Whole-Testpaper

TCS PAPER ON 27th APRIL AT MANIPAL

Hello friends,
My name is Kumar Ujjwal and i want to share my experience of the TCS selection procedure with all you folks who want to enter into this high profile firm.

The company came to our college on 27th April. The selection procedure and the final declaration of results took place in a span of three days. There was a written "online" test followed by interviews. Here is a synopsis of the entire process they adopt for selection:

WRITTEN TEST: It consists of three sections:

              1. English

              2. Quantitative Aptitude

              3. Critical Reasoning.

The English part essentially consists of four sections: synonyms, antonyms (these two sections contribute 10 marks each with each containing 10 questions). Good reading habits can take care of many of the synonyms, although the antonyms may seem a hard nut to crack. I am not quite sure of the third section marks but it is a fill in the blank section which will gauge your mental flexibility and ability to grasp the meaning of sentences quickly and hence fill in the most appropriate phrase as an option. Remember, you need to have a fair reading speed, if not quick to score in this section. Then comes the reading comprehension part. The passage given may seemingly look as if it has dropped out of the blue as these passages are generally not graspable in one reading and you may not have enough time for two, but the best way to tackle these questions is to have a look at the question first and find a suitable sentence or a combination of sentences which may help you choose one from the given options. In any case, this method will surely help you to narrow down the options to two, in which case the chances of your answering the question correctly is 50%, which owing to no negative marking is worth the risk with also the opportunity to answer rest of the associated questions.

               
The quantitative aptitude section is the one which is most scoring, even to those who don't have the desired aptitude to solve them. This is so because most of the questions are repeated from previous years and some of my friends even didn't have to read the questions to answer them. Like it or not, i advise you to go through the previous year question papers and odds are that the questions will be reproduced with the same arrangement of options. This not only helps you score, but also saves precious time in solving some unexpected new ones. Perhaps TCS hasn't bothered to change this trend as it believes the tough rounds following this more than compensates for the headache of setting up of a new pattern of question paper.

               
The third section is critical reasoning. All of them are from "Barron's 12th edition". But my advice is not to mug them up along with the options (as A,B,C or D for a particular passage). You can still solve them on your own as there is plenty of time for this section and once you have grasped the conditions and noted it down, it is not difficult to eliminate the options one by one. There are just 12 questions in this section constituting three passages.

INTERVIEW: It consists of three rounds:

           1. Technical

           2. HR

           3. MR

The HR and MR are not necessarily in the same order as listed above but technical is usually going to be the first one. In this round , no matter which engineering stream you hail from, some of the questions will be essentially from C and C++. I come from a Mechanical background, some of the questions which were put to me were as follows:

* Tell me something about yourself.

* Some basic definitions from C++ like classes, objects, inheritance, OOP, polymorphism etc. Make sure you know at least  some of these definitions if you are from a non-software branch.

* What is a fibonacci series? Write a program in C++ to print n terms of a fibonacci series.

* Tell me something about your confidence level (answer to the point and not give way-ward answers or famous quotations, remember, he has asked a question about "you", generalising by standing on the shoulders of great scholars can be dangerous).

* Some questions related to my branch. What is thermodynamics, the first law second law, applications of them etc.

* Questions from your elective subjects may be asked, so be prepared.

* Last but not the least, it pays to know something about the company, so get a gist of the company and its recent activities which ca be easily found out on its website as well as other search engines.

The round was just above average for me as i fumbled with some of the software related questions.

                  I was relieved when called for the MR interview. This interview is mainly a check of your mental strength, patience and ability to handle stress and "unorthodox questions". Was asked about my native place, why i wanted to venture into software inspite of having a mechanical background and coping up pretty well with it. Some other questons which i don't remember but answered them logically all the same. In short what is being tested here is your atticism and attitude. The interviewer was very much satisfied and impressed with my tactical answers. He finally asked about any query which i might have . I asked him about the performance appraisal in the company. He gave me almost every detail i was looking for. The interview ended here.

                  Shortly thereafter, i along with four other fellows, was called for the HR round. The madam concerned asked us to choose a topic and give our views on it. We unanimously chose the recent "quota controversy and the justifiable step of the apex court on its stay order".  She didn't ask anything else and enqired upon our queries. Quite a few questions were asked by us and she answered them all gleefully. Lastly she told us all about the bonds and agreements. Thus finished the entire interview process. Results were declared within an hour and a half and i found myself through, as did 272 other students of my institution.

                  My word of advice, prepare well for the written test, that of course is quite easy looking at the general trend over the years. In the interview, be confident and count upon your strengths. Don't overdo anything as the panel members are quite smart to notice it. Make sure that your body language doesn't give you away, they take it very seriously and for heaven's sake, never try to outwit or hoodwink them. The members of the TCS panel are quite friendly and break the ice pretty soon so that you can find yourself at ease. Best of luck, may God be with all of you.

Regards,

Kumar Ujjwal