Top 40 TCS Interview Questions (With Example Answers)

Updated 4 August 2023

From freshers, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) may be a good company to begin your career. If you are looking to get a job at TCS, they conduct mass recruitment every year, where they hire candidates for the role of system engineers. By making a good impression during your interview, you can increase your chances of securing this type of role. In this article, we discuss common TCS interview questions with sample answers and how to prepare for a TCS interview.

General TCS interview questions

Below are some general TCS interview questions that an interviewer may ask to understand your personality and know your interest:

Tell me something about yourself.
Why do you want to join TCS?
Why we should hire you?
Explain your strengths with examples.
What are your weaknesses, and what steps do you take to overcome them?
Where do you see yourself five years from now?
What is your goal in life?
Are you open to relocation?
What do you expect from TCS as a company?
What value you can add to TCS?
How comfortable are you with night shifts?
Are you comfortable with working weekends?
What are your interests and hobbies?

Questions about your experience and background

Below are the interview questions the interviewer may ask to know your educational background and experience:

What coding languages have you learned during college?
Did you do an internship during college, and what was your role?
Which were your favourite subjects in college, and why?
Have you faced any challenging situations in life, and how did you handle them?
How does your educational background make you a fit for the job?
Explain any situation where you have worked under pressure.

In-depth interview question

Below are some of the in-depth interview questions that the interviewer may ask to evaluate your technical knowledge and analyse if you are fit for the role:

Tell the primary difference between Java and C language.
What is a static variable?
How do you print an address?
Explain objects and classes.
What is the difference between arrays and structures?
What are different techniques to prevent deadlocks?
Explain bubble sort and insertion sort.
Explain cache memory.
Define DBMS.
What is the difference between primary key and foreign key?
What is a bug?
Explain SDLC.
What is polymorphism?
Explain the difference between C and C++ programming languages.
Explain "pass by value" and "pass by reference."
Explain nested query with example.
Explain the difference between function overriding and function overloading.
What is an object-oriented language?
What is schema?

TCS interview questions with sample answers

Here are several TCS interview questions with sample answers:

Explain objects and classes

The interviewer may ask this question to understand your knowledge about C language. You can answer this question by briefly explaining objects and classes.

Example: "A class is a user-defined prototype using which objects are created. Class is a set of properties that is common to objects of one type. Whereas an object is an instance of a class and many objects can be created from the same class type."

What is the difference between a null pointer and a void pointer?

The interviewer may ask this question to know if you are familiar with the basics of the programming language. You can briefly explain the difference between the two pointers to the interviewer.

Example: "A null pointer points towards the null value of any data type, whereas the void pointer is a generic pointer that points to the other variable of any data type. You can convert any pointer to a void pointer"

What is the difference between outer join and inner join?

The interviewer may as this question to test your knowledge in different technical areas. If you have studied SQL, explain the difference between the outer join and the inner join.

Example: "You can use joins in SQL to extract the data from the intersection of two tables. Inner join gives the data from the intersection of two tables. The outer join gives the data from the union of two tables. The different types of outer join are left outer join and right outer join."

Define database management system (DBMS)

The interviewer may ask this question to know if you are a good fit for a data management role. Give them a thorough explanation of this term to show your knowledge.

Example: "DBMS is a system that is used to store, define, modify and manage data. It provides a platform to extract or change data by users or other programs like RDBMS, MySQL, Oracle and many more. There are different types of databases like centralised database, distributed database, relational database and object-oriented database"

What are different types of inheritance?

The interviewer may ask this question to know how clear your concepts are in programming knowledge. You can answer this question by listing the types of inheritance you know.

Example: "There are five different types of inheritance, namely, single inheritance, multiple inheritance, multi-level inheritance, hierarchical inheritance and hybrid inheritance."

Explain foreign key and primary key in SQL

The interviewer can ask this question to check your basic knowledge of structured query language (SQL). You can answer this question by defining a primary key and a foreign key to the interviewer.

Example: "You use primary key to identify the record in the table. The primary key must have a unique value and can not contain NULL values.Foreign key is a key that you use to point to the primary key of the other table. The table in which the primary key is present is called the parent table and the table in which the foreign key is present is called the child table."

How to prepare for a TCS interview

You can prepare for your TCS interview by knowing the different rounds of this interview process in the steps below:

1. Prepare for the written round

The written round comprises four sections and candidates have to complete the test in 90 minutes. The four sections are:

Quantitative aptitude

This section tests your numerical and reasoning ability. This section comprises 20 questions and gives you 40 minutes to attempt this section. To clear this section, you need to prepare topics like number systems, logical reasoning, time and work, probability, profit or loss, time distance and speed, progressions, series and geometry.

Programming language

This section tests your general knowledge about programming and computer science. This section comprises 10-12 questions and gives you 20 minutes to attempt this section. There are multiple-choice questions in this section on basic programming. To do well in this section, you must revise the subjects you studied in college.

Coding round

This section tests your coding skills. There is a maximum of two questions that you have to attempt in 20 minutes. They give you a scenario based on which you have to do coding. They evaluate your code and the approach to write the code.

Email writing

In this section, they check your email writing skills. They give you a scenario and some pointers using which you have to write an email. You have 10 minutes to complete this section and have to mention each point in the email that is given to you in the brief.

2. Know the requirements of the technical round

This round tests your subjective technical knowledge. They test your knowledge on topics like operating system, database management system, networking, OOPs and two coding languages of your choice. If you do not belong to computer science background, you need to prepare a minimum of two subjects related to your discipline of study and the interviewer may ask questions based on those subjects.

3. Think ahead to the managerial rounds

You can reach this round if you qualify for the previous two rounds. In this round, your ability to perform under pressure is evaluated. You need to remain confident, calm, precise in your answers to perform well under pressure.

4. Understand the HR round

In this round, HR may ask you questions related to your background, hobbies, family, educations and internships. To clear this round, answer all questions with confidence.

Is the TCS interview difficult?

It is possible to get through TCS interviews with the right preparation. You need to work hard and prepare well to clear the written round. Focus more on the areas where you feel need more preparation. You can also refer to the TCS test paper for your preparation. It may give you an idea of the pattern of the test. Also, it can help to identify topics where you need to put more effort.

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