Friday, April 9, 2010

TCS Campus Recruitment Experience

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Hi friends,

Recently I got placed in Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) through the campus placement process. I’m extremely delighted to share my TCS experience with all budding professional and sincerely thank www.CareerInfoline.com team to provide me an opportunity to share my experience of the most memorable day in my life so far. I would also take this opportunity to thank all my batch mates who provided me with relevant information about TCS in last few days.

Without any more delay let me begin now:

TCS Eligibility Criteria
1. 60% and above in 10th, 12th and B Tech.
2. No pending or active backlogs.

This is a pretty relaxed criteria and any company will have atleast this requirement. I would urge all to work sincerely and if you have any backlogs please clear them before your seventh semester.

TCS Online Test
TCS is famous for conducting a rigorous online campus placement test. This year was no different. We all were expecting an online test on the pattern that TCS generally follows. As a preparation to the online test students had started mugging up BARONS wordlists and some aptitude questions. The craze was such that some students had even blindly started mugging the options to the multiple choice questions in BARONS book. All were pretty confident of the online test pattern as TCS seldom changed that. But, to the surprise of many TCS played a spoilsport this year and changed the test pattern.

The instructions of online test were given by TCS officials. It was a real nightmare for us. I’d never expected such questions. All the questions were new and some of them were from previous years CAT papers too. This is the new pattern on which TCS is conducting their campus drive, so I would request you to stop memorizing and start understanding!!!!!

The TCS online test had three sections:

1. Verbal
          a. Synonyms, Antonyms, Comprehension, Fill Ups
          b. 40 question in 20 minutes
2. Quantitative aptitude
          a. 38 questions in 40 mins
3. Critical Reasoning
          a. 3 parts with 4 questions each in 30 mins

The result was declared on the same day. Once you clear the online test then there are three more steps to go. Most of the time interview is not on the same day & you will get time to relax and prepare for the interview. We too were interviewed the next day.

Pre Placement Talk
The TCS officials gave a presentation and told us about their company and services. Listen to this talk carefully and you will get answers to a lot of questions that might be asked in the interview like:

o Why one should join TCS?
o What are the recent projects of TCS?
o Of course about salary and many more other important details

TCS Interviews

TCS conducts multiple rounds of interviews in its process. For me three interviews were conducted. Let me give you a clue as to what are the kinds of questions that can be asked.

1. Technical Round Interview
This to me is the most crucial round of the recruitment process. No level of preparation is sufficient for this round as the scope is wide, but to be decently prepared you should at least prepare:

       o One or more Core Subjects in sufficient detail
       o Trainings undertaken during graduation and learning’s from these trainings
       o Projects undertaken during graduation

You should be comfortable if any questions related to these areas are asked. It reflects your preparation level for the interview.

Some of the questions asked to me by the TCS panel were

        o Which is your favourite language?
        o What subjects have u studied till now? Name them
        o Which one of these is your favourite subject?
        o Tell me about COCOMO model?
        o Tell me about SRS and phases of SDLC?
        o Questions related to some basic concepts of C and C++ like friend function, pointers, strings
        o Write a program for calculating factorial using recursion?
        o Have you read data structures?
        o Few questions related to linked lists and sorting
        o Tell me about your projects?

I being a computer science engineer was supposed to know in detail the concepts of data structures and the software design life cycle. Aspirants from other streams must prepare one of their core subjects in details.

I felt that the panel was satisfied with my response to the questions asked. They shook my hand and asked me to wait for the next round. After half an hour I got a call for the second round of interview the Management Round. 

2. Management Round Interview
Management Interview by TCS is used to test the interpersonal skills of an applicant. The questions in this round are vague. The key is to be confident about of your abilities. You should be able to strike a balance and should not sound too bombastic.

Career Infoline Word of Advice: People generally believe that they should answer each and every question and hence sometimes start guessing or lying. Remember that you should never leave an impression in the mind of the interviewer that you are making things up or bluffing just to get some extra marks. This generally happens unintentionally, but you should be proactive enough to understand that you are starting to cross the line. For damage control you can generally say that “Sir/Madam, I frankly don’t know the answer but have tried my best to put my thoughts into words”

Some of the questions asked to me by the TCS panel were

        o Tell me something about yourself?
        o What are your strengths and weaknesses?
        o Do you work for any social organization? If yes, which one and why?
        o Tell me about your academic projects?
        o Have you read DBMS? Tell me some concepts related to database management?
        o Why you want to join TCS?
        o What do you know about TCS as a company?
        o Some situational questions were asked too.

The interviewer was happy with my response and asked me to wait outside for the next round. After ten minutes, I got a call for HR Interview.

3. HR Interview
The HR interview was very similar to the Management round with many questions being repeated. Some of the questions asked in the HR round were:

        o Introduce yourself?
        o Why do you want to join TCS and not any other company?
        o Why do you want me to select you in TCS?
        o Where you find yourself in TCS after 5 years?
        o Tell me something about your family?
        o Will you be comfortable if you get posted in Trivandrum or Coimbatore?
        o Are you aware of the two year bond period?

I was able to answer the questions comfortably. After the MR round I had started feeling very comfortable about the process which made the HR interview like a cakewalk for me. The Interviewer was very happy with my answers and asked me to wait for the result.

The D-DAY
The results were announced the next day. Finally after waiting for a long time the process for all the students was completed. Around 3.45 P.M the results were announced and I was among the selected people. I was extremely delighted to find my name in the list. It took the announcer less than one second to utter my name, but that fraction if a second made the day truly memorable for me. I am happy to be a part of such a prestigious company. If you believe in yourself and have faith, you too can be part of your dream organization.

Here’s wishing ALL THE BEST to the future aspirants…..

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanx a lot for sharing your xperience.. u have done too good to me..

Anonymous said...

Thanx a lot for your valuable information

Anonymous said...

thanx a lot for providing me such a useful information about tcs and itz criteria.

 
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