Interview-HR Interview |   5390

Interview-HR Interview

Cognizant Campus Recruitment Process on 25.02.2011

Eligibility Criteria:  60% throughout (X, XII, UG/PG)

                                  No year Gap

                                   Only 2011 Pass out

Venue: FIEM, Sonarpur (it was not an on Campus Process)

Reporting Time:  8:00 am

My experience

I was 15 mins late, but it did not create any issue

An auditorium sought of place was given to us so that it can accommodate at least 400 students, 452 were eligible. Cognizant came at around 9am, and when I saw the entire team I was simply stunned, more than 35 people came, out of which 33 were interviewer (I came to know about them before the interview). The T.P.O of the FIEM introduced Mr. N Ghosal, the HR Manager of Cognizant.

Mr. N Ghosal, introduced himself and started off with the ppt session, it was damn good and inspiring

After 30-45 mins of ppt session we were asked to get ready for the Aptitude test, a consultancy named Meritrake came in with a team of more than 20 people and divided the entire group of students into several rooms, they had taken every possible measure so that no unfair means occur.

A form (data sheet) was given to fill-up, followed by two question papers (2-sections)

Total 55 questions were there, 60 mins time, 2 sections, 1-logical and quantitative 2-Based on English, no Negative marking but sectional cut-offs were there.

Aptitude result was declared by 1.30 pm, and panels were allotted to the selected candidates, there were 33 panels, and 5-6 students were allotted to each

I was in panel 1.

The interview session began, 1:1 interview, Technical and HR was combined, and the single man that was sitting on the other side was more than enough to make us realize that he was from CTS and the questions won’t be as smooth as we were thinking

I was waiting for my turn to come; seriously, I was quite tensed and nervous though my face did not reflect that. At that moment of time I was completely blank, I could not even remember the syntax for inheritance in C++, anyways I had to wait till 5.30pm, as the interviewer was taking a lot of time with a single candidate, so you can imagine how sweet the interview session could be, sitting with the interviewer for than 30mins, minimum, gradually I started to make up my mind that I have to face the person on the other side of the desk, and if I get tensed then everything would be in a mess, actually I was not tensed, neither was i nervous, it was a different feeling, which you can only feel when your waiting outside that ROOM.

When my name was called, it was near about 5.40pm

Me : Sir, may I come in

X: yah, sure (he had a smiling face)

Me: Good Afternoon sir (I was standing with my bag on one shoulder, and a file in my hand)

X: yah, have your seat, be comfortable

(I took my seat, kept my bag on the floor, and the file on my lap)

X: (with a smile on his face) so you are Shyam, from JISCE?

Me: yes sir
X: (he called out two names, they were also from my college and asked me) who is the topper?
 
Me: sir all are unique in their own way, but if you talk about academics I have topped the last 5 semesters

X: so you are the topper? (smiled again)

Me: yes sir till the 5th semester

X: show me your certificates, class X and XII (I gave him the original),make sure that you put back all the certificates safely

(He started calculating my percentages, one by one) and said all are perfect

X: you have passed out class XII from CBSE? I am also from CBSE

Me: which school sir?

X: Kendriya Vidyalay, Alipore, (smiled) I have passed out class 10 in 2000, so where do you stay?

Me: Naihati

X: hmm nice place, so what are your hobbies Shyam?

Me: (told) (and he continued writing everything in his evaluation sheet)

X:  (going through the data sheet that I have filled up in the morning) you like data structure

Me: yes sir, we had DS in our 3rd sem

X: ok (he gave a blank A4 sheet and wrote an array of 6 elements) sort the array
Me: which technique sir?
 
X: anything of your choice

Me: (after sorting the array by Bubble sorting technique) sir done

X: ok let me see (going through my code) no this will not work!! (returned the paper back to me)

Me: (surprisingly) why sir? (I went through my code,….but couldn’t find any mistakes) (Gave it back to him) sir it will work

X: (again going through my code) no it won’t, ok let us do a dry run

Me: (eagerly waiting for him to point out my mistake) yes sir

X: oh! My mistake, I didn’t notice the other loop (he overlooked my outer loop) it will work (gave a positive smile)

X: Can you tell me its time complexity?

Me: (told, a complete wrong guess, I was not sure) (he did not say anything)

X: what projects have you done?

Me: (told)

X: do you know Linked lists?

Me: yes sir

X: ok, have you heard of circular, doubly, circular-doubly linked lists?

Me: yah sir, sure

X: how can I search an element from the linked list? (Passed that paper to me again)

Me: shall I write the code?

X: your choice, I just need to understand

Me: (I wrote the code, defined a structure for linear linked list, and defined a function for searching the element) ( I was taking a bit time and I looked up once to see what was he doing)

X: take your time (gave a pleasant smile)

(I continued with my ‘searching’ function)

(After completing, I looked up again, found him busy writing something, so I started checking my code, if there are some errors)

Me: sir I have done it

X: oh , let me have a look (going through my code) yah good

X: what changes would you make if I ask you to do the same for doubly linked list?

Me: (made the changes)

X: (with a impressive smile) your code is ok but it could have been much simpler. What is recursion?

Me: (told)

X: write down a recursive function to print the fibonacci series in Java

Me: (feeling a bit tensed, started off)

(Finished writing the code, I didn’t print the a and b as 0 in the beginning, I took a=-1 and b=1, and gave him the sheet back) sir done.

X: (checked out my code) why did you take a= -1 and b=1?
 
Me: (explained him)

X: (he looked impressed) (he took the paper back, wrote a small code snippet) what will be output of the following? (The code was written in C++, a bit tricky)

Me: (I started solving it, wrote few steps) (suddenly he took back the paper and said)

X: what is string?

Me: (answered him)

X: how can you copy one string in another?

Me: (I told him about the strcpy function)

X: without strcpy?

Me: bla bla…. (could not answer properly)

X: ok can you relocate outside Kolkata?

Me: (butterflies in my stomach) YES ! sir

X: ok last question I’ll ask you, if you can answer you are through

(I was excited)

X: ( wrote 3 statements:    x=1+2+3; y=”1”+2+3; z=2+4+”6”;) if I write System.out.println(x) and in the same way SOP for y and z what will be the output?

Me: x=6; y=123 (as ‘+’ will act as a concatenation operator),and z= (he took back the paper)

X: you are through, you can go
Me: Thank you sir
 
(I saw him writing the marks, he gave me 9/10) ( before getting in I heard, that, 6 is the cut-off, so any one getting 6 will get the job)
Came out of the room, I was quite satisfied and eagerly waiting for the result

They announced the result around 7.30pm,

And they gave me the offer letter.
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