Cognizant Digital Nurture is one of Cognizant’s campus hiring programs through which students from colleges across India can get the opportunity to join the company through different technical roles. Although the hiring is conducted across the country, the program is available only to students from selected colleges, and fortunately, my college was one of them.
Cognizant offers different role categories based on the candidate’s performance and selection criteria. The major roles include GenC, GenC Pro, and GenC Next.
The hiring process consists of around five major rounds:-
- Communication Round
- Coding Round
- 2-Month Deep Skill Training
- Deep Skill Assessment
- Technical & HR Interview
Round 1: Communication Round
My journey started with the Communication Round, conducted around 22 May. Around 2,000 students appeared for it.
- The round included:
- Reading sentences
- Listening
- Grammar
- Speaking on a given topic
I found this round fairly easy. After about a week, the results were announced, and around 1,700 students were shortlisted.
Pro tip: Use good-quality earphones/headphones, especially for the listening section.
Round 2: Coding Round
The next round was held on 4 June and included:
- 2 Java coding questions
- 2 SQL questions
- 1 Web Development question
The Java questions were easy to medium. One SQL question was easy, while the other was quite difficult. HTML/CSS was easy, but JavaScript was a little tricky.
I would rate the overall difficulty around 6/10.
Pro tip: Revise arrays, strings, recursion, stacks, queues, SQL basics, and JavaScript.
After a week, I got the result — I had cleared the round. But there was a surprise: out of around 1,700 students, only 254 from my college moved forward.
That was honestly shocking. The competition had suddenly become much tougher.
Round 3: Deep Skill Training
After clearing the coding round, all selected candidates entered Deep Skill Training, which worked like a pre-training program.
I was assigned to the Java cluster, which had around 17 modules covering topics such as Java development, design principles, Docker, Git, Cloud, and more.
The training lasted around 50 days. Cognizant conducted weekly classes, but our college also provided additional classes, which were really helpful. We also had to complete the assigned courses and upload our assignments to GitHub.
Round 4: Deep Skill Assessment
The assessment was conducted on 31 July. It had 100 questions with a 2-hour time limit and covered the topics from the Deep Skill training.
Overall, I found it fairly easy. The results came the next day, and only 14 students were eliminated.
After clearing this round, I received my interview schedule for 10 August.
Round 5: Interview
Finally, it was time for the interview.
- The interview covered:
- Self-introduction
- Java basics
- OOPs
- Project explanation
- Java coding — string reversal
- SQL
- React
- A simple React coding task: building a counter with Increase, Decrease, and Clear buttons
- 3 HR questions
- The interview lasted around 40 minutes.
One thing I wasn’t prepared for was the waiting time. The interviews started around 11 AM, but my turn came at approximately 6:30 PM.
Pro tip: If you’re appearing for a campus interview, be mentally prepared for a long wait. Stay patient and keep yourself relaxed until your turn.
Final Thoughts
And that’s where my Cognizant Digital Nurture journey currently stands.
The final result is still awaited, so I don’t know yet what the outcome will be. But regardless of the result, the entire process has been a great learning experience for me.
If anyone is interested, I can also write separate articles covering how I prepared for each round, the resources I used, and tips to clear them.
For now, I’m just waiting for the final result.