I applied through college or university. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Cognizant (Madras) in May 2009
Interview
There was a skills test on the first day and those who cleared the test were called for interview the next day. The interview was pretty straight forward. There weer two people in the panel that interviewed me. They asked me questions related to Data structures and algorithms, Operating Systems and DBMS. There were also a few competency questions like why do you want to join Cognizant. are you willing to relocate to any part of the world if given an offer etc.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Cognizant in Oct 2011
Interview
First, i had a phone interview to check my background.
Second i had a human resources interview to re-check my background and a little conversation in english.
The same day i had an interview with a manager that told me about testing, what was it and if i was interested in joining a testing project after the 3 month trainee was over. I said yes.
Another day i had to get the personality test, took about an hour, and another personality test web-based.
Then, an online english test