Cognizant interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

SDE - 1

Cognizant
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3 rounds | 6 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
I started my coding journey from first day of collge, spent my first 3 years doing competitive coding. During my 3rd year applied to many companies, got link for coding round and solved all problems in most of them, still didn't get call for interviews, because of that I wasn't able to do any internship during my 3rd year. Same story repeated during 7th semester, was solving all coding problems and still wasn't getting call for interviews. Interviewing at was my Cognizant first tech interview and I was able to crack it with ease.
Application story
Company visited to your campus for the placement and this is where I applied for it. A on campus interview round was there and then a second technical interview followed by the HR Round.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
I was selected for this role. My answers were satisfactory and had a great discussion with the interviewer.
Preparation
Duration: 5 months
Topics: Data Structures, Pointers, OOPS, System Design, Algorithms, Dynamic Programming, Computer Networks
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Atleast go through most asked 300-400 questions by all companies.
Tip 2 : Before interview, go through all the problems asked by the company you are interviewing for.
Tip 3 : Do mock interviews during preparation.

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: 7 CGPA
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Have some projects on resume.
Tip 2 : Highlight your tech skills in the resume.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration80 minutes
Interview date4 Aug 2021
Coding problem3

1. Maximum Subarray Sum

Moderate
25m average time
75% success
0/80
Asked in companies
UberTata Consultancy Services (TCS)Dunzo

Given an array of numbers, find the maximum sum of any contiguous subarray of the array.


For example, given the array [34, -50, 42, 14, -5, 86], the maximum sum would be 137, since we would take elements 42, 14, -5, and 86.


Given the array [-5, -1, -8, -9], the maximum sum would be -1.


Follow up: Do this in O(N) time.

Try solving now

2. Longest Increasing Subsequence

Moderate
30m average time
65% success
0/80
Asked in companies
ShareChatFacebookMorgan Stanley

For a given array with N elements, you need to find the length of the longest subsequence from the array such that all the elements of the subsequence are sorted in strictly increasing order.

Strictly Increasing Sequence is when each term in the sequence is larger than the preceding term.

For example:
[1, 2, 3, 4] is a strictly increasing array, while [2, 1, 4, 3] is not.
Try solving now

3. House Robber

Moderate
26m average time
0/80
Asked in companies
SamsungAmazonQuikr

A thief wants to loot houses. He knows the amount of money in each house. He cannot loot two consecutive houses. Find the maximum amount of money he can loot.

Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Online Coding Test
Duration50 minutes
Interview date11 Aug 2021
Coding problem2

1. Braille's Dilemma

Hard
24m average time
65% success
0/120
Asked in companies
SprinklrCognizantVFISLK Global Services

Abhishek, a blind man has N distinct binary strings all of the equal lengths. A binary string only contains '0's and '1's. The strings are numbered from 1 to N and all are distinct strings. Abhishek can only differentiate between these strings by touching them. In one touch Abhishek can identify one character at a position of any particular string from the set. Your task is to find the minimum number of touches Abhishek has to make so that he finds that all strings are different.

Try solving now

2. Valid Sudoku

Moderate
40m average time
60% success
0/80
Asked in companies
SamsungDirectiAmazon

You have been given a 9 X 9 2D matrix 'MATRIX' with some cells filled with digits(1 - 9), and some empty cells (denoted by 0).

You need to find whether there exists a way to fill all the empty cells with some digit(1 - 9) such that the final matrix is a valid Sudoku solution.

A Sudoku solution must satisfy all the following conditions-

1. Each of the digits 1 - 9 must occur exactly once in each row.
2. Each of the digits 1 - 9 must occur exactly once in each column.
3. Each of the digits 1 - 9 must occur exactly once in each of the 9, 3 x 3 sub-matrices of the matrix.
Note
1. There will always be a cell in the matrix which is empty.
2. The given initial matrix will always be consistent according to the rules mentioned in the problem statement.
Try solving now
03
Round
Easy
HR Round
Duration20 minutes
Interview date20 Aug 2021
Coding problem1

1. Basic HR Questions

Introduction
Explain your projects
Why did you enter the IT industry?
Can you relocate?
Is there any expected pay?

Here's your problem of the day

Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company

Skill covered: Programming

To make an AI less repetitive in a long paragraph, you should increase:

Choose another skill to practice
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