CTS On Campus Freshers

  • Name: Meenakshi Pillai 
  • Branch: ECE
  • College: BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore
  • Type of Interview: On-Campus (3.38 LPA)

Student Interview

Two months back the placement cell of our college notified all the final year students that Cognizant will be conducting a recruitment drive in our college soon. Immediately, everyone applied for it. But due to the eligibility criteria of minimum 60% in 10th, 12th, and graduation and no existing backlogs only a few students were eligible for the drive. Fortunately, I was one of those few students. The CTS selection process had 3rounds;

  1. Written Test
  2. Technical Interview
  3. HR Interview

Round 1- Written Test

MeritTrac conducted the written test. The test contained 3 sections.

Sections

Number of Questions

Time Duration

Syllabus

Verbal Ability

25

25 minutes

Synonyms, antonyms, Para-jumbles, comprehension, sentence correction, grammar etc.

Quantitative Ability

16

16 minutes

Number system, Profit, and loss, percentage, time and work, speed and distance, etc.

Reasoning Ability

14

14 minutes

Coding and decoding, arrangements, blood relations, data sufficiency, syllogism, etc.

Overall the difficulty level of the test was moderate, and since I already practiced such questions on PrepInsta, so, I was able to solve most of the problems. Luckily, I cleared the cut-off and was shortlisted for technical interview.

Round 2-Technical Interview

As soon as I entered the room, the interviewer asked me to sit and immediately started asking technical questions. I got nervous, but still, I tried to be calm and composed. Mainly, he was testing my confidence level. And luckily, I was able to maintain that confidence. Then he asked me to introduce myself and eventually we had a friendly conversation.

  1. Which was your favorite subject in engineering?
  2. You are an ECE student why do you want to work in IT domain?
  3. What do you know about Cognizant?
  4. Tell me something about your Project.
  5. What is a pointer?
  6. Distinguish between C++ and JAVA.
  7. What are objects?

The technical interview was straightforward as fundamental questions were only asked. I was able to answer all the questions and so was shortlisted for the HR round.

Round 3-HR Interview

The HR primarily evaluated my communication skills and confidence by asking some general question related to my personal life.

  1. Tell me something about yourself.
  2. Why do you want to join Cognizant?
  3. Do you want to pursue higher education?
  4. What are your hobbies?
  5. Suppose you win a lottery of Rs. 10 Lakh, how are you going to spend it?
  6. What are your expectations from this job?

At last, the HR informed me about night shifts, relocation, and other conditions to which I agreed. He asked me if I had any questions. I asked him to give me a feedback about my interview. He said you need work on your communication skills and rest all is great. I thanked him and left.

A week later, results were declared and fortunately, I reserved my seat at Cognizant, in short, I was selected.