Cognizant Interview Experience | GENC Next

I was selected for the GenC Next role at Cognizant with an annual compensation of 6.75 LPA. The interview process revolved around the skill cluster I chose, which included C#, SQL, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

The Screening Process

The screening process was conducted prior to the interview, and I was called in for the interview about two hours later. The interview was conducted on the Superset platform, which provided an integrated IDE for coding. Two interviewers participated in the process:

• One interviewer was physically present.
• The other joined virtually.

Technical Questions and Tasks

Coding Task

I was given a simple problem: Count the even integers in an array.

• I was allowed to choose between C, C++, or C# to implement the solution.

OOP Concepts

I was asked about the following Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) concepts:

• Polymorphism and Inheritance: I explained these with examples and discussed their types.

APIs and Front-End Technologies

I was asked about my understanding of APIs and front-end technologies. I honestly admitted that I had a basic understanding of these topics.

SQL Questions

The interview included several SQL-related questions:

1. Definitions:

• Primary Key
• Composite Primary Key
• Normalization
• Indexes
• Difference between Left Join and Inner Join

2. SQL Queries:

• Retrieve the top 5 employees with the highest salary from an employee table.
• Retrieve the name of the employee with the maximum and minimum salary.

Behavioral and Formal Questions

The virtual interviewer asked a few formal questions, including:

• Willingness to relocate
• Availability to work in any shift

It was also mentioned that I wouldn’t join as a trainee but directly in a full-fledged role from day one.

Other Topics Discussed

During the interview, I was introduced to a term called "shield," which was unfamiliar to me. The interviewer explained it thoroughly. Additionally, I was asked if I had worked on AI projects, to which I responded that I hadn’t.

Conclusion

The interview concluded after the SQL-related tasks. Overall, the process tested my coding, SQL, and conceptual understanding, as well as my willingness to adapt to the work environment.

I am now eagerly awaiting the results and hope to embark on this exciting journey with Cognizant.