HCL Grandquest Interview Experience 2021

I applied for HCL Grand Quest 2021 through their website. HCL Grand Quest is an event that is conducted by HCL first careers every year for the hiring of freshers from all over the country. The event consists of multiple rounds and at the end, there is a ceremony in which the top 100 students are given job opportunities with HCL and the top 25 are felicitated with prizes and certificates. More than 11 thousand students participated in the event this year.

Round 1(Online Test): The first round was an online test conducted on CoCubes which comprised of 4 sections that had to be solved in a duration of 1 hr and 15 minutes. All the questions were Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) with a +1 mark for correct answers and a -0.25 mark for every wrong answer. The first 3 sections were of  15 minutes each and the last section (IT fundamentals) was of 30 minutes. The test was web-proctored with complete audio and video recording.

• Section 1: This section consisted of 15 MCQs based on Verbal Aptitude (English). The questions were easy and consisted of fill-in blanks with the appropriate word, synonyms, antonyms, error detection, paragraph-based questions.
• Section 2: This section consisted of 15 MCQs based on Logical Reasoning. The questions were slightly difficult and were based on figures, directions, calendars, blood relations, directions, coding-decoding, etc.
• Section 3: This section consisted of 15 MCQs based on Quantitative aptitude. The questions were easy to medium and were based on simple and compound interest, profit and loss, probability, permutations, mixtures, and number systems.
• Section 4: This section consisted of 30 MCQs based on IT Fundamentals. Most of the questions were easy and were based on the basic concepts of OS, DBMS, OOPS. There were some medium-level questions as well that were based on MS Excel, shortcut keys for windows, processors, and other windows based applications.

After the first round, I got a call after a week for the first technical round which was supposed to be held after two days.

Round 2(Technical Interview Round): This round was a technical interview round. The interviewer asked me to give a brief introduction about myself. I started my introduction by telling most of them that were written on my CV. Then he asked several technical questions based on my profile. Initially, he tried to discuss with me the projects that I had mentioned in my CV and we had a thorough discussion on 

1. What are pointers?
2. Which languages support pointers? Does Java support pointers?
3. What is the difference between Java and Javascript?
4. Explain the concept of hoisting in Javascript. Then we had some discussions on functionalities of javascript since it was mentioned on my resume.

After this round, I got a call within an hour for the next and final round which was supposed to be held on the same day.

Round 3(HR Round/ Basic Communication Round): In this round, the interviewer asked me some common HR questions and we had some general discussions.

1. Tell me something about yourself and your parents.
2. What makes you think you are fit for this role?
3. HCL works all over India so you can be given any location. Are you comfortable with it?

Then he explained to me the entire process of selection on the basis of different parameters, the 3-month training process that is conducted by HCL (currently in virtual mode), the further 3-months Internship, and final placement at the HCL office. Finally, on the ceremony day, I was declared as the 1st runner-up (2nd rank) of the event and got an opportunity to start my career with HCL first careers.