Hi everyone, I'm Shriyansh Kesharwani, currently in my 7th semester, and Iād like to share my placement journey with TCS NQT 2025. The recruitment process for our college began on 22nd November 2024 with assessments conducted at the TCS ION Center. We had to register on the TCS Nextstep platform to participate.
TCS Recruitment Test Process 2024
Round 1: Foundation Round
- Verbal Ability: 20ā25 questions to be solved in equal minutes.
- Numerical Ability: 20 MCQs in 25 minutes, focusing on basic aptitude.
- Logical Ability: 20 reasoning MCQs with a similar time limit. The overall difficulty was easy.
Round 2: Advanced Round
- Advanced Aptitude and Reasoning Ability: 15 questions in 25 minutes with an easy to medium difficulty level. I managed to solve 60% of the questions.
- Advanced Coding: Two questions to be solved in 90 minutes, each with 7 test cases. All programming languages were supported.
- Q1: A simple
if-else based question, which I solved in less than 5 minutes. - Q2: A variation of "Find the maximum (or minimum) sum of a subarray of size k," based on the sliding window pattern, solved in 10 minutes.
Important Tip: Solving one coding question guarantees a Digital interview call, while solving 1.5 or both ensures a Prime interview call.
Result Announcement
On 9th December, the list of shortlisted candidates was released. Out of 800 students, 217 were shortlisted, including 50 students for the Prime interview. I was thrilled to be among the Prime candidates, especially since I focused primarily on the coding round due to my weakness in aptitude. This reinforced that strong problem-solving skills are more critical than excelling in aptitude for advanced profiles.
TCS Final Interview
The final interviews were conducted on 24th December at our college campus. It was a face-to-face interview with a panel of three interviewers: Technical (TR), HR, and Managerial (MR). The process began with document verification before the interview.
Technical Round (TR)
1. Internship Discussion:
- Questions about my machine learning-based internship, focusing on model selection and CNN architectures.
- Discussed ML concepts like bias, variance, and activation functions.
2. Dataset Analysis:
- Given a dataset, I was asked how to determine the number of neurons required.
3. Code Writing Task:
- Wrote code to compress a string (e.g.,
"aaabbCCC" to "a3b2C3").
Observation: Despite preparing for topics like DBMS, OS, OOP, DSA, and trending technologies like Cybersecurity, Cloud, and Generative AI, the questions primarily focused on ML and a single coding problem. This highlights the need for a diverse technical knowledge base since the interview direction is unpredictable.
HR and Managerial Round (HR & MR)
General Questions:
- My previous interview experiences.
- Reasons for choosing TCS despite other offers.
- Differences between virtual and physical interviews.
Role Expectations:
- Discussed my readiness for relocation and shifts.
- Shared what I expected from the role.
- Why Should We Hire You?
- Gave an honest response highlighting my skills and experience.
Hobbies:
- Mentioned reading news, watching sports, and exploring gadgets. Follow-up questions included:
- Do you watch or play sports?
- The latest news headline.
- The most recent football match I watched.
Terms and Conditions:
The interviewer explained the terms, and I confirmed my agreement.
Conclusion and Advice
The interview tested my technical knowledge, problem-solving skills, and interpersonal abilities. I enjoyed the experience and gained valuable insights.
Advice:
- Focus on DSA and coding skills over aptitude for Prime or Digital profiles. Basic aptitude knowledge is sufficient.
- Ensure you are thorough with all the projects listed on your resume and avoid adding older projects unless you have revised them.
- For complex DSA problems, stay calm and approach them systematically to avoid errors.
Final Verdict
On 30th December, I received my offer letter for the TCS Digital profile. The journey was challenging but rewarding, and I am grateful for the experience.
