The Online Assessment
Before you start
You need: Article 10. This is the round that happens before everything that article covers.
Time: about 25 minutes to read. Then two to three hours a week for four weeks, running alongside your normal study.
Learning objective
Know what the pre-interview online test contains, why it exists, and how to prepare for it in the smallest number of hours that reliably gets you through.
Topics
- Why this round exists at all
- What is actually on the test
- The aptitude patterns that keep repeating
- The coding problems that keep repeating
- How to practise, and for how long
- On the day
The round nobody warns you about
Everything in Article 10 — the screening call, the technical round, machine coding, HR — assumes a human has looked at you.
At most companies that hire freshers in volume, a human has not. Round zero is a timed online test, sat at home with a webcam on, usually 60 to 120 minutes, and usually before anyone has read your resume properly.
| Section | Roughly | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Quantitative aptitude | 15–25 questions | School arithmetic under time pressure |
| Logical reasoning | 10–20 questions | Sequences, arrangements, simple deduction |
| Verbal | 10–15 questions | Comprehension, grammar, sometimes an essay |
| Coding | 2 problems | Basic string and array work, any language |
Be clear about what this is. It is not a measure of whether you can do the job. It is a filter that takes four thousand applicants down to four hundred, and it is used because it is cheap to run, not because it is a good predictor. Companies that hire in tens rather than thousands often skip it entirely.
That has one practical consequence, and it is the whole reason this article is short: treat it as a gate to pass, not a skill to master. Every hour beyond what you need here is an hour not spent on the project that actually gets you hired.
But do not skip it. The failure mode is specific and common — a student finishes this programme, can build and explain a full-stack application, applies to twenty companies, and is rejected by eleven of them without speaking to anyone. Not because they were not ready. Because they had never done timed arithmetic without a calculator since school.
Quantitative aptitude
The same dozen patterns appear across nearly every company's paper.
| Pattern | The thing to know |
|---|---|
| Percentages | Increase, decrease, and successive change — a 20% rise then a 20% fall does not return to the start |
| Profit and loss | Cost price versus selling price; margin is on which one? |
| Ratio and proportion | Splitting a quantity; scaling a recipe |
| Averages | The weighted average, and what happens when one value is removed |
| Time and work | Two people, different rates, working together |
| Time, speed and distance | Relative speed; trains passing each other |
| Simple and compound interest | The formula, and why compound overtakes simple |
| Number system | Factors, multiples, HCF, LCM, remainders |
| Permutations and combinations | Order matters or it does not — that is the whole question |
| Probability | Basic events, "at least one" as one minus none |
| Mixtures and alligation | Two concentrations combined |
| Data interpretation | A chart or table, then four questions on it |
Two facts change how you prepare.
First, there is no calculator. You need mental arithmetic that has probably rusted: multiplication tables to twenty, squares to thirty, fractions as percentages (1/8 is 12.5%, 1/6 is 16.67%). Ten minutes of this a day for a month is worth more than any amount of theory.
Second, it is scored on speed, not difficulty. A typical section is 20 questions in 25 minutes — 75 seconds each. Nothing on it is hard. The pressure is entirely in the clock.
So the skill being tested is triage. Read a question, decide within ten seconds whether you can do it in a minute, and if you cannot, skip it and come back. Students fail this section by spending six minutes on question four and never reaching questions eighteen to twenty, which were easy.
Check whether the test has negative marking before you start — the instructions page says. If it does, do not guess blindly on what you skipped. If it does not, guess on everything you left blank in the last thirty seconds.
Logical reasoning
Fewer patterns, and they are more learnable than the maths.
| Pattern | Example |
|---|---|
| Series | 2, 6, 12, 20, 30, ? — find the rule, apply it |
| Seating and arrangement | Five students in a row, four constraints, who is in the middle |
| Blood relations | "My mother's only son's daughter" |
| Syllogisms | All A are B; some B are C; what follows |
| Coding-decoding | If SCHOOL is written as TDIPPM, what is CLASS |
| Direction sense | Walk north, turn right, turn right — where are you facing |
| Odd one out | Four items, one does not belong |
Draw the arrangement questions. Every one of them. Students who try to hold five students and four constraints in their head get them wrong; students who draw five boxes get them right. It takes twenty seconds and it is the difference.
The coding problems
Two problems, and they are far easier than the ones in the machine-coding round from Article 12. You write in any language the platform offers — write C#.
The recurring set, more or less complete:
- Reverse a string
- Check whether a string is a palindrome
- Count character or word frequency
- Find the second largest number in an array
- Check whether two strings are anagrams
- Sum of digits, or reverse an integer
- FizzBuzz, or a variant
- Find duplicates in a list
- Remove vowels, or count them
- Sort without using the built-in sort
Nothing here needs a data structure you have not met. A List<T> and a Dictionary<string, int> from Track 03 Article 05 cover almost all of it.
Here is the shape of an answer, in the house style — full braces, explicit types, no shortcuts:
// Second-highest mark in a class — the array version of a question
// you have already answered in SQL for the School results screen.
static int FindSecondHighest(int[] marks)
{
if (marks == null || marks.Length < 2)
{
throw new ArgumentException("Need at least two marks.");
}
int highest = int.MinValue;
int secondHighest = int.MinValue;
foreach (int mark in marks)
{
if (mark > highest)
{
secondHighest = highest;
highest = mark;
}
else if (mark > secondHighest && mark < highest)
{
secondHighest = mark;
}
}
if (secondHighest == int.MinValue)
{
throw new InvalidOperationException("All marks are equal.");
}
return secondHighest;
}
Read the input format before you write a line. More of these are failed on input handling than on logic — the problem gives you the count of students on the first line and the marks on the second, and a solution that reads them the wrong way round scores zero with perfectly correct logic.
The hidden test cases are the empty case and the duplicate case. An array where every student scored the same. An empty list. A single element. The visible example never covers them; the scoring does. You already know this instinct from the absent-student rule that runs through this whole programme — it is the same habit, applied to a toy problem.
How to prepare
Four weeks, two to three hours each, alongside your normal study. Not a block. Not instead of the project.
| Week | Do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ten minutes of mental arithmetic daily. One full aptitude section, untimed, to see where you are |
| 2 | Two aptitude sections, timed. Work through the patterns you got wrong, not the ones you got right |
| 3 | Two reasoning sections, timed. Solve five of the coding problems above in C# |
| 4 | Two full mock tests, timed, end to end, in one sitting. Solve the remaining coding problems |
Time every practice section from week 2 onwards. Untimed practice trains nothing that this test measures. If you can only do one thing from this article, do this.
Track which patterns you get wrong, by name. After two sections you will find it is the same three — usually time-and-work, probability, and successive percentages. Fix those three. Ignore your strong areas entirely; there is no prize for being faster at something you already pass.
Free practice is sufficient. IndiaBix, PrepInsta and GeeksforGeeks cover the aptitude and reasoning patterns; HackerRank and LeetCode's easy tier cover the coding. Paid courses for this round are not worth the money — the material has not changed in fifteen years.
On the day
- Test your setup an hour early, not five minutes early. Webcam, microphone, browser, a stable connection. Most platforms have a system check page; use it.
- Read the instructions page. Negative marking, whether you can move between sections, whether you can return to a skipped question. These vary by company and they change your strategy.
- Keep paper and a pen. Draw the arrangements. Do the arithmetic. Nobody scores this.
- Do not leave the tab. Most platforms flag it, and enough flags voids the attempt.
- Watch the section clock, not the total. Sections usually lock independently — time saved in reasoning does not transfer to quantitative.
- Spend the last two minutes filling in blanks if there is no negative marking.
If you fail one, it is not a verdict on you. Most companies let you reapply after six months, and the same student who misses the cut-off in August passes it in October having done nothing but time themselves. Apply widely enough that no single test matters.
Common mistakes
- Discovering this round exists during it
- Treating it as the real interview and preparing for it for two months
- Practising untimed, then meeting a clock for the first time on the day
- Reworking the patterns you already pass instead of the three you fail
- Solving the coding problem for the visible example only, and failing on empty input
- Sitting on one hard question for six minutes and never reaching the easy ones
- Guessing everything on a paper with negative marking
- Buying a paid course for a filter round
Practice
- Sit one full aptitude section untimed this week. Note your raw score and how long it took.
- From that section, write down the three patterns you got wrong. By name.
- Do ten minutes of mental arithmetic daily for two weeks — tables to twenty, squares to thirty, fractions as percentages.
- Solve five of the coding problems listed above in C#, in the house style, with full braces and explicit types.
- For each, add the empty case and the all-equal case before you look at anyone else's solution.
- Sit two full mock tests, timed, end to end, in one sitting.
- Find out whether the three companies you most want to apply to use an online round. Their careers page or a current employee will tell you.
You can now
- Describe what is on a fresher online assessment, section by section
- Say why it exists and what it does and does not measure
- Name the aptitude patterns that repeat, and which three you personally fail
- Solve the recurring coding problems in C#, handling the empty and duplicate cases
- Triage a timed section instead of sitting on one question
- Prepare for this round in four weeks without stealing time from your project
Review questions
- Why does this round exist, and what does that tell you about how much time to give it?
- What is actually being tested by a 25-minute, 20-question section where nothing is hard?
- Which two test cases fail most coding submissions, and why does the visible example never show them?
- What changes about your strategy if the paper has negative marking?
Next: back to Interview Preparation — the rounds that happen once you are through this one.