Cognizant Programmmer analyst interview questions

Received an email saying that I was selected for interview. They were having by-invite job fair. I went through 3 face to face interviews, 2 technical and 1 HR. First interviewer asked about J2EE concepts, asked me to write code for Java beans. Also, asked about JDBC concepts, creating data connection and lookup etc. Second interviewer asked about Core Java concepts, serialization, Inline classes, marker interface etc. Certifications mean a lot to them, asked me if I have got any certification (Java, Oracle etc). The process went on whole day. Couldn't even get lunch in between. Had to wait a long for HR interview. Got offer 2 days after interview.

If I wasn't gainfully employed with a good salary and benefits, I would likely have taken this job. As it was an exciting product group among a strong set of software developers. But my job search goal was to find a position that was a step up from where I was now. I had been looking for a job that was a change from where I was at, but would still allow me to be in a leadership role (software manager, architect, or developer with a large scope). The position offered was for an individual contributor role. I knew I would be in for a long learning curve and long hours to ramp up on their code base and tools before I would be on par with the rest of the group.