Tata consultancy private limited interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

SDE - 1

Tata consultancy private limited
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3 rounds | 4 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
I was unaware of this coding stuff till my school life. I got to know about the field of computer science in my class 11th. I found it intresting and decided that I will pursue my career in the field of computer science. I took admission in B.Tech CSE and learned the various concepts like DSA and all. But I found that they were not easy to learn at all.
Application story
I got a message in my telegram group about the company visiting our campus to hire SDE-1. It was a happy happy moment as TCS is a Mass Hiring Company so It was great companyAs, I was in the fourth year, it was sure that I was going to apply for it. I started preparing accordingly and got selected at last.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
I think my skills and knowledge were up to the mark, that they found me as a valuable candidate. Moreover, my communication skills added up to my numbers.
Preparation
Duration: 4 months
Topics: Data Structures, Pointers, OOPS, Algorithms, Dynamic Programming, DBMS, Operating System, System Design, Computer Networks, Machine Learning, C++, Python
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Be thorough with your basics - Data Structures and Algorithms, Pointers, DBMS,OOPS,OS etc.
Tip 2 : Practice Competitive Programming. Improve your programming skills. (Take data structures course from CN. That's enough for cracking any service based or product based company). Practice questions from Leetcode/Codechef/Codeforces.
Tip 3 : Be confident in your answers. You should not fumble while giving answers.
Tip 4: Also have a good practice on aptitude. Managing time during the test is also an important skill.
Tip 5: Have good projects on recent technologies(ML/Web D/Blockchain/Analytics etc). Have in depth knowledge about the project as the interviewer can go deep and can ask difficult questions on projects as well. 
Tip 6: Start your preparation as early as possible and work on your communication skills as well.

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: Above 6 CGPA
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1: Mention good projects.
Tip 2: Write the things about which you're 100% sure that you can answer questions from those things.
Tip 3: Do not try to go high profile by mentioning too many skills/projects/extra curriculars on resume.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Interview
Duration50 minutes
Interview date3 Oct 2020
Coding problem0

Online test. The test consisted of two parts-
Timing- Morning 10-10:50. The platform used was TCS ION. 
English: 15 questions in 10 minutes. Questions were from topics such as synonym/antonym, critical thinking, passage-based questions. The level of the questions was from easy to medium. 
Aptitude: 25 questions in 40 minutes. Questions were from Simple Interest, Profit Loss, Permutations and combinations, Blood relations, etc. The level of the questions was from medium to hard.

02
Round
Medium
Online Coding Interview
Duration60 minutes
Interview date4 Oct 2020
Coding problem2

Coding Test. This round was held on TCS own platform. The same platform is used for TCS Codevita. There were two questions in this test.
1. This was an easy level question based on Math.
2. This was a medium level question based on string manipulation

1. Encode the Message

Easy
18m average time
90% success
0/40
Asked in companies
MicrosoftAmazonWalmart

You have been given a text message. You have to return the Run-length Encoding of the given message.

Run-length encoding is a fast and simple method of encoding strings. The basic idea is to represent repeated successive characters as the character and a single count. For example, the string "aaaabbbccdaa" would be encoded as "a4b3c2d1a2".

Try solving now

2. Count sequences of positive integers having product X

Hard
15m average time
85% success
0/120
Asked in companies
HSBCDelhivery

You are given an array 'NUM' consisting of N positive Integers. Your task is to find the total number of possible sequences of positive integers (greater than 1) whose product is 'X'.

The value of 'X' is calculated as the product of the N terms, where the ith term is generated by raising the ith prime number to the power of an ith element in the given array.

In mathematical terms, we can write X as:

X = 2 ^ NUM[1] * 3 ^ NUM[2] * 5 ^ NUM[3] * 7 ^ NUM[4] * 11 ^ NUM[5] * … up to Nth term
Note :
1. Sum of all the elements in the array 'NUM' will always be less than or equal to 400.
2. As the total number of such sequences can be very large, print the answer modulo 1000000007.
Try solving now
03
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration30 minutes
Interview date14 Oct 2020
Coding problem2

1. Technical Questions

Why C++. Difference between C++ and C.
What’s constructors. Why are they used? Syntax of writing a constructor.
What is OOPS. Explain 4 pillars of OOPS along with examples.
What is foreign key, candidate key and primary key.
Different sorting algorithms.
What is big data, machine learning, IoT? (They do not expect formal definitions. Support your answers with examples)
They gave some code snippets and asked whether the code is right or wrong. Also some output prediction questions. These questions were a little tricky.
They also asked to write a code in an online compiler. In my case the code was based on Binary Search. 
A brief discussion about the projects mentioned in the resume.

2. HR Questions

About relocation.
Plans for further study
Different products of TCS
If any issue working in shifts
Inquired whether I had any backlogs or year gaps.

Here's your problem of the day

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

Skill covered: Programming

What is recursion?

Choose another skill to practice
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