Cognizant Sr. Associate interview questions

I'd be avoiding interviewing with Cognizant in the future purely due to their HR department. It felt like being played with, and was a massive waste of time. The interview process is: 1) Recruiter contacts you. Discussion about experience, requirements, current CTC, salary expectations etc. 2) Interview with Cognizant technical person. 3) Interview with Client. 4) HR discussion. It was a good experience till the HR discussion. But from my experience with 2 HRs I talked to, and my colleague's experience with Cognizant HR, the Cognizant HR department is pretty difficult to talk to. The process is slow, cumbersome, and irritating. The telephonic discussions/negotiations with the HRs were longer than the other 3 rounds combined. The HR process is slow. While the first rounds took barely 4 days in total, it took weeks to even initiate the HR discussion. It went on for another 3 weeks, after which I'd told them I'm no longer interested in working with cognizant and will be proceeding with the offers from other organizations. At one point, I'd even received a call from the hiring manager (who coordinated the 2nd and 3rd round), informing me that some documents that HR needs are pending with me and to fill them quickly. I informed him that I'd sent the documents to HR two weeks back but hadn't heard back, and I'd contacted the recruiter twice to follow up in past 2 weeks, but hadn't heard anything back from the HR. I got a call from the HR the same day. We had the salary discussion, and the HR offered me the expected CTC. (seemed to be going well so far) 1 week later though, no sight of offer letter and no call back from the HR. The next 3 weeks of dealing with the HR was painful. HR told me that the expectations were too high and couldn't be offered - the max they could offer is 15% below the previous number. They didn't have a good answer to the question "Why was the interview taken at the Expected CTC if it was higher than the possible budget?" or "Why was the Expected CTC offered initially, and then it couldn't be offered?" When I'd asked them to send the offer letter for the lower amount, they refused. At this point, it just seemed like they were playing with me. So I'd asked them if they can send me the offer letter by EOD , we can proceed, otherwise I'll proceed with future opportunities. Didn't hear back for next few days, so I dropped it and joined another organization. I eventually got a call from the HR a couple of times, but didn't pick up.

It was two step process one for technical and one HR round and both were done within stipulated timeframe. So it is a very smooth process and everything went as expected.