HCL Group Consultant Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round: Test
Experience: Selected for round 2

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: Selected for round 2
Duration: 15 minutes

Skills: Communication
College Name: SJRCW

Round: Test
Experience: English skill based test, it was more like a basic clearance test. There were two different rounds one of them was to listen/read and then fill up questions (approx. 45min) other one was the Telephonic test (computer generated test, approx. 15min).
Tips: Aptitude is a must, so practise
Duration: 60 minutes

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: Here the way you interact in a group and essence of your points. Personally I felt that they didn’t concentrate much on speaking skills as such.
Tips: Practise to talk in groups, current affairs  and even random topics
Duration: 15 minutes

Round: HR Interview
Experience: I was tested on basic understanding of Big Data and tested on enthusiasm
Tips: Puzzles (for most startups) and HR & resume based for others mostly.prepare things very much related to the company.

Skill Tips: Starting earlier helps . Aptitude requires some time and it is better to start atleast during summer vacation. Last two months before placements can be spent for other preparations.
College Name: IIT MADRAS

Round: Test
Experience: I performed well in the written test, and there was a speaking and listening test too.  I felt quant was most important for the tests, fast mathematics, then technical questions. Technical questions generally asked by core companies. Some programming based companies also ask such technical questions.



Puzzles can help you in answering quant questions also. The tests were mostly MCQ. Some tests were there which had subjective question papers. None of the core companies had subjective type, but coding companies had such questions. 





They were write a program to do *task* type questions. The programming language to write the code in, was our choice. The language options were C, C++, Python, Java. Python was rarely asked, though.
Duration: 3 hours minutes

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: Don't quite actually remember those topics. But, skills they wanted to test was to see how well they were able to express their ideas, but without outwardly disrupting others while talking.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: The interview was at least 40 minutes, with 5 minutes of HR interview for my current work profile. 

The HR usually starts with “Tell me about yourself”. Then they go through the resume, and ask about the project (DDP, in my case) and internship. This was done by the HR team, just to see how the candidate is putting forth his ideas and contributions clearly.
Tips: Since I cleared the tests, I was allowed to appear for the interviews, but after that, the CGPA played a major role in the final selection. Hence people with low CGPA had to perform exceptionally well to compensate for the low CGPA. However, I don’t know of the internal mechanism of shortlisting, so I was of the opinion that CGPA did not result in elimination of candidates, (except for the candidates who were eliminated due to the cutoff CGPA). But it played a role in the final selection.

For managerial positions, PoRs like coordships, coreships etc can be used to pitch your leadership qualities. They can start a chain of conversation that involves the work you did, on how you managed to execute the task efficiently, which ends up working in your favour.

Round: Puzzle Interview
Experience: Two puzzles were given in the interview. I did well in both, hence got selected. Another puzzle was to measure 45 minutes of time elapsed by using two candles, both of which take 1 hour to burn out completely.

General Tips: I was weak in thermodynamics, so he covered that course revision, for core placements. I prepared from the material sent by Shruti. That was all I prepared. The Coursera for R language was not that useful for me as I was looking for a managerial position.In case of resume shortlists, students who had done management, operations research or economics courses were preferred.
Otherwise, one has to justify your selection through good pitching. Finance companies are sort of open minded; they are looking for people who would do the job. Anyways, they will be providing training, so the knowledge in finance gained through independent means is not quite significant. It will, however, give an edge in the tests, as finance and quant based questions will be asked. They won’t go deep info finance.
I also suggest to freshies and second years to complete the core credited intern in the second year itself so that they can take up an intern of their choice, be it either research intern or core intern in their 3rd year summer. It offers much greater flexibility to the students. It will be useful, especially for non-core placements. I started preparing for the interviews late. I did not put pen to paper, to write down his answer for the ice-breaking questions like “Introduce yourself”. It would be better to write those answers down and get them polished, rather than trying to remember it and/or make it up spontaneously.
Skill Tips: For handling pressure, I suggest that after the interviews are over, just eat and get a good night’s sleep. Preparing/analyzing about the performance in the interview would only make you more anxious, affects sleep, and this would affect your performance in the interviews the next day. The additional one hour of preparation is not going to make a big difference.
Skills: Speaking Ability, Ability to express your ideas, Capable of managing things efficiently
College Name: IIT MADRAS