.

Cognizant came to our campus in September (around 12th Sept 2020). It was a campus-drive and cognizant declared (in their e-mail) that they would be hiring for 2 profiles (Genc and Genc Next).

Round 1: The Exam for Genc was held on 18th October 2020. It was an amcat based exam. There were 4 sections in this exam 

1. Quants (25 questions / 30 minutes)
2. Logical Ability (30 questions / 40 minutes)
3. Automata fix (7 questions/ 21 minutes)
4. Essay Writing (Non-eliminatory. 200 words/15 minutes)

Now for those who are yelling at the screen and asking the criteria for Genc and Genc Next is what I am going to tell based on my experience.

I solved 21 quants questions correctly, 27 logical ability questions correctly, 7/7 automata fix questions correctly. I still wasn’t qualified for Genc Next, only got Genc Interview. So, it’s not based on how many automata questions you do or how many other questions you do. My classmate solved 5/7 in automata, and he was shortlisted for Genc Next. None of the 7/7 solvers in my class got shortlisted for Genc Next. I must say that this is the point where your luck matters the most 🙂 

One more thing to note that the results of GENC were declared a long time after ( Cognizant is not so fast in declaring results)

Test was on 18th Oct whereas The test shortlists were declared on 24th November (1 month +1 week approx.).

Round 2:

• Genc Shortlists: 181
• Genc Next test Shortlists: 25

Now my interview was scheduled on 27th November 2020 .

This interview was purely based on a resume. You should have brief knowledge about the technologies you have mentioned in your resume . In my case, I was doing machine learning from the last 2 years and you should note the fact that I am an Electronics undergrad too.(Relevance will be told later in this section) so the questions were asked as follows.

Introduce yourself 

Interviewer: I guess you are quite good at ML and DL etc.

Me: Yes sir, I am doing it for the last 2 years

Interviewer: Okay, so I expect some good answers from you then ( smiles)

Me: I will try my best sir

Interviewer: What is the difference between ML and DL?

Me: Answered 

Interviewer: What is the difference between supervised and unsupervised learning 

Me: Very well answered with live examples in Zoom meet itself

Interviewer: What are the types of regression 

Me: Answered 

Interviewer: What is k means clustering

Me: Answered

Interviewer: What is elbow method

Me: Answered 

Interviewer: What is precision and recall 

Me: Answered with good example

Interviewer: Why do we use elbow method and what are the values of k we set initially 

Me: Answered with depth explanation

Interviewer: What is Linear regression equation 

Me: Answered y=mx+c

Interviewer: How do we calculate the slope and intercept in linear regression ( Mathematical formula)

Me: Took a minute to recall but answered finally

Interviewer: What to do when a model is 100% accurate 

Me: Answered (adding more training data, model parameters changes)

Interviewer: What is overfitting

Me: Answered

Interviewer: What is the python command to split the data in train and test set

Me: Answered X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(X,y,validation_split=0.2) and train_test_split is a function of model_selection library

Interviewer: What is Bayes theorem and what is Naive bayes 

Me: Answered partially 

Interviewer: What are model parameters 

Me: Answered

Interviewer: That was really great, I am really very impressed. I should select you now but as we have some regulations to follow , I have to ask you questions related to your field of study too (ECE).

Me: Smiles and asked him to proceed 

Now comes the ECE questions (Relevance I was talking about), questions were as follows:

1. What is Diode 
2. What is half duplex and full-duplex?
3. Characteristics of communication systems  
4. What is flip
5. What is latch 
6. These were basic questions and I answered them all.
7. At the end, 3 aptitude questions were asked, I solved 2/3.
8. He was extremely happy with my performance, and he kept on laughing about how much i know.
9. Now he asked basic questions of relocation, idol, etc.
10. He asked me if I have some questions or not, I said no and the interview was over.

The results of the interview were declared after 1 month on 22nd December 2020

I was selected. Out of 181 students who gave the interview, 60 were selected and i was one of them.

Thanks 

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