Cognizant Placement Experience and Process for Freshers - 2016

Cognizant Placement Experience and Process for Freshers - 2016

Recently our college had Cognizant Technology Solutions for campus recruitment. Around 200 students appeared in the recruitment out of which 120 got selected.

This company conducted recruitment process in two phases. First phase took place on 19th November while the second phase took place on 26th November.

The eligibility criteria put forward by them required us to:

• Have scored 60% in B.Tech.
• Not have any active backlogs.

This is how the selection process went ahead:

The company conducted the process in two phases:

First phase had aptitude test organized by Merit Track. Time allotted for the test was 1 hour. The paper was divided in two sections:

1. Logical and Quantitative Questions
2. Verbal Questions.

1. Logical and Quantitative Questions

For Logical questions, practice syllogism, blood relations, patterns and assumptions & statements; For QA focus on Data Interpretation, problems on train, problems on ages and time & distance.

To qualify this section you must have good time management for reasoning section and good command in Quantitative Aptitude.

There is a lot of practice material available online and offline. You can refer to books like R.K. Kanodia, R.S. Aggarwal and Arun Sharma which some of my friends did.

If you are an internet person, www.CareerRide.com has a large collection of practice questions and tutorials for placement practice. My primary source of practice was this website.

2. Verbal Questions

Now, the verbal test included questions of comprehensions, vocabularies, verbal analogies, fill in the blanks and antonyms & synonyms.

To qualify in English all you need is rapid reading skills.

It is mandatory to qualify aptitude round to reach next.

Out of 200 students, 170 got selected for the second phase.

The second phase consisted of two rounds:

A. Technical
B. HR

A. Technical

During technical round, the interviewer asked following questions:

i. What is normalisation?
ii. What do you understand by 1NF?
iii. Difference between DBMS and RDBMS?
iv. Disadvantages of file processing system?
v. Levels of data abstractions.
vi. How do you convert analog signals to digitals?

A few questions were asked related to MS Office as it was mentioned on my resume.

B. HR

After cracking technical round, there was an interview with the HR. This round was quite easy. I was asked the following questions:

i. Introduce yourself.
ii. Tell about your family.
iii. What is your greatest strength?
iv. Are you planning to go for further studies?
v. Which place do you like to visit the most and why?
vi. What do you mean by team work and leadership?
vii. Are you ready to relocate?
viii. Some questions were related to Current Affairs.

After completion of interview with HR, they announced the names of selected candidates in half an hour and were given a form to sign to their terms and clauses of relocation.

Some tips that can help you in facing the test and interview:

• Make sure that you have arranged your resume and documents properly.
• Read newspapers and articles to improve your reading skills and vocabulary. This will help you to crack questions of Current Affairs also.
• Never use short forms, slang language or SMS language to fill your form or speak. For e.g. 'wanna', 'gonna', 'see ya' etc. instead of that use proper words 'want to', 'got to go' and 'see you'. Slang puts the interviewers off.
• Don't take too much time to answer any question. This shows that you are not prepared.
• Try to convince them but avoid bluffing. Never show ignorance blatantly.
• Always maintain eye-to-eye contact with interviewer but don't stare.
• Try to clear your doubts or questions, if any, before they approve you.
• Be confident but excess of it makes you look arrogant.