TCS Experiences (EEE branch)

Hello everyone...my name is Satish and I am from St.Jospehs

College of Enggineering,Chennai!!

TCS was the first company to come for recruitment to my

campus...and by Gods grace i got placed in the same Company!!I
was just as nervous as every fresher is...but still,apt
preparation and luck(more of the former though) helped me
through!!

I will give a detailed explanation of the Three Phases used in the

Selection Process at my Campus.....the entire interview process
happened in the MBA/MCA block of my college.

PHASE ONE: APTITUDE TEST

We had an Online Aptitude Test...NO NEGATIVE MARKING &

NO SECTIONWISE CUT-OFF(so everyone attend every single
question,provided you have the same conditions).

We had three sections in the Aptitude Test:

VERBAL was difficult....in the sense that it did'nt have words
from previous papers!!!

QUANTZ(Quantitative Aptitude) was the easiest,i had already

seen 90% of the questions from this section,in the previous TCS
papers!!

LOGICAL REASONING or whatever one calls it,was Latin and

Greek for me...I think one can get a good idea about it from
BARRONS 12th EDITON.

When the time eventually ran out,I thought I would get the
message "Sorry better luck next time”, but by God's grace the
message "Congratulations,you can move to the next level".

I was on cloud nine...I was then given a TCS application form

which I duly filled. The form was given to my placement in-
charge. I started for my house at around 7.45pm and I reached
home at 9 pm. My Technical Interview was scheduled at around
9am the very next day, which meant i had minimum time to
prepare for the Interview.

NOTE: The TCS application form is your key from here on.

PHASE TWO:TECHNICAL INTERVIEW

Once you clear the aptitude test(level one)..ur 75% done! We

then move on to the Technical interview. The interviewers were
really friendly...especially mine. There was a lady and a
gentleman.

I opened the door and asked their permission to enter, with a

1000W smile on my face. They asked me take my seat...I
thanked them and sat down. My resume was on my lap.. they
never asked for it. All they reffered to was the application form
that I had filled the previous day.

The gentleman(sadly i do not remember his name) asked me as

to,why i had scored low in my 10th and semester (70% cbse and
71.25% aggr respectively). Maybe he wanted to break the ice by
asking an informal questions...anyway my reply was confident.
He then asked me about my favourite subject, which was as i
said,Physics(surprised??so was i, when he asked about school
subjects!!).

He asked me what SONAR meant...i really did'nt remember..so i

managed by telling him,it was related with sound and had
DOPPLER EFFECT as a basis.He said,"Thats good. But can you
explain?" Now where was I to go for an explanantion??I told him i
did'nt remember.

Then he asked me about Concave & Convex Lens and Keplers

Law Of Gravitation.I did not answer those questions
correctly,so we moved on to the core subjects(at last!!!!).

My areas of interest are DBMS and s/w engg..and the madam

started this time around.She asked me about the Various
Phases of S/w Enggineering (a very genreal question)..I was
able to answer it.

Then i was asked to write a c-program to reverse a string(a

success) and later on,the question was about Singularly
Linked-List from Data-Structures.And finally,DBMS concepts
were touched upon....i spoke confidentally for two minutes,when
they asked me to stop!!I had the feeling things were going to
turn out well...!

In between I had actually stammered once,but I was not

reprimanded.They reassured me by letting me know that they
knew exactly how I was feeling.I was asked to relax,ask a cup of
water if needed and then to continue…from hereon I spoke
confidently till the end of the HR,making sure i made no lapse in
speech.

At the end,they asked me wether I had any questions..I enquired

about the prospect of higher education through TCS.After giving
me satisfactory answers,they asked to wait outside.

And there I was,waiting nervously outside my TECHNICAL

interview room...and when finally,I was asked to go down for the
MR(same as HR) interview.....RELIEF ebbed through my entire
body.I knew for sure that once I had reached this level,i was not
going to return home disappointed.
THE FINAL PHASE:

I could see happy faces outside the HR room, evidently fuelled by

the fact that they will get selected. I had to wait a long time to
meet my HR interviewer(he was a bit busy) which I did not mind
at all. Meanwhile I asked my other friends as to what they were
asked…some unlucky guys were drilled a lot on tech. Most of the
ppl had had just a casual chat.

PEOPLE. the important thing is not what u say. it is...how u say

it!!!
COMMUNICATION is what people expect from u here...you
communicate effectively,
your through. Finally i went in to meet my interviewer. I was
beaming at him and when I reached the table, I shook hands and
sat down. He was really sweet. He actually apologized for the
delay(3hours actually)..i said it was no problem.

He initially asked me why i wanted to join TCS..i answered it from

my heart(i had selected my college during counselling to get
placed in a dream company like urs sir.and here I am, watching
my dream come through).

Next, "ok these are the reasons u want to join TCS. Why should
we hire you??".
My answer was "I do all the work that i undertake with utmost
sincerity and dedication"....(I finished it with an example of how I
handle my exams.)

Moving on, he asked me about the books i read(my hobby is

reading)..i told him that I had started reading in my 3rd class
with Enid Blyton then moved on to Nancy Drew-Sherlock Holmes-
Sydney Sheldon-Michael Crichton-Dan Bbrown ...at this juncture,
we started conversing about THE DA VINCI CODE!!
Finally he asked me as to whether i have any questions....i asked
him not one, but THREE!!
#1.sir,the prospects of higher education in TCS.
#2.What does TCS actually expect from its newly-joining
freshers??
#3.What actually happens during the training?and after the
training??

When we were finished ...i shook hands and left with the
words,"it was a pleasure meeting u Sir."
I had a feeling of jubiliation when i came out.

It was a long wait for ther results starting at 5pm..which

eventually ended at 730pm.
When my name was read out it was like,” oh my god, I really
made it through”.I was delighted!!!I thanked GOD and
congragulated all my friends.
hii friends.

After i get through my written test, I was sent to perform technical round. At first
they said to say SELF DETAILS. I continue with my RESUME included with
educational qualifications, strength, achievements etc... they said me to prove my
above strength which I mentioned in my resume. the above experience made me
away 4m my tension, nervous at first time interview. I am basically ELECTRICAL
AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING STUDENT, my technical round started
dis way ....

Interested topics???
I answered power electronics and electrical machines. I request 4 EEE students
not to mention CONTROL SYSTEMS topics. becoz it has large extend to ask ques
difficult to diffend 4 answering.

Asked me to explained interested topics 4m power electronics. later they went

through MICROPROCESSORS i'e asked me pin diagram, small programs in 8085
microprocessors.

I am certified in MICROCONTROLLERS, so my questions extended towards

8051 microcontrollers.. don’t worry they will go through BASICS in every FIELD.

As I am not computer science student they asked me to write C-program which u

interested. at this point I am lucky fellow. MY TECHNICAL ROUND ENDED
LIK DIS.

BEST THING I QUOTE U. before leaving 4m intervier, he will ask u any question
or doubts. at this moment u hav use 2 ur oppurtunity to prove urself. dat ur
interested towards firm etc... its ur turn u have ask questions abt TCS.

MR INTERVIEW:

This is also continue with self-details. the main motto is they will check ur
managerial skills, stress while ur working by asking few puzzles n question after
referring ur resume n body language. its 4 me I being EBM(EXECUTIVE BOARD
MEMBER) of AEE(ASSOCIATION OF ELECTRICAL ENGINNERS). they ask
me experience and work that hav u done. Problems that u have faced, response and
achievements. In this round you have to prove ur COMMUNICATION SKILLS. i
request u dnt make any false satatements lik to diffend urself. Plz be concious...
here if u selected 4 MR round intervier itself say u to wait 4 HR(HUMAN
RESOURCE) interview n again ask u any questions or doubt... its ur turn jst prove
urself.

HR INTERVIEW:

here it will decide ur job dat ur gng to firm or nt... here they will check our complte
resume i written things or correct or nt,,, if v fail to prove our RESUME v will b
out of it. 4 me asked abt my presentations n hobbies.. really typical question he
will put while v r answering.. really check our patience atmost. ITS OUR LUCK
IT DEPENDS ON FACE VALUE.

These all my experince while i am performing my TCS rounds.. really exciting....

all the best. keep rocking

Hi friends,

Myself Priyanka K.B. from EEE,SJCE Mysore.

The most eagerly awaited one, TCS had come to our college for recruitment on
OCT 15th, 2011 ("the unforgettable day in my life").

Let me explain the selection process. TCS decided to have two different process
and approaches for the selection process. One for those who have consistent
performance from 10th onwards till the VI semester undergraduate engineering
students (75% and above) and the same was also applicable to those from post
graduate disciplines. These students were interviewed without being administered
test. On the contrary, only those who had maintained consistent performance of
60% throughout were administered online test and were later interviewed.

I was under the 1st category. I had gone for direct interview. Friends before sharing
my experience, please note these things. Don't neglect TCS interview process. We
had a rumour that the TCS interview will be easy, we can easily get through. But it
was not easy as we speak. Please do necessary preparations. Be thorough with your
resume, C, C+, projects. This time TCS had given a wonderful opportunity that
non CS stream students can get jobs in Core engineering services of TCS. So no
need to worry as it's a IT company. Be proud to be a part of world's leading IT
company. And for our batch specially, TCS is great, as they took more people
during this recession period.

Technical interview:

ME: gud afternoon sir,

HR : good afternoon, take your seat.
Me : thank you sir.
Hr : asked my resume and TCS application form
Me : gave
(Most of questions were based on my resume, unfortunately Hr did not ask me d
most awaited and prepared first ques..'tell me about yourself' !!!)
Hr : asked about my project i.e. UPS. Difference between My UPS and traditional
UPS?
Me : explained.
Hr : Wat is energy audit? (one of my project)
Me : answered.
(I had mentioned only 'C' in my resume as i was not sure about C+ or other
languages)
Hr : why oly C? Why not C+, 8051 ?? did not you study C+ outside by joining
courses? Rate your C capability between 1 to 10.
Me : explained. Friends be honest. Being a electrical student i just gave 5 on 10 for
my C capability. And i had added a sentence that i can learn again these languages.
Hr : appreciated my honesty. And gave me two puzzles to solve.
1) seven members are there in a room. Each one will give hand shake to others but
only once. Find out the number of handshakes.
Me : i just asked a sheet of paper to solve, even though i knew the answer. And
solved the puzzle in front of him.

The answer is 6+5+4+3+2+1=21

Hr : 2) consider a well of 100 mt depth and a frog at the bottom of the well. It
climbs 3mt in day time n slides down 2mt during night. How many days it needs to
climb the well?
Me : 1mt per day, on 98th day, it climbs up and does not slides down as it will be
on the top of the well. So answer is 98(day time)
Hr : good. You can go.
Me : thank you sir.
Then i was waiting for my Hr interview. Many of my batchmates had sent to home
in the mean while, as they could not do well in technical interview.

HR interview:

Hr : Hi Priyanka
Me : hello mam, gud afternoon. (I felt very happy and became more confident
when hr said hi to me, as Hr is friendly. she was very sweet and bubbly. I think am
the one, giving these best compliments to Hr )
Hr : gud afternoon, take your seat.
Me : thank you mam
Hr : where are you staying? Do you have siblings? Where does he work? Married?
Me : answered
Hr : are you ready to work anywhere?
Me : yes mam. (and this is the most common question in Hr round)
Hr : you can go
Me : I asked two questions about TCS. Actually i could not ask these questions in
technical interview. So asked here
That's it my interview got over. I was confident as i will get place and it came true.
Around 8.30 they announced the results.

Friends as you red, for me there were no deep technical questions, and most of the
questions were unexpected like puzzles. I was good in solving puzzles and it's my
luck also that i got puzzles. We cannot predict about interview questions, so be
ready for everything.

All the Best.

Hello Folks

His post will discuss the details of the technical/HR (2nd) round for the TCS
placement process. I have included mine and some of my friends experiences.
Basically there are 2 rounds for TCS. Once you clear the aptitude(In my college
127 out of 232 cleared aptitude) you have to attend a pure HR , HR/Tech or a pure
Tech interview round. Yes it might sound odd but there are 3 types of panels(HR ,
HR/Tech or a pure Tech) and depending on which one you go to the type of
questions asked vary. The following are the type of questions asked in each panel, I
have tried my best to get all possible questions asked to the 127 that attended.

Each interview lasted approximately 10-15 minutes no more.There will be three

interviewer, 2 will ask you questions while the third interviewer listens and takes
notes. And yes make sure you can answer questions asked from your resume they
do read it unlike most companies. You will be given a print out of your camous
commune application form.

Pure HR Panel:
Easy to clear for the most part, IT IS REALLY CRUCIAL THAT YOU SPEAK
GOOD ENGLISH OR ATLEAST TRY “. As far as i have seen most people with
good English speaking skills were selected

 Asked to give a self introduction about themselves(refer to

the post which i made, should give a good idea)
 “Are you ready to go anyway we send you are is there
a particular place you like most?”
 “Do you have a Girl Friend how long have you been
together?”(for boys ofc)
 They will ask you about your hobbies, if you say painting for
example they will ask what you have done to improve your
skills in it.
 “What is your fathers job?” or “How many brothers and
sisters do you have?”. For most of the HR interviews there
was always a family type question, shouldn’t be a problem.
 The biggest challenge you have faced so far in college
 Why you choose your department and your favorite subjects
(basically questions related to why you choose the
department and your interests).
 THEN THE STRESS TEST: expect questions like “you
have a low score in your aptitude why?“, “your marks are
consistently low why ?“, “You don’t sound confident is
that why you are speaking so softly “, “you are an
emotional person is it not , you look very tense“.Remember
these statements may or may not be true about you try reply
with a smile and positive comment like “I will try hard next
time ” or “I will do correct these mistakes” etc. Just don’t
burst into tears like some of the girls in my college did NOT
GOOD!!!
 “How badly do you want this job?”
 And of course the most common questions “what did you eat
in the morning? “,maybe a slight variation like “you look
tired have you had your lunch”.
 Then there was some questions on details about the company
like “who is the CEO”, “What do you know about TCS”, “Do
you know what sector in IT TCS working”. For these make
sure you visit the campus commune website and read all the
details.
 “What are you expecting from TCS?”. For this just prepare a
well rehearsed answer like “To improve my skill and abilities
in such a way that it is mutually beneficial to company and
me”(What 2 of my friends said , both selected of course)
 Some questions from the resume, your co-curricular
achievements , extra-curricular achievements. In some cases
the programming languages you know about.
 Then some of the HR’s asked questions logical questions like
“Two people start from Delhi and Pune one traveling at
20km/hr and the other 160km/hr in opposite directions both
meet at a point who is closer to Pune?” The answer is easy
both as same distance since it is mentioned that they meet,
THE KEY HERE IS TO LISTEN CAREFULLY TO WHAT
THEY ARE SAYING, some of my friends from other
colleges did not answer and thought the one going at
160km/hr was closer.Be prepared for questions of this type
testing your concentration.
 “Are you going to do higher studies some time?”
  “what is the hardest data structure for you “My friend said
Trees, the HR are was like “Trees really what about graphs,
the LOLed real loud”
 “about the various certification programs you have completed
and why you took them”

Tech Panel:
To be honest this isn’t hard really, all questions are simple nothing deep and tuff.
Some of the Interviewers did not even look at the code my friends wrote
they just took the paper and used it as paper fans :),

Programming, Data Structures and project related

 “Write a java code using try catch statements“
 “Explain about your project, implementations, front-end,
back-end, technical details etc” BE extra through about the
details of all your projects
 “code to implement a link list in C”. “write it using pointers”
 Some will ask you to write code from your projects(For some
mechanical students theory behind functionality of the
project)
 swap function without using temp variable
 Explain linked list concept /stack/queue/trees
 Explain different types of sorting
 What is a null pointer, void point and a wild pointer
 Explain the object oriented concepts in
java(polymorphism,inheritance,encapsulation )
 Then the sizes for various data types in C and Java
 Program using thread/overriding/overloading in java.
 Infix/postfix/prefix convertions
 Java database connectivity.
 what is a constructor?
 other programs like prime numbers, odd/even easy stuff basic
programming

Networks and OS

 OSI layers in network model and functions of each layer

 difference between TCP and UDP
  “there are 2 systems in 2 different networks will you use a
switch or a router to connect them”
 What is the difference between switch, router , bridge
 In OS questions related to the fork() command
 Scheduling algorithms in OS
 What is a semaphore
 How many bits in an IP address
 Draw a rough sketch of an IP packet
 Layers of TCP/IP
 A few questions related to the linux file system
 Questions related to network address and host address
 How is windows 7 different from XP
 what is paging and questions related to that.
 process life cycle
 What is the ping command used for?

Database and Testing

 This was all really easy MySQL queries which included
select statements using where condition etc, very easy
queries.
 Also some questions about normal forms, 1NF ,2NF, CNF.
 Black box and white Box testing differences
 Types of testing?
 What is a test case?
 Software life cycle models(waterfall models etc)
 what is meta data?
 Why is testing important?

This section had the most easiest of all questions, just study all the basics.
Other Department Students Tech Panel
Yes there is programming but it is not that deep here are a few samples
 “explain about your project “(most frequent question asked to
78.9% students i got this information from)
 Then the interviewer asks what programming languages you
know (most replied C), then he asks you to write a simple
programming like prime numbers ,swap without temp etc. In
some cases write any C program
 To some EEE students the interviewer has ask how the
ceiling fan/generator etc works
  4 Mech students and 1 ECE student told me that the HR
asked them their favorite subject and to explain about it
 “what is CAD(he had CAD in his resume)”
 Some questions related to data structures basics “what is
stack”

Overall Pragramming and OS concepts are not going to be asked much unless you
say you know them.For example if you say you know java obviously he is going to
ask a lot from it. Mostly others departments had HR questions only or
HR/tech.Everyone i asked said it was nothing tuff.Make sure you know
C programming , at least the basics.

Tech/HR panel

This is a mix and smash of both types of questions . Basically one HR will ask a
tech questions and the second HR will ask a HR questions. My friends kept on
talking for all the HR questions he says it help reduced the number of tech
questions asked to him (I do not know the degree of effectiveness of this idea ).
By far these type of panels are easy to clear too.

After a few interviews it should be clear which panel is of which type. In my

college the placement representatives were responsible of putting you in a panel,
just talk to them depending on which panel you feel comfortable with.

Some important things

 Speak clearly, most of the students who were selected could

speak good English
 Try not to sweat a lot, lots of interviewers ask they questions
 Keep a separate copy of your resume in a stick file.
 They was a incident in our college relating to under-
performance. Basically some of the students who were
already placed went in and said they were placed in such
and such company and they don’t want to come to TCS
etc or that they don’t like going for a job and want to do
higher studies. DO NOT DO THIS IT PISSED OFF THE
INTERVIEWERS AND RESULTED IN LESS
PLACEMENT COUNT AND IS REALLY RUDE. The
 head of HR mentioned it during the closing ceremony. IF
you want to under perform then do it without it being too
obvious. This incident happened in 3 colleges so far as I
know, remember do not let your actions effect other .
(tell your friends who are planning on under performing this)
 try wear a tie for boys and girls no high heels(one of the girls
in my college tripped and fell in those ).
 I do not know the degree of truth in this but most of
my friends were saying that the female interviewers were hot
but deadly, since they asked the most questions and their
interviews lasted the longest

One more thing in my college students with cgpa over 7.5 had direct interview and
those with < 7.5 had to write aptitude which was tuff. Overall the hr/tech round is
not that difficult just be calm and you can clear it easy. Those who were selected
got the offer letter on the same day through campus commune.
Good luck and feel free to ask any questions
regards,
India geeks