TCS Digital Codevita Interview Experience

(I’ll be very brief)

Through GeeksforGeeks, I got to know that you can get an Interview opportunity by Qualifying Codevita. So I registered for it as soon the registration began.

I had solved 2 problems completely and 1 partially so I knew the chances were high that I will be called for an Interview. On 29th July I got a mail that my interview is scheduled on 31st July at TCS Hinjewadi, Pune.

I reached right at the reporting time. We were checked in and they issued an ID. We waited for about 15 minutes and then the interviews started.

There were 3 Interviewers I don’t remember who asked which question so I’ll call them all Interviewer.

NINJA INTERVIEW

Interviewer: How was your morning?

Me: Fine sir, and I am very excited.

Interviewer: Good. So ‘college name’… where is it?

Me: It’s in –. It’s not that famous and very new so I get that question a lot. ( smiled. He nodded)

Interviewer: How many questions did you solve in Codevita?

Me: I solved 2. (named them)

Interviewer: I won’t ask you about them (with a devilish smile) I’ll ask you about questions you tried but couldn’t solve.

I had a vague idea about those Questions and as I knew my programming style I was able to answer his queries and he was satisfied. As I hadn’t commented a lot of modules He asked about it and I said ‘I usually comment my code but as time is a constraint in coding competitions, I comment a few lines here and there or not at all’. He asked some more questions and I was able to answer those.

Interviewer: What Questions did you prepare for this interview?

Me: Sorting and Searching algorithms, Data Structures, General Questions, etc.

Interviewer: Which general questions did you prepare?

Me: Questions like ‘why should we hire you?’, ‘tell me about yourself’. etc.

Interviewer: (again with a devilish smile) I won’t ask any of it.

Tell me about your strengths and weaknesses.

Me:

Strength-Told.

Weakness – Sometimes I procrastinate and avoid doing things that are boring and unfruitful.

Interviewer: boring and unfruitful like…?

Me: Assignments (We both smiled).

Interviewer: Okay, so What are you doing to overcome that?

Me: Last year I tried an experiment. I did all my assignments even before the semester started, I did them swiftly by mixing them with fun activities and had a lot of time to study for practicals in the end.

Interviewer: What is your biggest accomplishment?

Me: In the very first semester of engineering I got a backlog in Mathematics-1. It hit me hard as I’d never failed in a single subject before. I took that as my motivation and I cleared it in the immediate semester by keeping my mind open and changing my approach. Ever since then I’ve been a topper in my class.

Interviewer: I am not convinced. How were you able to do it by keeping your mind open?

Me: I studied maths in School and College too, but I feel Maths in Engineering is a very different story, I learned that it’s not about mugging up formulas as I did before, it needs a more practical approach. It’s called applied mathematics for a reason. I had a friend who was a master of that subject, he helped me too. So I kept my mind open to actually learning those concepts rather than just mugging up those formulas, in the end, I did what I’d set out to do and more.

(convinced)

Interviewer: Tell me about your project.

Me: Explained (the Optimal Stopping Algorithm).

Interviewer: What is the biggest drawback of your project?

Me: Pointed out.

Interviewer: Suppose you want to do a project in your company and you have two choices. A guy who is very talented and a team of 10 people who are average, which one will you hire?

(As my project was about balancing time and quality for the hiring process for startups, I assumed I should consider this company as a startup)

Me: I will hire 1 guy because if I am even considering him for this job and comparing him to 10 other people, he should be able to do the job.

Interviewer: But don’t you think it will put a lot of pressure on just 1 guy?

Me: It will, but as you said he is a talented guy so he should have some experience working in the domain so I think given the fact he should be able to handle the pressure. We can save a lot of money too by employing 1 guy rather than 10. If we are a startup then we wouldn’t have any conflict resolving process in the team so it can be hard to manage a team in a small company.

Interviewer: Why are you taking money into consideration?

Me: A company has to make a profit, and money is the blood of an organisation, it is an important factor to consider.

Interviewer: Suppose if you have an infinite amount of money, but you want the work done in the best way,  what will you do then?

Me: Then I will hire the team of 10 guys. (why? he asked.) Because each person will have some experience working in that domain if they came this far and by brainstorming with this team we just might land on the solution.

Interviewer: might? (he smirked)

Me: There is always a possibility that we might fail. We will give our best but it is not always necessary to reach the solution we can reach a distance and if someone else was meant to take it to the end then they will. That’s what researchers and scientists do.

Interviewer: What is the biggest problem you face almost every day?

Me: Parking in Pune.

Interviewer: What did you do to solve that issue or what do you think can be done?

Me: Gave some solutions. told them about what china did. My observations around Pune. Government’s involvement. I tried to avoid criticism on anybody government or people, so I never said people lacked discipline.

Interviewer: You’ve made some fine points but you forgot about the most important thing. People’s involvement. People are not disciplined enough to follow the rules we apply, whatever we do they will find something easier or a loophole and do the same thing they did before.

Me: I agreed.

Interviewer: You are good. Always try to think out of the box.

Me: I do that but sometimes I go towards the wrong answer so I tried to limit myself.

Interviewer: Don’t worry about going in the wrong direction, try to expand your mind and consider all the possibilities.

They asked each other if any one of them had any more questions. Told me that the interview is over.

I asked for each of their names and thanked them for giving me this opportunity. They seemed happy and I left the room.

I sat for a moment in the waiting room. HR called my name and told me to go again in the room.

I went. I thought something was wrong, so I asked them if there was. They said they were considering me for a higher position and will take my interview again for that position.