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Company interview guide

HCLTech interview process and practice questions

HCLTech's careers site describes its process as an application, shortlisting, a business or technical interview whose questions may include out-of-the-box queries, puzzles and problems, and an HR interview. For engineering freshers in India, candidates commonly report an online assessment before the interviews, and technical rounds that stay close to programming basics, their projects and, for infrastructure roles, networking and operating-system fundamentals.

As candidates commonly report it; it varies by team, level and year. Last reviewed 18 October 2026.

Practise a mock interview in HCLTech's styleWarm up free on these questions

The interview process

  1. 1Online application or campus registration, then shortlisting
  2. 2Online assessment for many fresher drives: aptitude, reasoning, English and coding or technical questions
  3. 3Technical interview on fundamentals and your projects; puzzles or problem-solving questions are possible
  4. 4Managerial or client interview (for many experienced roles)
  5. 5HR interview on goals, strengths and flexibility

Outside India

Candidates elsewhere more often report:

  1. Online application and recruiter screen
  2. Technical interview with the team; puzzles or problem-solving questions are possible
  3. Manager or client interview (for many roles)
  4. HR interview

What interviewers listen for

  • Integrity
  • Inclusion
  • Value Creation
  • People Centricity
  • Social Responsibility
  • Programming, database and networking basics, explained simply
  • Calm reasoning on puzzles and unfamiliar problems
  • Hands-on knowledge of everything on your resume
  • Willingness to learn new platforms, from cloud to infrastructure tools

Behavioral questions

  1. Tell me about a time you solved a problem nobody had shown you how to solve.

    A good answer covers

    • The problem and why the usual answers didn't apply
    • How you broke it down, what you tried and what failed first
    • The solution and how you checked it worked

  2. Tell me about a time you made sure everyone in a team was heard, including quieter members.

    A good answer covers

    • Who was being left out and how you noticed
    • What you did, such as asking for their view directly or changing how work was shared
    • What their input changed for the team

  3. Describe a time you chose to do the right thing when a shortcut was available.

    A good answer covers

    • The shortcut and why it was tempting
    • Why you didn't take it and what it cost you in time or effort
    • What happened as a result

  4. Tell me about critical feedback you received on your work. What did you change?

    A good answer covers

    • The feedback in plain words and who gave it
    • Your first reaction, honestly, and what you did next
    • The change you made and how it shows in your work now

Role and technical questions

  1. What is the difference between TCP and UDP, and where is each used?

    A good answer covers

    • TCP: connection-based, ordered and reliable delivery with retries
    • UDP: no connection, faster, no delivery guarantee or ordering
    • Examples: web pages and email over TCP; video calls, gaming and DNS lookups over UDP

  2. A server's disk is suddenly full and an application has stopped. How would you find what filled it?

    A good answer covers

    • Restoring service safely first, without deleting anything you can't explain
    • Finding the largest folders and recently grown files, often logs
    • A lasting fix: log rotation, clean-up jobs and a disk-space alert

  3. What is virtualisation, and how does it relate to cloud computing?

    A good answer covers

    • Running several virtual machines on one physical server through a hypervisor
    • How cloud providers build on it to rent computing on demand
    • How containers differ from virtual machines, briefly

  4. Talk me through how you'd find duplicate records in a table using SQL.

    A good answer covers

    • Grouping by the columns that define a duplicate and keeping groups with COUNT above one
    • Using ROW_NUMBER to mark extra copies if you need to remove them
    • Checking what counts as a duplicate first, such as case or spaces in names

  5. How would you estimate how many laptops an office of a large company in Bengaluru replaces each year?

    A good answer covers

    • A structure: number of staff, laptops per person, typical replacement cycle
    • Adjustments for new joiners, breakages and people leaving
    • A final estimate with a quick sanity check

  6. A user says an application works on a colleague's laptop but not on theirs. How would you troubleshoot it?

    A good answer covers

    • Comparing the two: versions, settings, permissions, network and the account used
    • Reproducing the error and reading its message or log
    • Fixing one difference at a time and confirming with the user

  7. For experienced candidates: walk me through how an incident is handled on your project, from alert to closure.

    A good answer covers

    • How it's detected and how priority is decided
    • Your role in fixing it and keeping the client informed
    • The review afterwards and one change it led to

Why HCLTech? Fit and HR questions

  1. Walk me through your background and why you applied to HCLTech.

    A good answer covers

    • Your degree or experience and the skills you're strongest in
    • One project that shows how you solve problems, with your part in it
    • A specific reason for this role, in under two minutes

  2. Why HCLTech, and which part of its business interests you most?

    A good answer covers

    • Some knowledge of its businesses: IT and business services, engineering and R&D services, and software products
    • The part you'd like to work in and why
    • How it fits the skills you have or want to build

  3. Are you comfortable with shift work or support roles at the start of your career?

    A good answer covers

    • An honest answer, with any real constraint stated clearly
    • What you'd learn from support work, such as how systems fail in practice
    • How you'd like your role to grow after that

  4. What would you like to learn in your first year here?

    A good answer covers

    • One or two concrete skills or certifications linked to the role
    • How you plan to learn them, on the job and on your own
    • A question back about how the team supports new joiners

Tips

  • HCLTech's careers site says interview questions may include puzzles; think aloud, state your assumptions and check your answer.
  • Revise networking and operating-system basics as well as coding: many roles are in infrastructure and support.
  • Know every tool on your resume well enough to describe one task you did with it.
  • Have a clear, honest answer on shifts and the kind of work you're open to before the HR round.
  • Read about HCLTech's main businesses (IT and business services, engineering and R&D services, HCLSoftware) so 'why HCLTech' is specific.

Practise it out loud

A mock interview asks the way HCLTech's interviewers are known to, follows up on your answers and gives you a report. The warm-up is free, needs no account and checks five of these questions as you answer.

Practise a mock interview in HCLTech's styleWarm up free on these questions

About this guide

Written by Orbit from HCLTech's own public pages and what candidates commonly report. Orbit isn't affiliated with HCLTech. The questions are practice questions in the style of its interviews, not questions taken from them. Processes change, so check the job post and what your recruiter tells you.

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