HCL Interview Experience (On-Campus)

HCL had a total of 5 rounds for this recruitment process,

Round 1: Group discussion

In this, the interviewer gave us a topic and we had to talk about it, it was not who talks the most and who stands out to be the most prominent one, but it was more of how your communication skills are compared to others. It was a 20-minute round.

Round 2: Apti test

This was the only for people who got shortlisted after the first round and this was the only test round that was conducted online, we had 5 sections with 15 questions each and a total of 90 min. Those who scored over 80% on this test were shortlisted for further rounds.

Round 3: Interview 1 (Technical)

I got asked

• Introduction
• What projects I did
• What am I doing in my current internship
• More deep dive into my internship project
• Resume project

I didn’t get asked any DSA questions, but the people who got asked, questions were pretty simple,

• Check if the array is rotated and sorted
• Quick sort
• Merge sort
• LRU cache (the only little over one)
• Element in an array which repeats N/3 times
• Find an element in BST
• Cycle in the linked list which the element where the cycle starts, and the length of it.

Round 4: Interview 2 (Technical)

This round was more project-related, he went into details of

• How I made my project
• Setbacks I faced
• Why the particular tech stack
• Alternatives of the tech stack
• Why alternatives were not the move
• Why did you do these projects (mine were some that solved some real-world problems, so I had my reasons to give)
• Implementation of backend and database in one of my projects
• Current internship project
• Techstack current company uses

This wrapped up almost the whole interview, additionally, he asked if I had any questions, and I just asked basic questions like work culture and management of teams.

Round 5: HR

This was the final round which was a typical HR round

• Intro
• Why hcl
• Hobbies
• Why wouldn’t I pursue my hobby
• Biggest fear
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Any newsletter I follow and which news did I find most exciting
• Am I a team leader, and give examples?

This wrapped my whole process and fortunately, I was selected with two others.
Total students who appeared: 150+
Selected : 3
The whole process lasted for 2 weeks.