TCS Prime
First I had to appear in the TCS NQT exam for priority institutions, where many other college students appeared. The scheme of the exam was this (No -ve marking):
Part A – Foundation Section
- Numerical Ability – 25 mins (Practise the short tricks as time is low)
- Verbal Ability – 25 mins (Easy)
- Reasoning Ability – 25 mins (Easy-Medium)
Part B – Advanced Section
- Advanced Quantitative and Reasoning Ability – 25 mins (Medium but Time-consuming)
- Advanced Coding – 90 mins (1 question on numbers and array [LC easy] another was String and 2D array manipulation [LC Medium])
Total Duration (in minutes) – 190
I solved both the coding questions and got shortlisted for Prime. If you do only Part A then you will be shortlisted for Ninja and 1-1.5 coding will get you Digital.
There was only one interview round ON-CAMPUS with 3 panel members – Technical (T), Manager(M), HR
I entered by greeting them. They all had a smiling face.
- T: How was ur day?
- M took my resume: You can start by introducing yourself
- M: How was your NQT exam? Did you solve all the coding questions?
- M: Oh you got Prime that means you solved all ha ha ha XD
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M: Do you remember the questions:
Trust me I had them in my mind but at that moment I couldn’t remember the questions at all - M: It’s fine. Don’t stress so much!
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T: WAP to find the square root of a number.
I used the binary search approach to code the solution on paper. They saw and nodded. -
T: Can you dry run it for 6096?
They just wanna see if you can dry-run solutions or not. They won’t need you to reach the answer and solve it whole. -
T: WAP to find the length of the Longest Palindrome Subsequence.
I got a little panicked at first as I never imagined that they could ask DP.
I told them my recursion approach. - T: What will be the time complexity here?
- M: Can we lower it? How?
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T: Code it down.
I made many mistakes in the code and was sweating. M asked me to calm down. In the end, I wrote it all down and they were satisfied. - M: Why have you used Mongo DB in your project and not SQL?
- M: You have worked in Power BI when you were at PWC. Do you know how to import data from a cloud database whose contents are changing periodically?
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M: Have you worked on CSS? What is its speciality?
I couldn’t answer this speciality question. I told them I am not sure - HR: Tell a real-life problem that you can solve by introducing tech. Anything that’s around you.
- HR: What do your father and mother do? Are you a single child?
- M: We don’t have an office in your hometown. So if we relocate you to some other city or abroad, are you okay?
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HR: If you have a family emergency, what will you do?
Answer diplomatically. Balance family and work - HR: What do you know about TCS?
- M: How much time do you expect to work in an office?
- M: You are from Electronics and Telecommunications Eng. So why did you start coding?
- HR: Do you have any questions for us?
I was selected for Prime. They don’t dump anyone from Prime. If you don’t have a good interview you will be demoted to Digital.
PS: Know a little bit about the company. Know everything in your resume. Be ready for all template questions from all topics. You should know a little of everything to crack the TCS interview. Many friends got questions about diverse topics. Most importantly be confident and answer everything. Don’t remain silent. Say whatever is going on in your mind – right or wrong. All the best!