Cogncise Business Services Interview Questions and Answers

Round: Test
Experience: Data interpretation questions,english vocabulary(GRE BARRONS) is most important , apptitude questions and reasoning are from R S agarwal.
Total Questions: 65

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Interviewer asked about your core subject littlebit and dont have any deep questions from c and c++.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Given a topic and asked me to speak about that topic for one minute and given a situation asked me how would you react on that situation.

General Tips: It is easy to get a job in infosys comparatively other companies because you dont need to prepare for software side.
Prepare aptitude and reasoning from R S Agarwal and GRE BARRONS for vocabulary
College Name: NIT WARANGAL

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: The resume was as per the norms of our institute’s placement office. One should mention only relevant points in the resume because if they ask you something from the resume and you are unable to answer then they will reject you bluntly.

Round: Test
Experience: In the written test the questions asked were mainly aptitude based. The company had sent us some sample question papers before the written test. The questions in the test appeared from those sample papers only. Most of the questions were tricky – questions were framed in a very lengthy manner and the answers or the data required to solve the question was hidden in the last few lines. Many students wasted their time analysing such questions completely. Out of the 80 odd students who appeared for the test only 11 qualified for the next round.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: In the technical interview he asked me whether I knew programming, I replied in the negative. He asked me to suggest an algorithm to a problem. The problem was based on swapping of numbers. At first I gave a very bland reply. The interviewer wasn’t convinced by my reply and gave me another opportunity to explain me the process. This time I managed to answer appropriately. The interviewer then enquired about my internship and my projects.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: The HR interview was taken by some top company official. He asked me to narrate any challenging incident in my life that I had to struggle through to emerge out of it. One important thing to note here is that your CGPA would speak for you – if you have a good CGPA half the battle is won.

College Name: IIT ROORKEE
Motivation: TCS recruits a large number of students from various colleges across the country. Knowing this fact beforehand I was not much interested in joining the company. I appeared for its process as a last resort. The company had organized a pre-placement talk. I attended the talk and before appearing for the first round I went through the brochure that was given out during the pre-placement talk.

You do not require any specific information regarding the company to ace the interviews or any questionnaire.

Round: Test
Experience: PART ONE: Verbal Ability, uses of articles (a, an, the) and a RC. 
PART TWO: logical reasoning, standard IQ type Questions, was simple. 
PART THREE: An essay, one out of two, one choice was nuclear deal and the other was education system in India.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Some regular puzzles were given, which were easy. A discussion on internship work.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: They are looking for people with good aptitude, very good communication skills and strong desire to learn. Also, someone with good academic record and clear career goals.
Tips: Do not panic in the interview.

General Tips: For GD, improve the content by reading and/or discussing among wing mates. Don't be aggressive but be assertive and ENERGETIC.
College Name: IIT KANPUR

General Tips: KGPians have to be a little more in the know-how of latest trends in IT and programming language landscape. KGPians don’t do group projects much, specially group programming/software project. Be affirmative about your abilities and be more clear in your intent, in interviews.
Skill Tips: Must: minimum CGPA of 8. they reduced the gpa requirement to 7.9 but they maintain final gpa must be 8. Good to have: Some knowledge of programming languages,databases,Algorithms. Any extra-academic involvement helps ,but is not a requirement. Be in touch with discrete math(not requirement). C++,Java programming(may be a little bit of Python). Projects and internships with computer programming as major /critical part. Having lead a bunch of juniors or equals in a project. Decent communication skills is essential.
College Name: IIT KHARAGPUR

Round: Test
Experience: CAT type questions were asked in English and DI.
Tips: Accuracy will matter and preparations for CAT will help.
Duration: 30 minutes
Total Questions: 40

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Questions were based on Data Abstraction. Internship was the main topic around which the rest of the interview went on.
Tips: Coding skills should be good.

Round: HR Interview
Tips: Work on communication skills.

College Name: IIT KANPUR

Round: Test
Experience: My first Interview was for the post of Network Engineer in HCL Technologies held in April 21, 2009. In the morning in that day at 9.00 AM I am with dressed up with formal dress code, black shoes and a tie. I waited there for around 2 hours for the company officials to come. They came at around 11 AM. Then they started giving information about HCL Infosystems through a powerpoint presentation and what all procedure they are going to follow in their recruitment process.
The recruitment process consisted of two sections:
1. Aptitude Test
2. Personal Interview.
The Aptitude test consisted of 30 questions in Quantitative Aptitude and 30 questions in Non Verbal Reasoning and the time allotted to complete the test is 60 minutes. The questions were quite tough and challenging. It was evident that the HR were expecting more talents for their company. I could answer about 40 questions and there were no negative marks so I answered all the questions. I was quite confident that the cutoff would be less that 40. We waited for the results of Aptitude Test. The result came around 2.30 PM. About 45 candidates were selected for the personal interview and I am glad that I am one of them. From the results we could guess that the cutoff was 35. The Personal Interview was at 2 PM after lunch. At 2 PM we waited there for Personal interviewer. Four different panels were there for conducting the interview. My turn came at evening 5 PM.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: HR: Are you Anbarasan?
Me: Yes Sir.
HR: Take your seat.
Me: Thank You Sir.
HR: Introduce Yourself Anbarasan.
Me: (I gave a brief Introduction about myself)
HR: What is your father?
me: He is a Civil Engineer Sir.
HR: Why didnt you join civil branch in engineering
me: I am more interested in Computers than civil Sir.
HR: What is your mother?
me: She is a housewife Sir.
HR: What is your career Objective!
me: My career objective is to work in a challenging environment where I could
constantly upgrade my knowledge thereby contributing for the organisation where 
I work and my professional growth as well. And my life ambition is to become a 
reputed Ethical Hacker.
HR: Good. Who is your role model?
me: Bill Gates Sir. Because he is the best programmer in the world. I like his thoughts more than his programming. He became the best businessman in the world because of his great thinking. He is a really innovative and inspiring personnel.
(Then He asked questions from all topics in Networking . As I am good in Networking I could answer his questions. I could see that he is satisfied with my answers.)
HR: How did you learn Ethical Hacking?
me: I learned through lectures of Ankit Fadia Sir. But still I need to learn more in Ethical Hacking.
HR: Will you join HCL if you were placed anywhere?
me: Sure Sir. When it is HCL, I wont hesitate sir.
HR: Your Personal Interview session ends here. You can leave and wait for the results
me: Thank you, Sir. 
That interview session took 30 minutes to complete. And the result came at 6.30 PM. Out of 45 students, 30 got placed. I was also got selected in the interview. Almost all of friends got selected. I was glad that I got the Network Engineer Job. That was the most happiest moment I ever had.

College Name: NA

Round: Test
Experience: The written test was quite similar to the typical CAT pattern. It contained sections on Reading Comprehension, Data Interpretation and Mathematics.

Round: Interview
Experience: There were 3 interview rounds:
There were 2 interviewers in the first interview, one was a technical guy and the other was from HR. They asked me a few
very simple puzzles, a few basic programming questions (swapping the value of two variables etc.), questions related to the development cycle of software products.  The HR guy asked stuff like what do you want to achieve in life? Strengths, weaknesses etc.
The second interview was resume based. He asked me about my thesis, internship, various projects, positions of responsibility etc. The third interview was the most important one (and I guess that was the deciding interview). The interviewer started with questions like why finance? Which companies are you sitting for? Then he gave me a case study: “As a banking organization, you have given house loans to a lot of customers. Given the current scenario, you have to profile the customers to which loans have been given based on the chances that they would pay back.” He started with this scenario and as I gradually started analyzing things and proposing models he kept on increasing the complexity saying you don’t have this data, you can’t make that assumption etc. Ultimately he narrowed down it down to a problem which was almost unsolvable. When I got stuck at that he told me that his idea was to just give me a taste of the toughness of problems they encounter in day-to-day business.

General Tips: After spending three or four years enjoying the IITK adventure, one suddenly feels a jolt when he/she arrives in the final year. You find yourself wondering at times, asking yourself the pertinent question, what next? And seriously, the best way to start preparing for placements, GRE, CAT or any other exam for that matter is answering this question honestly. Take a few minutes of your precious time and think what you want to do with your life? Where does your heart truly lie? I know it’s not that easy to decide on this but at least give this a good thought and prioritize your options. Make a list of them on paper if that helps. Once you are done with this, the real planning starts. Take each option one by one and do a truthful analysis of yourself from the perspective of that option. For e.g., say you have CAT as your first priority, and then analyze your strengths and weaknesses from CAT’s perspective. What all areas you need to improve on? How much time and effort would it take? How much time you have got left? By doing this exercise you will really get to know the work that needs to be done and will help you plan for the remaining time.


Resume:
I am sure you would have heard it umpteen times but still I will repeat it to stress the point, take resume making seriously! A good resume would drive your interview in the direction you want it to go, a bad resume on the other hand might end the chances of you even getting interviewed! Start by trying to remember each and every achievement of your life and write it down. Spend a few days on this part till you are sure you have got almost everything. Now write it down properly in formal language in the form of a master resume. This would serve
as a repository of information for all your subsequent resumes. And on top of that, having a fresh memory of your achievements would help you in answering the questions in interviews (especially HR questions). Ideally you should have a separate resume for every company you sit for. The way to do this is make sector specific resumes and edit them accordingly for the different companies of that sector. For example, make a single resume for all the core CSE companies and then you can probably change the list of projects (or their order of appearance) targeting individual companies.

PPTs:
If you are serious about getting job in a company, you cannot afford to miss its pre placement talk. PPT is not only an opportunity to know about the company, but it also gives you the chance to know what the company is looking for. This will give you the basic idea around which you should structure your resume and preparation for that company.
Preparation:
Core Computer Science Companies: All the core CS companies first take a written test which contains questions on C/C++, may have JAVA, UNIX, Algorithms, Data Structures, basics of Operating Systems and Compilers, some questions on basic networking in case the company works in that field. Almost all the companies have a couple of questions in which you are required to write code on paper. Some companies also have a few questions on aptitude, simple maths or data interpretations. You can find the company specific details in the placement feedback guide. This is the major
shortlisting step for core companies, so you cannot take it lightly. You can start preparing by revising the relevant courses you did (like Data Structures, Algorithms, Operating Systems, and Compilers). Practice a few questions available in the various placement preparation guides on LAN. Most importantly, practice writing code on paper. This is something we are not used to and requires some practice. This not only will do you good in the written test, but also help you in the interviews.
Non Core Companies (Finance, Consulting, and Analytics):
The written tests of most of these companies are quite similar to CAT. So if you are not preparing for CAT, get hold of some CAT preparation material for practice. These tests are more speed based than knowledge, so practice is absolutely essential. Revising some basic mathematics (like probability, progressions etc.) would also do you good. Apart from that, you need to have some basic knowledge and understanding of the field the company works in. For example, if you are appearing for a finance company, learn the basic concepts and common terminologies of finance. The least it would do is show that you are sincerely interested in the field the company works in.
College Name: IIT KANPUR

Round: HR Interview
Experience: I had a good attitude in the interview, was always confident and smiling even when they were trying to put stress. Secondly i was very true and genuine in whatever answers I gave and that worked positive for me

General Tips: For interview which was mostly CV based it is important to know every line of your interview. Some people wrote projects on their CV which they were not through with. So its very important to be aware of each and every line of your CV.Don’t be very aggresive and don’t enter into unnecessary details regarding the job. Be calm, humble and flexible during your Interview. speak few good points in GD and don’t make it too noisy.
Skills: Banking, Economics
College Name: NA