Hello Chetanaites

I am Vinay. I attended the interview at TCS, Hyderabad on 27th and 28th of October and I got selected. On 27th there was the technical interview and on the 28th it was Managerial Round (MR) and HR round. Many of my friends, who got selected, had relatively easy interview.

Technical Round:

We had to wait in a long queue for about 2 hours before we could be called in for the technical interview. The interviewer called in my name and took me to his cubicle. He had a good look at my resume and started off with asking what my favourite topics were. I told him that I was good at C and Java. So he concentrated mostly on these two things with a bit of others.

1.                Tell me about yourself.

2.                What is the difference between C and Java? Which one is better and why?

I said the pros and cons of both things. I said java is more suited for networked environment than C.

3.                What type of a language is C?

Procedural language.

4.                What do u mean by that?

I said it divides the program into functions or rather modules or procedures. Hence called so.

5.                He said that even java defines methods then how is C diff from java?

I said that C concentrates on functions while since java is OOP it concentrates on the data rather than the methods. It defines methods to provide access to that data. That’s where they differ.

6.                What are structures? How do u declare it?

I did that.

7.                What is the difference between structures and arrays?

Arrays==all elements have to be of same data type

Structures==It can incorporate different data types

8.                What are pointers and what is its use?

I said that pointers are variables which hold address of other variables. It is used to increase the access speed of the element and we can perform complex operations using pointers that we cannot do otherwise.

9.                What are linked lists? And how is it different from arrays?

I explained linked lists and said that LL save memory as memory can be allocated at runtime. Elements in LL need not be stored in continuous memory locations while in array they are to be allocated sequentially. But arrays can be accessed faster ‘coz they are stored sequentially.

10.           Where are linked lists used?

They are used where dynamic allocation is required and memory is at a premium.

11.           What is a destructor in java and how is garbage collection different from that in C?

Destructors are used to free any unreferenced memory. In java garbage collection is done automatically by the JVM whenever the CPU is idle while in C we have to explicitly free the memory. In C it is programmer’s burden to free up memory.

12.           How can two strings be concatenated in java? He asked me to pen it down.

String s=”vinay”+”kaparthi”;

13.           How do u declare an array in java? Pen it down.

14.           What are collections and why are they present in java?

Collection provides the programmer with built in data structures that he can use without the requirement of he specifically doing it. They would be much more efficient than user defined ones.

15.           What are Lists in java and how do u declare an array list?

I did so.

16.           What are DDL, DML and DCL & give examples of each.

DDL—create, alter

DML—insert, update

DCL—grant, revoke

17.           He asked do u know unix? I said I know but not sure. So he asked how to search for a string? Pen down the syntax.

$grep ‘vinay’ kap.txt

18.           What do u use to alter text in file?

Vi editor

19.           How to implement multiple inheritance in java?

Through interfaces

20.           What is the need for inheritance?

Code reusability

21.           What are abstract classes and how are they different from interfaces?

An abstract class has atleast 1 unimplemented method and atleast 1 implemented method, whereas an interface has all unimplemented methods.

22.           What are the commands for compiling and executing a java program?

23.           Explain your project and the technologies that u have used.

I explained the project and then the technologies

24.           What is the difference between servlets and jsp?

I said that servlets reside on server side and JSPs on client side. Sevlets need to be recompiled and deployed in the web server where as it is not needed so with JSP. JSP are used for front ends purposes or presentation purposes whereas servlets are used for backend purposes or business logic.

25.           What is the need for JavaScript?

Client side validation and to make HTML static pages a bit dynamic to respond to user input.

26.           What is WML? Its my project related

27.           What are inner methods?

This was the only question that I could not answer

 

And then he asked me to leave

 

Managerial Round:

This was a really grueling session. I was the first candidate for the day to attend the MR round and by the time I came out there were already 15 students sitting their having finished with their MR round. Such was the situation. It was 45 minutes of sheer stress testing and trying to catch if I was lying anywhere. I had to be on my toes and I guess I did quite well. It also included quite a few technical questions.

As I entered the room he came up to me and greeted me and asked me to sit. He asked me how I was feeling having cleared the technical interview. He then asked about my college and that if I was local or not. He then jumped on to the point that why did my percentage drop in graduation. I was not expecting such a question as I had SSC-84%, inter-85% and B.Tech-78% which I think is quite good. But I had to answer. So I said that % does not reflect the person’s actual ability and elaborated on that. I said that graduation is all about practical knowledge and hence marks are not the only important thing. He said talking about practicals, what did u learn from practicals? I said that everyone feels theory is easy but unless one starts to implement he/she does not know the minor details and how to manage stress.

 

1.                What is that 1 thing in u that u like most?

I said about my learning ability but he didn’t seem satisfied at first but I elaborated on that and then he said ok”.

2.                Who is ur role model? And why?

I said about my sister.

3.                So have u ever been a role model for anyone or has anyone been impressed by you?

I said about me getting only 67% in II/II and then being the college topper the very next semester was praised by many. I said it showed my determination and blah blah blah.

4.                Being a team leader of your project how did u pick your team mates? What were the characteristics that u decided upon?

5.                If both team members have equally good idea about a module and have conflict on which one to use then how will u settle the matter?

6.                If u developed a project and after delivery to the client u found out a bug in your code then how will u approach your superior? Will u tell them or wait till the fault actually occurs?

I said, I will explain the problem to my superior and if the problem is a high impact one then I will convince him to take action else if it’s a low impact one I will leave the decision to him.

7.                How did u work as a team to do the project?

I said that we divided the project among ourselves based upon modules or in some cases one did the user interface and one did the application logic. And I also said that we did the project in just 45 days as we had spent a lot of time on analyzing the project. So we had to divide the work on project.

8.                How did u decide the duration of project that it will be done in 45 days? It could even end earlier?

I said that we were behind schedule when we started the implementation so we had to work fast to meet the deadline. And as we did so, we were able to finish it off a week earlier. Then we concentrated on improving the interface as we had been spending more time on application logic. Hence we used that week for that.

9.                Why didn’t u try for higher studies?

I said ‘coz of family problems.

10.           Will u relocate?

I said yes

11.           Explain me your project. And he asked questions on the working of project.

12.           How did u design the tables in your project?

I explained

13.           What are indexes?

I said indexes are used to access data faster from tables and that index can be created on any column.

14.           How many indexes can a table have? Can a single index be created on more than two columns?

I said that a table can have any number of indexes and that we can also base our index on more than 1 column.

15.           How did u decide which columns should be placed in which table?

The answer he was expecting was normalization.

16.           What is normalization and why is it needed? Why can’t we put all data in single table?

I explained normalization and it is needed to reduce redundancy and save space. Distributing data across various tables reduces access time.

17.           What are the types of DBMS?

RDBMS,n/w DBMS,hierarchial DBMS

18.           What is RDBMS and why is it called so?

I said that ‘coz it defines the relation among data and among tables.

19.           Did u not answer any questions in your technical interview?

I said about the inner methods.

20.           Why are you trying to get a software job and nothing else?

I am a computer graduate and so I have to go my stream.

21.           Why did u join in Sri Indu?

I said that I had to join some college. But then felt that I have made a mistake. So I added that for me branch was more important than college.

22.           Why didn’t u join any other company till now?

I said that we didn’t have any campus interviews in our college and so here I am. He didn’t believe me I guess and said “be realistic and don’t lie”. I said I do not need to lie.

23.           Did u attend any other company interview?

I said “no”. And he again said “be realistic”. I said I am saying the fact.

24.           So didn’t u get bored all these days? What did u do these days?

I said I did nothing. I just was brushing up my subjects and preparing for an interview like this one. He again said “be realistic”. This phrase was slowly getting on to my nerves. But thankfully he never said that again

25.           What improvements do u see in yourself before and after graduation?

I spilled out my dil because I really had learnt a lot from graduation.

 

He thanked me and asked me to leave. And guys please remember to switch off ur phones before the interview. I didn’t and it rung in the middle.

 

HR Interview:

 The HR interview just happened for 5 minutes but that were the worst 5 minutes. The only thing he did during those 5 minutes was finding mistakes in me.

        As I entered he made me wait for 2 minutes without asking me to sit. Later he started talking to his colleague and in between said “please sit down”. He then opened up my profile and started finding mistakes. I had placed a thing under wrong heading I my resume. I got an earful for that. Then he pointed out that I had affixed a picture of mine wearing T-shirt and gave a lecture on professionalism and said that u have come for an interview and not for a marriage proposal. He said this is the problem with people they do not do things properly. I didn’t know what to do. I just kept giving him a cold smile. He then asked me the distance from my house to TCS and from my house to my college. He then asked me to leave.

        I don’t know whether he did so to test my patience or was he really mad at me. But that’s how it all ended. Hope it’s helpful for you all. All the best.