I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Cognizant
Interview
It was a typical interview where the company was just looking to fill someone in but not sure of what they want. I applied for the job for city A and the HR called me and said that job would be in city B or anywhere else but not city A for which I applied. I went ahead with discussion and they were paying below the industry standard. After the HR round, I had a skype interview with one of the developer and it was pretty clear to me that interview was not going to end well right after the first question.
The interviewer to explain the internal working of Hashmap. I explained that in detail with examples but he insisted the bookish definition. He probably had a website open in front of him and was reading out from that page. Eventually after 15 minutes I got frustrated and opened up java documentation and read out to him to prove my point. To my surprise he said that is wrong. At this point, I knew something was wrong. On the other hand it was hilarious when he said no and read out from his sheet the answer he was looking at and said he has to follow the procedures and questions that has been handed to him.
I was applying for a java position and he started going on DBA type questions and I explained couple of them but then he started asking advanced configuration level question at that point I had to stop the interviewer and explained that in any company java developers are not given access to change or modify production database configuration. That is job typical of database developer or DBA. He insisted that as Java lead I should know Db configuration which is pretty uncommon for "me".
On couple of topic we had worked on different flavours of technology and the interviewer had the audacity of saying I have not worked on X but I am going to ask you about Y because that is what I am familiar with and didn't care to read my resume that I don't work on Y. He never went over my past work experience.
Here's the last straw and funniest part:
In the end when I asked him if he knew what position was Interviewing for? The Interviewer said that it could for any position and I could be on a project which did not involved coding at all as it could be onsite offshore coordination or development position or an architect.
The interview process is almost the same as other companies. Depending up upon the hybrid or remote env, the process is over the call or in person. Lateral Joiners should expect at least 3 rounds of discussions,
There will be a 4 rounds of interview if possible a client interview will be arranged initial a basic telephonic round to check our communication skills and followed by the Team lead interview and a manager round and HR final discussion if required a client interview as I said earlier.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is the role in the current organization pls explain.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Cognizant (Hyderābād) in Jul 2025
Interview
Interview process was good, after completing l1 , l2 happened two weeks later. After l2 again client took two weeks after completing all the rounds of interview successfully they mentioned requirement got changed
Technical Lead applicants have rated the interview process at Cognizant with 3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 56% positive. To compare, the company-average is 69.3% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Technical Lead roles take an average of 9 days to get hired, when considering 26 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Cognizant overall takes an average of 17 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Cognizant as a Technical Lead according to 26 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 21%
One on one interview: 21%
Group panel interview: 12%
Skills test: 12%
Background check: 10%
Presentation: 8%
Drug test: 6%
Other: 4%
Personality test: 4%
IQ intelligence test: 4%
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