My Interview Experience @ TATA Consultancy Services! :)

The Interview & The 5 Second Gap


This happened on the second day of the placement. The 7th of January, I could never forget. I was waiting in the Audi and the hall for about the whole day. The people from TCS started calling out our names and we all went to the library and were seated according to the numbers and since I registered for my friend immediately after my registration, my friend got the next number to me and was sitting next to me.

To really say about, my friend was really caring about how am I and what I am doing and the moment I was called in for the interview, they called one student, which was said by my friend not to get up, but the guy at the back asked me to get up. So there was a get up sit down test for me for about a minute and I got totally tensed.

My friend wished me all the best and I too wished back and went into the interview panel. The lady who called me asked if I am tensed and I said I am cool and she said that’s how I have to be and sent me to the table there. I was interviewed for my technical skills. This is the second phase in TCS and I was so confident I would clear the technical.

He started by asking me the generic question, “Say about yourself”. God, I didn’t have any clue how I would be answering in that tensed posture. Somehow I was saying about my name, the place I come from, the family I come from, the schooling I did, the hobbies I have, the projects I did, and stopped.

He asked me what is the project about, which I have given in the datasheet. I said that’s a “sappa” (meaning silly or simple) project and started saying about my #-Link-Snipped-#. The #-Link-Snipped-# proposal baffled the interviewer and another bottleneck position got me. He asked me why I am joining TCS. I had no idea what to answer and started the answer like this, “Sir, all my seniors, neighbours and others have joined TCS, so am I”. I know that I have given the stupidest answer ever.

I had to change it, so immediately I said, “This was my liking towards TCS from my eight standards!”, and finally made up the points like GDNM and others. He asked me if I own a bike, a car and a license. I said yes to all the questions and the moment he asked what car, I said, “Sir, it’s Maruthi, but that’s my dad’s car. If I would get a car, I will be getting ‘Tata what car’, ‘Tata Indica’ or at least ‘Tata Nano’. Yes sir, I will be getting ‘Tata Nano’, on my first pay and give you a drive for sure.” This is the way I answered him and he laughed.

He had a heavy headache, interviewing the other people too so I asked him to take care of his health and spoke somewhat personal. Final bottleneck for me was that he asked me why was my marks so less. I had no answer except I had to say about my mom and her health condition with two major operations and he agreed.

Finally while I was going, he was saying me better luck and I was continuously saying take care and I came out. The disaster was that the students who have completed tech before and after me have got into HR but not me. Then our placement officer came and asked all of us to get out and have our dinner. I thought I have to prepare for my next company Infosys and I had my dinner and went to the library.

To my surprise I wasn’t rejected. The tech, who interviewed me came to me and said he had given me a stress interview and I was cool the whole time. If only he had come out to see my condition, he would have surely rejected me. I was called in to the HR and I was the third student to go and I went in. I overheard students saying that the HR round contains questions like, what’s your favourite music and all stuffs.

Expecting them I went in and found two HRs were in the panel, they asked me the first question, the same generic question, “Say about yourself”. I thought that they had asked the question there and wouldn’t ask here, but no way I answered the question and the first HR question they asked was, “What did you lately searched Google for?” Since I wanted the HR to be technical, I answered something on speech recognition and went deep into it.

After a few minutes, I found both the HRs to be staring at me. I asked excuse to which one of them asked me to please wait. I decided I would be selected in this phase and they asked me if there are any questions for them. I asked a question and they asked me to leave and I went out with the confidence.

A few students had to leave their place due to missing of their datasheets by TCS themselves and they had nothing to do against it. One was my close friend and others from other departments.

It was 1 in the morning, after the speech of the TCS HR, he said, “Congratulations to those who have got selected. This is the toughest online and interview tests ever held by TCS. Those who have cleared, congrats and those who haven’t, they have cleared the toughest test at least.”

The placement coordinators started reading out our names and my heart was pumping like anything. I was expecting mine and my friend’s placement to be confirmed as my friend comes next to me and last of the batch.


The moment, he said my name, he paused. At that moment, I was like my life was in a doom; out of focus and stuffs came to me. Then after the 5 seconds pause, he said my friend’s name. I can never forget this and finally, it was great, we both have got placed in the same company as expected. By 1’o clock we started and reached home by 2’o clock.