Cognizant Technology Solutions is one of the finest companies in the globe which offers potential growth opportunity to each and every employee whether it could be any freshers or even a senior employee. The amount of exposure provided by them is massive. Digital Nurture program is basically a semi-on-campus hiring program, which offers students to learn a technology and after the learning process is over, the interviews are taken to select the best fitted ones for their respective roles. Let's discuss the whole process!

Eligibility Criteria

• Your College should be the part of Digital Nurture 2.0 cognizant Program.
• Only those college candidates would be eligible whose academic marks should be >70% throughout your School to Degree till 4 semesters.
• No Backlogs Allowed
• Courses - B.E/B.TECH/CS/IT/Circuit streams

Timeline

• In March, 2022, Cognizant approached our Campus Placement Officer about this program. We were informed by our placement team, and have filled up the application form in Superset. Cognizant relies on Superset for their campus recruitment processes. While filling up the application form you need to provide your updated resume, Xth and XIIth marksheets, grade cards/marksheets of your UG course, additional certifications (if you have done eg. Coursera, EdX, NPTEL etc.) into a single file (.pdf) and upload that in the Superset.
• In April, 2022, they took a cognitive based assessment (Platform: Mettle), based on that they enrolled the students in this programs. There were two tracks, in which you have to choose any one. One is Java Full Stack Developer and another one is DotNet Developer. Based on your choice the assessment test will be framed for you.
• Later on, the selected students were enrolled in the Digital Nurture learning program. There you need to complete the learning processes and along with that you need to do Hands-On problem solving. Based on your performance a leaderboard will be there, through which you can check your performance graph, even you can compare yourself with your friends too.
• Once the learning process is over, your interview dates will be scheduled with the SMEs (SME means Subject Matter Expert). There will be two rounds of interview, technical and HR (Both of them are in Online mode).
• After the interview process, the selected ones are eligible for either Gen C Next profile or, Gen C profile. You'll get the confirmation from your college placement cell, superset and lastly they provide Letter of Intent (LOI) via Superset.

Cognitive Assessment Test
The cognitive assessment is taken in Mettle platform, the overall difficulty level is Moderate, Duration: 120 minutes.

• Coding - 3 questions (Level: Moderate to Tough) [Implementations of arrays, strings, lists etc.]
• Web design section - 1 question (Level: Moderate to Tough) [Create a web page based on the problem statement given using HTML, CSS, JS]
• SQL Query - 1 question (Level: Easy) [Write a query based on the problem statement]
• MCQ - Web based multiple choice questions. (Level: Easy)
• Advanced MCQ - UI/UX based MCQs with multiple possible answers. (Level: Moderate)

Deep Skilling and Learning Stage
The selected candidates will be enrolled in the deep skilling and learning stage in the tekstac platform provided by Cognizant. There you will find the curriculum for this whole program and you need to complete the weekly goals by learning the courses and doing the hands-on problems. You need to complete the entire process otherwise Cognizant may not allow you to be eligible for interviews. All the courses are associated with Udemy. I was from Java Developer background, that's why I have to learn about Spring Core, Maven, Spring Boot, Cloud technologies. The entire process is too good, it provides you a great learning as well as an assessment of your skills. This stage is really good.

Interview Experience
There are two parts in this entire interview process. Technical and HR. Let's talk about Technical round first, this is the most important one in this whole interview saga.

• Technical Interview

  • Tell me about yourself.
  • Show your government ID card.
  • Given two coding questions and ask me to solve them in 20 minutes. (You can use any programming language of your choice, but preferably Java)
    1. Given a string, find the repeated characters in that string.
    2. Given a sentence, find the non-repeated words in that sentence.
  • Given an SQL query and ask me to write the query in the editor.[Query related to Inner Join] (Time given 5 minutes)
  • What do you know about Spring?
  • What do you mean by Maven?
  • What is Abstract Class and Interface?
  • What is method overriding and overloading?
  • What is polymorphism? What are the types?
  • Tell me the difference between Final, Finally and Finalize keyword.
  • What is method and constructor?
  • What is HashMap?
  • What is constraints?
  • What is triggers?
  • What is Inner join and Outer join?
  • What is Primary key?
  • Difference between Delete and Drop.
  • What is normalization?
  • Will you be able to relocate if the company needs you, especially in Chennai?
  • Where do you see yourself in the upcoming years?
  • Why do you want to join Cognizant?
  • Will you be able to learn new technologies, if needed?
  • Lastly, he asked me, if I have any questions or, not.

• HR Interview

  • The interviewer has given a topic, and asked me to tell something about it for 2-3 minutes. My topic was, Social Media - Pros and Cons.
  • Will you be able to relocate?
  • Where do you see yourself in the upcoming years?
  • Show your government ID card and college ID card.
  • Why you have chosen CSE over other branches?
  • Write down the alternate contact number in the chat.
  • Any questions do you have?

This was all about the 2-stage interview process. The entire interview process depends on how the interviewer is going to take the interview. Some of my friends have spent 20 minutes in the technical round, some of them have spent 10-15 minutes and some of them have spent more than 30-40 minutes. I have spent 57 minutes in the technical round. They check your knowledge, ability, attitude and everything in those time period. Be positive at that time, if you are not able to answer the questions, tell them you don't know, do not waste time. Be louder and focused, always have a smile in your face. This will bring a positive vibe inside that meeting.

The HR round is not so difficult, but can be tricky sometimes. Be aware of that, and speak properly. They check your communication skills here, so be careful with this. Although you have passed the difficult technical round, you can be eliminated from the HR round, if you are not up to the mark.

Resources that helped me to crack this job!

• DBMS resources - interviewbit.com/dbms-interview-questions
• Java OOPs Concepts - javatpoint.com/java-oops-concepts
• Core Java resources - interviewbit.com/java-interview-questions
• Spring resources - interviewbit.com/spring-interview-questions
• Spring Boot resources - interviewbit.com/spring-boot-interview-ques..
• Spring Maven resources - interviewbit.com/maven-interview-questions
• Coding questions resources - simplilearn.com/coding-interview-questions-..

Best wishes to all of you. Be confident and positive, you'll definitely crack this opportunity!