I applied through college or university. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Cognizant (Chandigarh) in Aug 2016
Interview
After placement tests, CTS generally conducts an interview that is HR and Tech combined. The interview questions can be expected to be really conventional in most of the cases. They don't generally grill you on in-depth concepts but they never fail to check your basic understanding of concepts. Given are few sample interview questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Interview Question 1
Tell at least two uses of NORMALIZATION in designing tables and other structures in a database ?
Answer 1
Normalization ensures that a) there is no redundant data storage and b) data dependencies across tables (foreign keys) are suitable for the level of concurrency.
Interview Question 2
How Databases handle concurrent SQL operations on same row of a table?
Answer 2
Concurrent operations are handled by the use of "Locks". To be more clear, if one sql query is updating (INSERT/UPDATE) a particular row of a table, no other sql query would be able to update the same row at same point in time. However other sql queries can read (SELECT) columns from the row under updation.
Interview Question 3
What is the simple difference between stack and queue type data structures?
Answer 3
Stack operates in a Last In First Out (LIFO) fashion while Queue operates in a First In First Out fashion (FIFO).
Interview Question 4
Can you tell real life examples for stack and queue ?
Answer 4
Plates arranged one over the other in hotel is an example for stack. Plate that was placed last on top will be the first one to be removed from the stack.
Queue in billing section of stores is an example for queue.
The interview was primarily technical, concentrating on C#, .NET, SQL, and API concepts. Questions tested understanding of core principles and practical application. The process was straightforward, professional, and focused on technical depth.
I applied online and got a calll back, had 4 rounds in total. first was a behavioral phone call just casual talks about your skills and when can you start working and general questions, then two coding rounds in hackerrank - was asked to code in java although the job was for python and finally HR.
3 rounds of interviews with a technical interview. The technical interview involved questions on Java and sql. They were mildly difficult. The first 2 rounds were not so difficult, lots of situational judgement questions