CodePath EES2024 COGNIZANT - Tools, Tips and Tricks to Ace the Technical Interview

Hi everyone, welcome to the breakout session. Tools, tips, and tricks to ace the technical interview. And if you had me before, you know how much I love talking about the technical interview.

We’re so excited because we have the Cognizant here team here today and we’re excited to have all of you join us. I will be introducing our speakers shortly, but first want to share a few reminders. Please utilize the chat to have conversations and share your thoughts during the session.

Please keep your messages relevant to the topic of the session and note that the presenters and speakers can see you in the chat. Any questions that you may have can be answered live, so put them in the Q&A section. Following the session, we ask that you complete the brief feedback survey.

Your feedback is very important to us. And with the reminders out of the way, I’d like to introduce you to our speakers today who are presenting on tips and tools you need for interviewing success. Welcome the Cognizant team.

Hi everyone. I’m so happy to be here. My colleague Nikki and I are excited to speak with everyone today.

So thank you CodePath for having us. I’ll go ahead and just quickly introduce myself. My name is Kelsey Bryce.

I’ve been with Cognizant for 10 years. Which is hard to believe. So, it’s been a wild ride, but I’ve loved every minute of it.

I have been fortunate enough to spend my career in the campus recruiting space. And I’ve held a few different roles while I’ve been here. I currently lead our, early talent internship hiring.

So, I work very closely with Nikki to just run our summer internship programs along with some other early ID initiatives. So, I live in Texas. I have been here for a long time.

So, if anyone’s in Texas, nice to to see some friendly neighbors. But again, we’re very excited to talk with you all today. And I will pass things over to Nikki for her to give an introduction.

Hi. Okay. Well, it’s such a pleasure to be with you this afternoon or this morning depending on where you live.

My name is Nikki Crump. I’ve been with Cognizant for about a year and a half now, and it’s been an incredible year and a half. I support our internship recruiting and our other early talent diversity initiatives.

I am currently based in North Carolina in the Charlotte area. And just really excited to have the chance to talk with you all today. So, thank you.

Awesome. All right. So, we will go ahead and get into our subject.

If we could please have the deck. Awesome. Thank you so much.

All right. So, as mentioned before, you know, Nikki and I are going to talk to everyone. Just, you know, our tips, tricks, anything that we can kind of advice we can give to you all for acing the technical interview.

And we’ll also throw in some stuff about behavioral interviews as well. So we’re just going to talk about a lot of really fun stuff today. So, buckle up and get ready to, go over the content with us.

So, just a quick agenda. So, we’ll be covering, you know, just basic ways to prepare for interviews. We’ll go over technical assessments.

As I mentioned before, behavioral based interviews as well. Go over some best practices again just from from our side of things being in the recruitment seat. And then we’ll open it up to Q&A towards the end.

So that’s kind of what we can expect during today’s call. All right. So first we’ll discuss preparing for interviews.

And you know just these are again very specific to Cognizant. So these are just you know things that we advise. You might hear something different from other employers but again this is just kind of what we suggest when going through interview processes.

So understanding the interview process is super important. So again, as I mentioned, you know, every company’s process will vary, but here at Cognizant, you know, we really want to challenge our candidates to think about how they plan to answer questions. You know, think about what skills you and qualities and characteristics that you that make you distinctive.

You know, what have you accomplished and what problems can you solve for us specifically? Especially with the job that you’re interviewing for. We recommend that you have thoroughly read the job description and understand what coding languages are needed obviously specific to the job that you’re applying for.

And then practice, practice, practice is also super important as well. So as I mentioned, practice makes confident. Practice with a partner.

You know, the more that you’re able to you know, speak out loud and kind of do these things with a partner, the the more prepared you’ll feel. And you know, as you’re prepping for interviews, it’s recommended that you research potential interview questions as well. So for tech students, you know, this might be these might be questions related to the current technology trends that are happening out in the out in the world or various programming languages.

Additionally, and this may seem like a no-brainer, but review your resume and pick out those experiences that really align to the job. Make sure you can talk about those and just you know, really elaborate on those experiences. And then next, I want to talk a little bit about your elevator pitch.

So, remember, this should be no more than 30 to 60 seconds long. Really short and concise as much as possible. The key things to mention during an elevator pitch are your name, your major, your career interests, and then what you hope to achieve, you know, during either an internship or a full-time, relative to what you’re applying for.

And then, lastly, you know, find a way to bring a personal touch to your interview. You know, everything you’re saying, you know, it’s an opportunity to really showcase your personality. And so I want everyone to just take a second to think about, you know, what specific words are you going to use when pitching yourself in an interview.

Some things, excuse me, some things to consider are, you know, what are you excited about right now? Is there something in the technology realm that really is just fascinating to you? You know, maybe you want to bring it up during conversations.

What do you want to do next with your career? It’s always a really good idea to kind of think about these things before you are actually sitting in an interview. And then just something that we also like to tell students to kind of prep themselves when it comes to an elevator pitch is really thinking about the language that you use.

So think about words that you’re using to describe your work. Not only in your resume because that’s also very important to kind of use these words for your resumes but also how you speak to the interview about you know the work that you’ll be doing what you’ve done so far you know think about how you can express your skills and using these words will really help you convey that. Think about adjectives, action verbs, you know, that’s super important, around how you want to describe yourself.

And this will really help you kind of build your brand as well while you’re while you’re speaking to the interviewer. Just some words that I personally like to call out are productive, rational, responsible, resultsoriented, self-starter, sense of humor, even sensitive, and strive for excellence. So, those are just a few again for for my personal words that I like to use.

And then so here we have just some samples of elevator pitches in case maybe you’re still kind of wondering well you know what does one what does it look like? What does it sound like? So these are again just just examples that we feel like might be helpful.

So the first one is I’m a rising senior at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, pursuing a degree in healthcare information systems. My dream is to merge my interests in health care and technology to improve access to health care in rural excuse me in rural communities. I intend I interned with a software development company that provided virtual appointment services to doctors in rural communities and I’m looking forward to continuing the work with Cognizant.

So, I hope everyone can kind of see how that was a really good example of, you know, not only touching on your your background a little bit, you know, some of the things that that one’s done you know, in their previous internship and then just tying that into the work that Cognizant does. So, it’s kind of a well, excuse me, a well-rounded answer to kind of just be an elevator pitch. Another suggestion that we have here is, you know, you’re likely going to get the question, you know, well, why do you want to work here?

You know, what’s what’s why Cognizant? And here’s just a good example that, you know, we can we can suggest. So, I’m interested in interning at Cognizant because the company earned a perfect score in our human rights campaign foundation corporate equality index.

This stood out to me given that many tech companies are under scrutiny for hostile work environments for LGBTQ plus communities and it’s important for me to do the work that I love in a place where I will be valued and respected. So again, that’s like kind of calling upon the culture of Cognizant. We’ll go over here in a few moments, but we’ll talk a little bit later about doing the research on the company and just really kind of delving into the the the culture and just how things work from a people standpoint at each organization.

So hopefully these these examples were helpful. But again, just wanted to kind of give everyone a peak as to to what we mean by elevator pitch and just some ways to answer interview questions. And I will go ahead and hand it over to Nikki so she can discuss a little bit more on our technical assessments and behavioral interviews.

Thank you, Kelsey. So we wanted to do a little bit of a deeper dive into technical assessments and behavioral based interviews. These are a huge part of the interview process, kind of the meat and potatoes if you think about it of how you can show off your skills and show what makes you a great fit for an organization.

So, we’ll move forward. With what technical assessments you might find in an interview process, there’s really no one-sizefits-all within a technical assessment. Sometimes that’s a coding assessment, sometimes that’s going through a project with an interviewer, and sometimes that’s an interviewer assessing your portfolio as well.

So, you know, these are different ways for you to show off your technical skills. And we’ll do a little bit of a deeper dive in the next slide about how you can, you know, really showcase your strengths in each of these types of assessments. So when you’re preparing for a technical interview, as Kelsey mentioned as we started this presentation, really make sure that you’re combing through the job description to understand what skills are required and what would make an incoming intern or full-time candidate successful in the role.

So, this is just an example of someone that’s looking for a software engineering internship. Some of the key requirements are a specific graduation date as well as the skills that they’re looking for for someone to be successful. In this case, there’s knowledge in Java, Python, and then a basic knowledge in C++ is a plus.

So in this this hypothetical, Gene is going to a final interview for this internship. It consists of a time coding assessment and followed by an interview with two hiring managers. Jane knows all these languages, but she’s most proficient in Python and then knows Java pretty well.

And is currently learning C++. So before we really, you know, start giving you answers, I’d love to do a poll on stage. Which coding assessment do you think or which coding language should Jane code in for the assessment?

Got votes coming in. This is so exciting. So, I’m going to go ahead and close it because it looks like we have a pretty solid majority here.

And the majority is right. We would recommend that Jean, code in Python because that is the language that she is most proficient in. So moving on ahead, these are just some of our tips for the technical interview.

And the first really ties into that example which go with what you know. Most coding assessments are oftentimes and honestly it’s really normal to feel nervous in any sort of interview. It means that you care and you know nerves are not a bad thing to have.

However you want to put your best foot forward and in this case coding in a language you know means that you’re going to have the most success in the the the coding assessment. So you know, not trying to figure out things in a language that you may not be as comfortable in, even if it’s listed on the job description, because you want to showcase that you’re the strongest talent to fit this role. And so therefore, it’s you know, our recommendation that you code in the language that you feel the most confident in.

Also take an extra moment, take a deep breath when you’re encoding assessments, especially if you know there might be trick questions or things to to you know gauge your comprehension, reading comprehension and knowledge. Before you dive straight into something, make sure to take an extra second to you know read the answer, read the question again, thoroughly understand every component. For interview questions, use that same moment to ensure that you’re fully understanding the question before you begin to answer it.

So that way you’re not having to shift gears mid answer to cover the components of the you know the question that the interviewer is asking you. That’s really relevant to those project building assessments or when you’re explaining your portfolio. Let’s say if someone’s walking you through a GitHub portfolio truly take a second, take a a deep pause and then dive into your answer.

Which actually leads us to our last tip for technical interviews, which is to communicate effectively. Regardless of the assessment that you’re facing, there is always going to be that in an inquisition into your communication. So in a coding assessment, even though obviously it’s very technical, if you’re able to communicate your thought process, that’s really critical.

Explaining your code and how you have gone to the decisions about what you want to code is really critical and can honestly make or break a hiring decision based on your communication. Even in technical roles, soft skills such as communication are key because you know should you land the role whether it be an internship or full-time opportunity we’re always working on teams and everyone wants to understand that you can be a team player and communication has a really big impact in that. So, we will go on ahead.

And that honestly is a really great segue into our behavioral interviews. It’s, you know, can be, challenging to think about those behavioral interviews when you’re in a really technical role. But again, hiring managers, recruiters, anyone who’s interviewing you wants to see that you have the key qualities to be really successful on the team that you’ll be going into, whether it be an internship or a full-time role.

So, behavioral interviews are here to assess past behaviors to predict future actions. They’re meant to see how you might navigate situations in the role that you’re applying for. You can tell that it’s a behavioral based interview question if they start the question with, "Tell me about a time or give me an example when." so an example of a behavioral-based interview question in full would be, "Tell me about a time that you had to work closely with someone with a working style that’s different from yours." There’s really no wrong way to answer the question if you answer it in whole.

But we really recommend a great concise way to fully answer the question is utilizing the star or car format. So it takes the past experience that you’ve had and it really breaks it down into a story so the behav the interviewers can understand you know logistically where you started and what result was shown. I know that’s a lot to take in from a slide like this.

So, we’ve actually gone ahead and broken it down to the base component for you all to understand a little bit better. So, what the star format is is the situation, the task, the action, and the result. The CAR format follows a really same principle, but it’s the circumstance, the actions, and the results.

So, you describe the situation that you were given. You go into the tasks that you had to go to to solve the problem. What actions did you then utilize to solve that situation and task?

But most importantly, what was the result of the situation? We want to further break it down a little bit for you with a true example. So star in practice.

You know again the the purpose of this is to tell a story that’s clear, concise and confident that really showcases that you can take on any task in this upcoming opportunity and be able to utilize your your what you’ve learned up until this point in addition to what you’re going to learn in the role as well. So the star format has kind of that natural beginning, middle, and end. So, we’re going to utilize that same example of tell me about a time that you had to work with someone whose working style was different than yours.

In this case, and I know you all can read, so I’ll give you a moment to read this yourself. But this is someone who was on the exec board of a coding club on campus and you know working with someone that had just joined the exec board as well and wasn’t maybe able to utilize some of the resources that they had to instill confidence in the club. So what did this president of the coding club have to do to make sure that the club had confidence in their exec board and that it was running fully in the future?

So breaking it down of that example, the situation, someone just came in as a president of the coding club. When the board was first voted in, they were figuring out new responsibilities. Very understandable.

Taking on a new leadership opportunity. The president who’s, you know, kind of that umbrella person of making sure that everything works together. Learned that the treasurer was someone who tended to procrastinate but ultimately still did the work that was needed but over time this started to impact other members of the club.

The task was to sit down with the treasurer and understand how to approach this whole situation better. During this the treasurer shared that he wanted to be better organized so they came up with a game plan and that game plan turned into the actions adding calendar reminders to the exec board calendar for that person specifically. The result was that it took some time as anything does.

But once the treasurer was on the better schedule, all the club members had more confidence in the exact board that they voted in. So one thing to note is that the result can be a really overlooked part of the star or car format. But the reality is that it’s the so what.

In a lot of ways, it’s kind of the most important part of your story because if you had just looked at the situation, task, and the actions, you’re wondering, well, what happened? How did this resolve? And your interviewers are going to wonder the same thing if you don’t really hit on that that result piece.

But it really also needs the the star or the situation, task, and action to really understand the impact of the result as well. So, they all go together. But it can be a little bit easy, especially when you’re at the end of the story, to have that result sort of fall off when in reality that’s what your interviewer is waiting for.

So, we’re going to open up another poll. Would love to know which of these examples do you feel is the stronger example of someone answering a behavioral based interview question. And we’d love to hear your insights in the chat as well if you’d like to share.

It’s a lot of reading. So, we’re going to give it just a few more seconds as the votes are trickling in. So, we’re going to go ahead and close because there’s a lot of really great answers.

And you know, all the there’s a lot of great answers coming in in the chat as well. So, it is a this follows the STAR format a little bit better. It’s a little bit more detailed and it has that end result.

Awesome. Well, thank you Nikki so much for going over the STAR interview process and then just elaborating a little bit more on the technical process as well. Again specific to Cognizant.

So next we just want to switch gears really quickly to overall best practices. You know, we’ll really still focus on the the interview piece, but again we’ll kind of give you some overall recruitment best practices that we like to to share here at Cognizance. So, first research the organization.

So, we kind of touched on this a little bit earlier in the presentation, but you know, it’s just really important to truly have at least, a good understanding of what the company does, you know, whom you’re interviewing for. So, you know, you might be thinking, well, why is it important? Well, there’s a lot of reasons.

So you know one thing that I’d like to call out is that you know if you research the organization this will really help you assess the culture and the values of that company and if they align with your expectations. You know you could it can also really help you answer those questions that we touched on earlier. You know why do you want to work at Cognizant?

Why do you want to work at this organization? So that’s just, you know, a a really important point to just really, you know, kind of get a good understanding of what the company, who they are, what they do, and and all that. You might be thinking, well, how what’s the best way to go about that?

How do I research the organization? Well, a good place to start is the company’s website. You know, there there’s, especially on our website, there’s a lot of information that, you know, you might feel overwhelmed.

So, you know, just do your best to kind of you know, navigate to areas that particularly interest you on the website. That’s always a good place to start. You I also really recommend you know, reviewing the news and any press releases that have come out about the company.

Those can be really helpful as well. Just to see what what other you know, people in the industry are saying. So that’s just you know one of what is it one big tip and best practice that we we recommend.

And then as far as you know just some general reminders you know take the opportunity to network you know this is such an important time in your life and you know your career skills that will and you know networking will really help you open many doors for you. You know some immediate examples of how you can start networking if you you know haven’t really worked on this before is you know within the walls of your own university. So you know talk to other fellow first years, second years you know anyone right who’s a a a colleague or in your your cohort in your in your classes talk to your professors you know talk to your career coaches they’re there to help you.

So, that’s, you know, really what we suggest, start networking now. It’s so important. And then just again some other general reminders when it comes to interviewing specifically.

You know, always ask questions at the end of the interview. You know, during the time the interviewer obviously is the one asking you a lot of questions. A lot of times they really, like being asked questions themselves, especially when it comes to like their day-to-day work.

They really like to to hear from from you all. You know, look up interviewers in advance if you’re able to find them on LinkedIn. Sometimes you don’t know who you’re interviewing with.

A lot of times that happens after the fact. I know sometimes when we do our technical interviews and even our behavioral interviews sometimes we’re not able to kind of let you know who you’re interviewing with first. But if you know that information, it’s always helpful to kind of look up someone just to get a better understanding again of you know who they are and what they do.

And then even in a virtual setting, your body language matters. And Nikki will go into this here in another slide, but just be very mindful of that. You know, even when you’re on camera, it’s super important to just be be mindful of your body language as well.

And I will hand it over to Nikki to go over the rest of the recruiting tips. Amazing. Thank you so much.

So these are just some general reminders of any sort of interview that you’re going into. Setting up in a clean and quiet environment. Bringing your best personality to the interview.

Making sure that you’re smiling and you show that positivity that honestly conveys your excitement for being considered for the role. Answer questions in specific detail. That STAR method that we mentioned and making sure that you’re answering questions completely.

Asking for follow-up questions. If you don’t understand something, it’s perfectly fine to ask for clarification just to ensure that you’re utilizing the time that you have in an interview the best that you can. Always circle back to questions if you’re drawing a blank.

You know, pause, breathe, get a drink of water. Everyone in the interview process is human. We’re human.

You’re all human. We understand that we you know, just need to take a pause every once in a while and take care of ourselves in the interview process as well. Dress in business casual or business formal.

I personally enjoy dressing business casual or professional when I go into interviews with students because it makes me feel really confident in my role and what I am bringing to the table with Cognizant. I do that whether it’s way like I just do the whole outfit. But you know, if you’re on camera and it makes you more comfortable to be only dressed from the waist up in in a business professional, that’s, you know, that’s on you.

No one’s gonna ask you to stand up in an interview. Answer questions within 30 to 90 seconds. You know they want to know all about you.

They want to know everything that you can bring to the table. And then they also want to leave time for you to ask questions at the end. So being concise in your answers will allow you to really maximize your time in the interview.

And so the interviewers can get everything they want from you and then you can get everything you want from the interviewers. Using headphones can really ensure that there’s no like mic cutting or or any audio issues. And then finally looking at the camera.

And I know I know personally I give a little bit of grace in this because sometimes I’m not sure where to look. Do I look at the screen? Do I look at the camera?

But you know, just anytime you can try to make that eye contact in the virtual setting can be great. And then of course when you’re you’re in person, making eye contact as well is incredibly important. And then what to do after an interview.

So what are the next steps? It’s perfectly acceptable to understand when you might hear back. You know, we’re always anxious to give students a good understanding of the timeline.

And we are completely appreciative that students want to know the timeline as well. So it’s always great to ask what next steps are and establish that timeline for yourself. Definitely thank anyone who’s interviewing you.

Sometimes you have to get a little bit creative with this and it’s okay to be creative. If you’re talking to a hiring manager and maybe you don’t have their email address if a recruiter set it up. Definitely ask the recruiter for the email address that you can have that.

Otherwise you know sometimes in calendar invites you may not think that you have the hiring manager’s email but if you look in there you might find it. And worst case scenario find them on LinkedIn and go ahead and send them a message to thank them for their time. Especially if you go out of your way to do the LinkedIn it will it’ll make an impact.

And then this one can be the hardest, and trust me, I empathize with this. You might have to just wait a little while. And, you know, go back to that timeline that you established with the recruiter.

Give them to the end of that timeline. Something, you know, some things can happen. There might be, you know, a family emergency with the interviewer that might delay their, decision a little while longer.

But when you get to the the end of that timeline that has been expressed, that’s a good time to do that initial reach out just to check in. Follow up if necessary based on the timelines. Be persistent, but don’t be panicked.

This kind of goes into the follow-up as well, but as a recruiter, I really appreciate transparency. We understand that your skill set is in demand. So if you are in the final interview stage and you know, perhaps you’re you’re going to the final interviews with other companies, I really like students just to let me know.

It helps me, you know, be able to to work with you, work with the hiring managers and understand the, the whole situation a little bit better and do whatever I possibly can to help you. So that’s where that, you know, persistent but not panicked come in can come into play. And you know, if you’re transparent with us, I promise that we’ll be transparent with you as well.

Using a professional tone in any of these steps after the interview is absolutely key. Sometimes you can build a really great rapport with recruiters, but remember at the end of the day that you know the professional relationship comes first. And again that’s that transparency of that we’ll be professional with you in response.

Which again just leads to that two-way street. Always you know being u professional and transparent with us will allow us to be professional and transparent with you. So those timely responses, honoring deadlines, we want to we are always going to do our best to be that way with you and we we love it when our candidates and students that we’re working with are that way with us.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Nikki. So we have gotten to the end of the content that we’d like to that we you know wanted to share with everyone.

So we hope you’ve enjoyed it. We hope that you know advice and things that we’ve shared today can be used you know when you’re starting the interview process. So we’ll go ahead and open it up to Q&A to see if anyone has any specific questions.

Awesome. Okay, so just give me a mo. Oh, the I saw one that I’d really like to grab if you’re comfortable with it.

Absolutely. Yes, go for it. So one of the questions asked was advice for new grads applying to technical roles who may not have a lot of internship experience.

You know, we didn’t really go into resume building with this. We wanted to really focus on the interview tips, but you know, just because you may not have internship experiences doesn’t mean that you don’t have experiences. Likely if you’re in a, you know, a technical major, you have been working on personal projects.

You’ve been working on class projects, you’ve been working on cross collaboration with other students and those are so important in you know showcasing your abilities and your skills. So always put those on your resume. Any you know projects that you’ve worked on class extracurriculars but I personally love looking at personal projects.

They are some of the most creative projects that I’ve seen outside of you know that kind of more structured class coursework. So all of those are so relevant to add if you are utilizing the skills that the opportunity you’re applying for needs those. Awesome.

I love that answer, Nikki. Okay. And I apologize.

I think I’m just not used to using this portal. I love how you someone put up the the question on the on the screen and that was super helpful. I don’t know if that was you, Josie, but thank you for doing that.

Okay, awesome. Oh, wait. I found it.

Okay. And Nikki, please turn in. Sorry, I’m clearly slow to Do you want me to read the next question?

Yeah, that would be great, actually. Thank you. Yeah, no worries.

No worries. All right. What’s your advice for delivering an elevator pitch confidently and smoothly enough?

I tend to get anxious during interviews and my elevator pitch sometimes ends up sounding rehearsed and artificial. Yeah. I mean, I I’ll just kind of be very transparent with everyone here.

You know, I get nervous, too. Even though I’ve been you know, I’ve had this career for again over 10 years. You know, I still get nervous, you know, when I’m trying to talk to people, whether it’s in a presentation setting or you know, when I’m delivering my own elevator pitch.

So, you know, we talked about we talked earlier about, you know, practice makes confident. And I really like that term rather than practice makes perfect because I do feel like, you know, if you tend to, you know, practice, practice, practice, it does end up sounding a little bit rehearsed. So I think there’s like a happy medium.

You know, my advice would be to definitely practice. Maybe instead of having a script, you know, have talking points like have, you know, little bulleted point information like you know, oh, I want to mention that, you know, this is my major. I want to mention that I’ve done this in an internship and this is how it relates to Cognizant.

So if you recall I feel like the the example we gave earlier is is really good for an elevator pitch. It’s like pretty short to the point but it also kind of encapsulates everything that you know you want to get across to the person that you’re talking to. So again try not to be anxious.

You know try to think of it as a conversation. You know rather than something that again that you feel like you have to be really prepared for if that makes sense. So hopefully again depending on the situation you know it can feel natural and just try to you know take some breaths.

You know Nikki said that earlier when you’re preparing for an interview or any of these situations right you know sometimes it’s it’s okay to take a step back and just you know breathe and kind of collect your thoughts. Kind of a long-winded answer but I don’t you have anything else to add? That was perfect but I did just want to add one other thing too.

If you’re invited into an interview, chances are you’ve had a recruiter that has reviewed your resume and has seen something in your resume that makes them feel that you would be a great fit for the role. So, when you’re talking to recruiters, hiring managers, what that looks like, just remember that you were invited there. People want to talk to you.

They want to learn about your background. You are a part of the process for a reason. And my hope is that that makes you feel a little bit more comfortable that everyone there is rooting for you.

I’ve never met another recruiter, no one that I’ve ever worked with or a hiring manager that wants a candidate to go into the interview to fail. Everyone wants you to succeed. And a lot of times, you know, we we do our best to make sure that you’re feeling confident in the process as well.

So, if you can even look at it that, okay, I’m talking to a person and I’m nervous, but they want me to be here, they want me to succeed. Hopefully that kind of quills some of the nerves. I love the suggestions.

Yeah. Yeah. So good.

It’s It’s also great like if you’re in the grocery store or an elevator or in a queue at a roller coaster ride, give your elevator pitch to the person next to you, right? Because then the more people you do it to, the more you’re comfortable with it. What do you think?

Yeah. Love that, Josie. That’s so funny.

I’ve never thought about in the grocery store, but I love that. That’s amazing. Like I might do that the next time I go.

Awesome. I have one. I think one that has a lot of up vote.

So it looks like this is a question that a lot of people are kind of thinking about. And it’s do you have any advice for new grads applying to technical roles who may not have had a lot of it? Did we talk about this one already?

Oh my gosh. No, sorry. Maybe we did.

Did we did we do this one already? I think we did. Okay.

Sorry. It said unanswered so I was like oh no I think we did that one already. Here let me read you the next question.

Does Cognizant use resumeé filter software? If yes, can you please explain what one can do to stand out and get their resume through the filter? Nikki, I’ll let you answer this one because I think a lot of people are going to be surprised by our answers.

Yeah. We do not use ré filtering software. So we hand look at every resume of students that are a fit for the opportunities.

And what I mean by that is, you know, with internships, we we said at the beginning we’re looking for students that are graduating between, December 2025 and 2026 for internship opportunities. So, anyone that applies within that parameter, their resume will be considered for the internship. At least, you know, as far as looking over their skills and making sure that their experience is relevant.

I know that I’ve done this and I know a lot of our team does this, too. If someone applies and maybe they’re not quite the right grad date. We always try to do an introduction to the recruiter that would be recruiting for the opportunities that they’re looking for.

So, you know, our full-time recruiters will sometimes see an intern candidate apply to the full-time roles and they’ll pass them up to us to do an indirection. We do the same thing to full-time. And then, for students that are maybe just a little bit early for internships, we have a lot of programming aimed at students that are in the, front half of their completed experience.

So, we always try to stay in contact for all of those opportunities, too. So, like, how long do you typically look at each resume? I feel like this varies recruiter to recruiter, but the national average is 7 seconds.

7 Seconds. So, what could if you’re not using a filter, what could somebody do to their resume that would make it stand out in those seven seconds? Are you fine if I take this real fast?

Oh, yeah. Go for it. Okay.

So, as I mentioned, we have different roles that are, you know, sort of there for different gradates. So, putting your grad date up at the top is really important to make sure that we’re, you know, your resume is getting to the right person. And it’s really helpful if you can be more specific.

So, like let’s say, you know, someone here is a summer 2026 grad. If your estimated graduation date is May 2026, we love that because if you put just 2026, you could go for an internship or you could go for some of our, you know, secondyear programs. So that’s really helpful to just like get someone going in the process immediately.

Even if you think that your grad date may change, that’s totally fine. That’s, you know, something that we can have a conversation about once you get into the process. But we really appreciate that.

Education levels, things like that, like relevant skills, are really great. So, I don’t want to say that there’s a absolute perfect way to do your resume, but typically having your education at the top. Any experiences like an internship or or part-time work can be really awesome.

And then projects, especially in the technical space, any projects that you’ve worked in. I know I we kind of answered this in the first question, but whether it’s a class project, whether it’s a personal project, anytime that you can show experience with anything in the technical space, like that allows my brain to start thinking of where you might be a great fit the second that I look at your resume. I kind of have this answer, Kelsey, so if you want to add anything as well, please.

No, you’re good. You answered it perfectly. I don’t think I have anything to add.

And you’re definitely it’s been it’s been a minute since I’ve been in the recruiter seat, so you’re definitely probably better to answer that than I am. So, all right, let’s go to the next question. What data structures should we focus on when it comes to preparing for tech interviews specifically at Cognizant?

Yeah, I think this is a great question. And you know, I it kind of comes back to it’s pretty dependent on the role that you’re applying for, but I would say that a majority of our opportunities have a focus in Java. So that’s probably the one like coding language that I would I would recommend that everyone kind of have at least a basic grasp on.

Python 2 obviously because it’s open source but we Java is pretty widely used here at Cognizant again just from the various project work that you know we tend to hire early career talent into that would be that would be one thing Nikki I don’t know if you have anything else to add to that. No I I think that’s I think that that’s a great answer. I probably should have said this a little bit more in when we were talking about it, but a recruiter should be able to give you a a good grasp of what to expect in the interview process if you have that introductory conversation.

Sometimes things might shift and change a little bit, but I know that with all my students, I try to give them a a rough understanding of, you know, what the timeline looks like, when they would be talking, what specific assessments might be coming up. So if you are in an interview process that kind of has a similar structure, I think that this is a really great question to ask the recruiter that might have some more insight into that specific technical assessment of, you know, what does that look like, what to expect, is it live, is it asynchronous, things of that nature. I know that’s not a great answer for the prep going into the interview process.

But hopefully you should have someone that can give you some guidance before you get to that actual stage. Awesome. And remember, you always have the CodePath mentorship program that you can practice your technical interviews with.

So, all right, let’s go to the next question. There are many certifications out there and many mixed views on if it’s worth it or not. Are there any certifications that could benefit in an interview or have on your resume?

If so, what certifications are worth it for résumés and interviews? Yeah, I think this is another good question. And we do tend to get this one a lot.

It there again for the opportunities that Nikki and myself recruit for, there’s nothing specific that we’re looking for students to have. We more so focus on the technical skills part. So exactly what Nikki was just talking about in the previous answer to to that question.

You know, that’s kind of what our recruitment team focuses on and a lot of times that’s what our hiring managers are looking for. Again, at this stage in your career, again, for, you know, most people who kind of fall into this early career talent bucket, we’re not really worried about anyone having any sort of certifications at this point. All right, next question.

Given that Cognizant provides a variety of services to a variety of industries, how many employees assigned to projects in a way that how are employees assigned to projects in a way that matches their experience while growing their skill sets? Yeah. Another great these are awesome questions y’all.

This is amazing. So we you know, Cognizant’s a very large industry or excuse me, we cover large industries, but we’re a large company. We have over 300,000 employees worldwide.

So our projects vary in sizes. You know, depending obviously what what you know, what you’re doing. And so, during the recruitment process, again, Nikki, I’m going to kind of go back to what you said earlier.

I thought it was very well spoken. You know, we as recruiters try our best to kind of, you know, fit you into a role that we feel that is gonna align most with your skill sets. Obviously we want to hear from you as well.

You know, we want to know what you’re interested in. We want to have a better understanding of like where where you want your career to go. So, it’s really important for you to continue to having the like these open conversations with your recruiter.

Leading up to you know meeting with the business unit. As far as like continuing your growth while you’re in Cognizant and like you know kind of moving project to project that’s something that’s very doable here. And so we have a specific group talent supply chain that kind of looks at you know skill sets of individuals and like helps place them on various projects if they need openings.

So, we work very similar to a lot of other consulting firms that that do that. I hope I answered that question, Mickey. I don’t know if you have anything else to add on that.

No, I think that was I think that was really great. Agreed. All right.

What advice do you have for new grads not hearing back after they apply? Yeah. You know, I again from the recruiter seat.

You know, we try our best to let everyone know, you know, if they’ve moved forward or not. You know, we get a lot of applications sometimes in the thousands, right? And so, you know, we are very fortunate that we have a lot of interest in our roles.

And so, you know, I would encourage you if you’ve been working specifically with a recruiter to again keep in touch with that recruiter. You know, if it’s kind of been out of that window of time that Nikki was referring to earlier, you know, after the interview process, if it’s been more than the aotted time that you spoke to the recruiter about, definitely follow up. You know, it’s it’s okay to follow up.

It’s a little different if you, and I apologize. I’m not sure if this is this question is specifically for after the interview process or Oh, after applying. I’m sorry, I can’t read.

Sorry. Yeah. So, applications, you know, our team, we try very hard to again let everyone know if they’re, you know, selected or not.

We also I like to think that we kind of make ourselves available even at the point of application. So again if you have a contact whether it’s you know ideally on the campus team you know again reach out it’s okay to you know ask hey what’s the status of my application you know a lot of times we’ll host like various information sessions or even you know this event through CodePath you know we we we’re kind of gathering interests and you know going to encourage people to apply and so you’ll have you’ve met Nikki and I so like that’s a great opportunity to kind of you know again just like reach out and ask for updates. I know it’s probably not like the perfect answer, but it’s that’s just my thought on it.

Can I tag something on advice? It doesn’t quite answer the question, but I’d love to share some of my personal experience, too. So some I guess it was November of 2022, I was looking to make a career change and I saw the posting on LinkedIn for the campus recruiter position with Cognizant and I was like, you know, looking through the job description and decided like, okay, I really want to do this.

Like this is this is for me. I really want this. So I went ahead and I filled out the application, but I also found on LinkedIn, one of the recruiting managers who tended to seem to engage a lot with candidates.

So I used one of my precious LinkedIn inmails and sent, an inmail, not to say like, hey, I really want this job or, you know, hey, I just applied. Like, can you help me with this? I wanted to showcase my passion for this role.

And so I reached out and I said, "Hey, you know, I wanted to let you know, I I did of course submit my application for this role. But I saw this and this about your company culture and it really resonates with me. Can I learn a little bit more about your experience within the company and how this applies to you?" I didn’t get a message back, but I like to think, and maybe I’m just a little delusional, that that might have helped my get my get my name out of the the candidate pool of thousands.

It’s not a surefire way of you know getting into the process but I think if you are again like kind of establishing those connections and showing proactivity about your interest and trying to you know kind of avoid like that one line of saying like hey help me get into the application like really showing your passion for it that might you know bode well for you in the application period too I can’t sign off that it’s a 100% guarantee but it doesn’t hurt in my experience those valid inmails They’re like so precious. Okay. I love this question.

As a single mommy, so I work, go to school, and have family responsibilities, so I like to be strategic about where I spend my time. Would you recommend focusing your time on leak code or personal projects as I embark on the job search for new grad roles? Nikki, I might punt that over to you if that’s all right.

Yeah. No, that’s that’s perfect. So I think it’s really hard to answer this like definitively about what would be be better.

I say that in my opinion personal projects give you more experience and it’s something tangible that you can put on a GitHub you know portfolio or you can showcase on your resume. I think focusing time on leak code definitely helps like really enhance your skills so that if there is a live technical assessment, you’re able to kind of like really breeze through that better. So I think it’s up to you.

If you feel really confident in your portfolio and what you have done, as far as like building up your your technical capabilities, that might be a great time to spend some time on leak code and, you know, again, like get a little bit proficient you know, just straight coding. But if you feel like you want to explore or new learn like new learn co excuse me learn new coding languages like if you want to pick up a new coding language or if you want to dabble in you know something that’s online that you can work on as a personal project to help bump up your experience. I know this is kind of a cough answer but I think either are are great.

It just depends on what you need to feel like you can get your foot in the door better. Kelsey, I don’t know your thoughts on that answer, but I’d love to Yeah. No, I I think everything you said I agree with.

I think it’s it’s kind of whatever you know, yeah, whatever you feel that you know that that you’d like to focus on. But yeah, I mean it’s I do agree with Nikki about like the personal projects being tangible. I think that, you know, hiring managers like to see that, especially at this point, like for an early career talent, like if this is your first job that you’re, you know, applying for, if this is kind of how you’re getting your foot into you know, your area of your career.

So, but you know, I agree. I don’t think there’s a there’s not a right or wrong answer here. Go with your gut.

Exactly. All right. How do you assess a candidate’s potential for growth versus their current skill set when hiring for an entry-level tech position?

Yeah. Could you put that up on the screen if you’re able to? Sorry.

That’s okay. I’ll read it to you again just while Amy’s doing that. How do you assess a candidate’s potential for growth versus their current skill set when hiring for entrylevel tech positions?

Yeah. You know, one of the things that I love so much about working with, individuals who are either still in school or about to graduate is that, more often than not, like y’all are so eager, which is amazing. You know, you’re always you have an appetite to learn.

And I think that’s super apparent when even, you know, having conversations like before you’re starting the interview process. You know, it’s, that’s how I personally like I can kind of, you know, you kind of hear all this stuff about, oh, you know, how you can tell like within the first few seconds of speaking with someone, you know, if it’s going to be a good conversation. So that’s a lot of times again like how I can gauge like oh based on you know what this person is telling me and about their experiences like they’re teachable you know even though they have these experiences like which is which is always great especially if it’s academic experience.

You know, that’s it’s all about like how you it kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier about how you like build your brand and how you are able to kind of pitch yourself during the interview. I I’m not really sure if I answered that fully. I think I’m a smidge confused on on that question, but Nikki, I don’t know if you have any thoughts, but yeah.

Yeah. And one of the other things too is the next question kind of ties into this as well. So the next question is what kind of questions would you should we ask to hear?

So to something that helps me assess like a candidates’s opportunity for growth in relation to their current skill set is the questions that they ask the hiring managers at the end of the interview. If they are really hungry and want to learn more about the company. You know if they talk about growth opportunities like what’s the next step after the role that they’re currently interviewing for.

If they ask questions about like how can they upskill themselves things of that nature that shows me that that’s a a candidate that’s not just happy with being where they’re at. They’re always looking for that next opportunity. So that’s something that I know that personally like I and a lot of hiring managers are really always excited to hear about because it means that the candidates seeing themselves in the company and seeing themselves growing in the company.

So yeah. So this the second question about what kind of questions like that’s a really big indicator to me about future growth potential in relation to where a candidate’s currently at. Yeah, sorry I didn’t mean to jump ahead, but I thought that it it was a really great transition into that.

And then honestly like kind of if you don’t mind me like finalizing this this the answers to this question too. I don’t think there’s like a set number of questions that you have to ask. I think that this is part of the rapport that you build with the recruiter or build with the hiring managers.

So the questions that you ask you know should be honestly just really organic. You can definitely you know pre-plan some such as like you know the timeline questions you know what role like kind of maybe clarifying role responsibilities but just allow yourself to organically jot down questions as you’re going through the interview process to show that you’re engaged with the interviewers and that you’re really engaged with the time that you’ve spent with them. But again always great to ask those growth questions at the end too.

Awesome. All right we have two more minutes. So one more question.

What’s your view on candidates who have taken non-traditional career paths or have gaps in their employment history? This question is super relevant for me. Because we actually if earlier this spring we have started I say we like the campus recruitment team has started working with our workforce strategy team to build out a program specifically for individuals who have taken non-traditional career paths and who have gaps in their employment.

So we call it cognizant skills accelerator. It’s essentially a Java skills programming course. It’s I think nine weeks long.

Anyway, it kind of leads into an apprenticeship, but essentially, yes, if you fall into this category of having a non-traditional career path, we absolutely would love to hear from you. I’m happy to tell you more about kind of what the opportunities are. It’s a little different from our traditional campus recruitment.

Again it’s more so we have an apprenticeship program so it’s it’s just kind of a different pathway but absolutely the main thing though is like again the technical skills are super important so even if you have just like a basic exposure to Java that’s that’s great you know we we can put you through this program that gives you more of that upskilling that will further prepare you to be on the path of an apprentice so again just kind of a different pathway, but if you’re interested, you know, feel free to reach out to me. I’m happy to talk more about it. Well, sadly, we’ve reached the end of our session.

I can’t even believe it. We’d like to love to thank Kelsey and Nikki for joining us and for giving us an engaging presentation and discussion. Please drop your appreciation in the chat.

And if they have a company booth, we encourage you to go visit them during the networking break. To close us out, we’ll now go to a brief video from our host, Bobby D. Thank you for joining us in this session.

I got some information before you leave. It says, "Please take a moment to complete a brief survey to share your feedback. Remember how valuable feedback is.

I’m trying to come back three years in a row and it’s all based on feedback, right? To see what comes up next, I want you to head back to the main stage and check out the schedule. See you soon in the next set of sessions.