TCS Prime Interview Experience | On-Campus 2024 (Tier - 1)

My journey began with the TCS NQT exam, specifically for priority institutions. It was structured into a Foundation Section (Numerical, Verbal, Reasoning Ability) and an Advanced Section (Advanced Quantitative, Reasoning, and Coding). I focused on both coding questions in the Advanced section – one on numbers and arrays (LC easy), and another on string and 2D array manipulation (LC Medium). Solving both coding problems helped me get shortlisted for the Prime category. Missing either of these would have likely placed me in the Digital or Ninja categories.

The interview was a single, on-campus round with a panel of three: a Technical (T) interviewer, a Manager (M), and an HR representative. After a quick greeting, I was asked to introduce myself. They inquired about my NQT exam performance and humorously acknowledged my Prime selection, implying I must have aced the coding.

When asked about the NQT coding questions, I honestly couldn't recall them at that moment, which was a bit panicking, but they reassured me it was fine.

Technical Round:

• WAP to find the square root of a number: I opted for the binary search approach and coded it on paper. They seemed satisfied and then asked me to dry run the solution for the number 6096, primarily to assess my tracing ability rather than getting the exact answer.
• WAP to find the length of the Longest Palindrome Subsequence: This question caught me off guard as I hadn't expected a dynamic programming problem from TCS. I explained my recursive approach first. They probed about the time complexity and how it could be optimized. I then proceeded to code it, making a few errors initially due to nervousness, but managed to correct them and complete the solution to their satisfaction.

Managerial Questions:

• They delved into my projects, specifically asking, "Why have you used Mongo DB in your project and not SQL?"
• Given my experience with Power BI at PWC, they asked, "Do you know how to import data from a cloud database whose contents are changing periodically?"
• A question about web technologies came up: "Have you worked on CSS? What is its speciality?" I admitted I wasn't sure about the speciality aspect.

HR Questions:

• "Tell a real life problem that you can be solved by introducing tech? Anything that's around you."
• Standard personal questions like, "What does your father and mother do? Are you a single child?"
• "We don't have an office in your hometown. So if we relocate you to some other city or abroad, are you okay?"
• "If you get a family emergency, what will you do?" (I made sure to answer diplomatically, balancing family and work responsibilities.)
• "What do you know about TCS?"
• "How much time do you expect to work in office?"
• "You are from Electronics and Telecommunications Eng. So why did you start coding?"
• Finally, "Do you have any question for us?"

Despite some initial jitters, I was ultimately selected for the Prime role. It was reassuring to know that if the interview wasn't strong enough for Prime, candidates would still be considered for the Digital role, demonstrating a flexible evaluation process.