What is GenC and GenC Next?

GenC stands for Generation Cognizant. It basically means the fresher hiring that Cognizant does. GenC refers to those candidates who enter Cognizant with no prior experience.

Cognizant GenC Profiles:-

There are 4 types of GenC Profiles for which Cognizant hires.

• Cognizant GenC:-

Candidates with minimal to no coding experience are often hired for this profile.

For this role candidates are trained once they are hired to work with technologies.

• Cognizant GenC Next:-

Candidates with advanced programming skills are hired for GenC Next.

• Cognizant GenC Elevate:-

GenC Elevate is for candidate’s who have basic programming knowledge along with knowledge of DSA and DBMS.

• Cognizant GenC Pro:-

For GenC Pro , candidates who know about technologies like SalesForce, Cybersecurity along with programming are hired.

The working and salary of all these profiles vary accordingly.

Qualification:

• 10th Grade cutoff: 6 CGPA
• 12th Grade cutoff: 70%
• College current cut-off: 6 CGPA
• Branch: CSE, IT, ECE, EEE



Job Title: They offer various job titles like Data Scientists, SDE intern , full stack developer, app developer, backend developer , front end developer, etc.

Job Role: : They offer 3 roles – GenC, GenC elevate, GenC next. In 1st batch GenC elevate and GenC next are offered and in the next batch GenC and GenC elevate are offered.

Cognizant GenC Next Interview Experience

Primary Rounds (Round 1): 

The skill assessment test is the next. It is administered via the software platform MSB, where many companies conduct their online tests. This test is divided into 4 parts, with a time duration of 3 hours. Here each section has its own time constraints and hidden internal cutoffs. 

The four sections are primarily a question-and-answer section with quick questions from basic cs theory, a coding section, another coding or programming section with two lengthy codes, and finally a SQL command questions section. 

CS Theory part:  

It basically contains MCQs. A time period of 20 minutes is given. Questions come from topics like aptitudes, logical reasoning, english, programming and CS subjects (OS, DBMS).

Resources: You can read GFG aptitude series. It will be enough for your aptitude part. Indiabix is also a good beginner but it is very easy, rest of their questions are similar to maximum company aptitude tests. 

Coding / Programming (part 1): 

This section consists of two short but complicated codes. In the most recent interviews, a question based on the conversion of 24-hour time to 12-hour time was posed to an interviewee.

Resources: Hacker rank problem solving, GFG cognizant company tag coding problems. A time limit of 40 minutes is given to the interviewees.

Some of the coding questions are:

Write a program to perform Binary search on an array of N numbers.

Coding / Programming (part 2):

They give you 2 moderate but lengthy codes questions. A time limit of 60 minutes is given to the interviewees.

SQL Query commands (40 minutes):

Maybe 2 queries are asked in this section. One question is asked of easy level and another one of moderate level. A time limit of 40 minutes is given to the interviewees. 

Resources: Hackerrank SQL for beginner, SQLzoo for sharp SQL preparation, for learning prefer any good crash course video on SQL as per your choice

Some of the common SQL and DBMS questions are:

1. Difference between delete and truncate ?

The following are the difference

2. Explain about the joins in sql.

Here are the different types of the JOINs in SQL:

• (INNER) JOIN: Returns records that have matching values in both tables
• LEFT (OUTER) JOIN: Returns all records from the left table, and the matched records from the right table
• RIGHT (OUTER) JOIN: Returns all records from the right table, and the matched records from the left table
• FULL (OUTER) JOIN: Returns all records when there is a match in either left or right table

3. How can you create empty tables with the same structure as another table?

This can be achieved by fetching the records of one table into a new table using the INTO operator while fixing a WHERE clause to be false for all records. In this way, SQL prepares the new table with a duplicate structure to accept the fetched records. However, there are no records that will get fetched due to the WHERE clause in action. Therefore, nothing is inserted into the new table, thus creating an empty table.

4. Write the SQL query to get the third maximum salary of an employee from a table named employees.

The following query is the simplest way to get the third maximum salary of an employee:

Here is the demo example that shows how to get the third maximum salary of an employee.

The following are the alternative way to get the third-highest salary of an employee:

A. Using LIMIT Keyword

B. Using Subquery

C. Using TOP Keyword

Review of an interviewee who sat for the round 1 of the interview: 

“The main difficulty of the test was its time duration and length of assessment, which made me exhausted, but it was very adventurous to give the entire test with so many different sections evaluated at once. I believe I did well on the multiple-choice questions. I completed 1 moderate level coding problem and 1 SQL query problem. To be on the safe side, my personal recommendation would be to try to finish at least one question from each segment (code and SQL), and in the MCQ section, try to finish the English component within five minutes, focus on your paragraph reading skills. If you have studied CS, it won't take much time.”

Technical Interview (Round 2):

People who qualify the round 1 get shortlisted for round 2 of the interview or the technical interview. Results are declared almost 1 week after round 1. At this point , they shortlist at a ratio of 1:3 for GenC next and GenC elevate role’s interview respectively, few GenC Next candidates get swapped to GenC Elevate position during technical interview.

Reference: Read about all GFG-aware interview experiences (both on and off campus) to get a sense of the types of questions that might be asked. Review CS subjects' concepts, projects, and tech stack usage. Consider how to present them as introductions and accomplishments. Try to know about the company, visit the company’s website to check their goal and achievements.

Parts of technical interview:  

Similar to the previous round, this interview is broken into four sections. The first portion is similar to the first round in that it consists primarily of the interviewee's basic introduction. Then they begin asking questions based on the CS theory sections, followed by giving codes to decipher. Then they ask question from web or app development depending on which one you have worked with.

Basic Introduction: They ask you:

• Introduction (where you included- brief about your education, current CGPA, internship, projects, about your domain interest and any special achievement)
• Anything you know about cognizant.
• Why you chose cognizant?
• Internship experience, role, tech stack used.

CS theory parts:  

Basic questions like from the sections of Java, class, objects, the pillars of OOPs, DBMS , SQL , interfaces and other basic areas. They also ask questions from AIML like from Pandas and Numpy.

Coding part: 

Two simple codes will be given in this part. The interviewee will be asked to solve and run the code Infront of the interviewer. Remember low level coding stuff like Fibonacci or maybe basic implementation of linked list patterns etc. One of our close people gave this interview and he was asked two questions which were, multiply 2 numbers without using the multiplication operator and reverse a sentence.

Development part: 

The interviewer initially looks at your resume and the work you have completed thus far during your time in college. Although the majority of the questions come from areas you are familiar with, you may still encounter challenging ones or questions from areas you are unfamiliar with or only have a passing familiarity with. If you're lucky, they'll ask you about your best areas of expertise, but they may also ask about your weakest. They don't care about your track. I personally know a Java track dude who was asked solely in Python. We advise being ready for anything.

HR interview(Round 3): 

If you crack this round you are shortlisted for the final or HR interview round. This part lasts only for 10-15 minutes, but is the most important of all.

From the recent experiences of interviewees it was seen that this section mainly consists of: 

• Introduction.
• why you chose cognizant? 
• do you know how cognizant works internally
• what are the recent technology you are known with?
• lastly they take your pan card and Adhar card maybe for document verification

This is the final part of the interview , and if you crack this you will bag a job. 

Some of HR Questions are:

• Tell me about Yourself.
• What are your hobbies?
• Tell me about your struggles to win your first hackathon (mentioned in my resume)
• What is your favorite technology?

Experience of a close Interviewee who got a job after giving the interview :

“ The interviewers questioned me about my most recent work I had created when the interview first started. As a result, I began responding with the simplest initiatives, in my case, a straightforward to-do website. He then inquired as to the tech stack I employed, and I provided the answers HTML, CSS, and Vanilla Javascript. He also inquired as to what notions were employed in javascript. array data structure was my response. Then, he quizzed me on the definition of arrays and asked me to implement a certain array in a specific code editor that was made available. 

Now he proceeded to DotNet. I got questioned on topics like a garbage collector etc. Then he jumped on OOP. Asked what is the main purpose of SQL ? I was given a query to write, i.e to output the inputs which are stored in the record on the current date to implement a code in JavaScript. What do you know about modern techs? I replied in IOT and Cloud, thereby got asked the same. Also he gave me a scenario where I was assumed to be an expert in cloud and IOT thus how will I explain this domain to a newbie After these moment of intense programming questions ,he asked me some other stuffs like my hobbies, why I choose this domain , how I spent my time during Covid lockdown and all.

Then after he got satisfied with my answers he concluded the session. In a nutshell I found the interview was of moderate level. Confidence is the key. Develop your soft skills, keep your calm and tackle the questions with a cool attitude because they also judge you on your ability to tackle situations under pressure. “

A heartfelt thanks to Mr. Souradeep Dutta for helping by sharing his experience in the interviews. Maybe his help will lead a lot of people in cracking the jobs or at least getting a wonderful experience for future interviews. We are posting his LinkedIn profile link so that you can contact him and ask for help. 

LInkedin Profile : https://www.linkedin.com/in/souradeep-dutta-305033203