Interview Experience | FRND

 Interview Experience of FRND, Bangalore

Role - Software Development Engineer (SDE-1 | Backend)

Package - 25 LPA

Experience - 1 year

It was completely the virtual interview.

It consists of 6 rounds.

 1. Screening Round

 2. Technical Interview (DS-ALGO)

 3. Technical Interview (Python / Django / Database)

 4. Technical Interview ( High level design )

 5. HR Round

 6. Final Discussion 

Round 1) Screening Round - 

• It was a Google Meet call with the Co-founder and CPO (Chief Product Officer) of the company.
• He asked me about my past experience and some trick behavioural/HR questions.
• It took almost 20 minutes.

Round 2) Technical Interview (DS-ALGO)

• It was the DS and ALGO round containing 3 medium to hard level questions related to Arrays, Dynamic Programming, Hashing, Graph, DFS, Geometry.
• The interviewer started with the introduction of mine and him and then ask me to share my screen with any code editor of my choice, and then he started putting questions 1 by 1.
• Question 1 - [Easy]
• Staircase problem - Given a stair with N steps, and we can either take 1 or 2 steps at a time. So we need to find the number of ways in which we can reach the top of the stairs.
• Started with the brute-force approach I gave him the most optimized Dynamic Programming approach and then he ask me to code it out, which I was able to do easily.
• Question 2 - [Medium]
• SubArray with 0 sum - Given an array with mix of positive and negative integers, we need to find if that subarray contains any array with sum 0.
• I started with the brute force approach of O(n^3) but then interviewer asked me to optimize it.
• After couple of minutes I was able to come up with the hashing approach reducing the time complexity to O(n), and code it out.
• Question 3 - [Hard]
• Given a rectangle in cartesian plan, starting from (0, 0) coordinate, and its top-right coordinate was (x, y). There are some circles inside the rectangle of radius 1. We need to find whether starting from (0, 0) coordinate can we go to the (x, y) coordinate without touching any circle or rectangle boundaries,  also without jumping to other quadrant.
• This was a trick question of graph , but I was able to solve it out quickly using DFS and then I explained my approach to the interviewer and code it out.
• This round was of 1 hr, but I was able to solve all 3 questions within 20 minutes along with code, by which interviewer was very impressed and we finished up the interview in 30 minutes only.

Round 3) Technical Interview (OS / Python / Django / Databases)

• This round was of 1 hr, and was taken by the company's CTO. He was a really strong technical person.
• This round was mostly about my previous project and my tech-stacks including Python, Django, Celery, WebSockets, ElasticSearch, Databases etc.
• He started with some OS questions - 
• Threads, 
• processes, and deep dive into it how they works internally, 
• need of threads, 
• need of processes, 
• their trade offs etc.
• Then started with Python questions, and again dive into the depth of the python starting from how python works internally to advance topics of python.
• Some of the Python Topics he asked in-depth are - 
• Python Interpreter
• Statically / Dynamic / Weak / Strong type language.
• Scope of python
• Mutability / Immutability use-case with functions
• Function Calling by value/reference
• Decorators 
• Dunder methods in depth.
• Async vs sync
• how to call async from sync, sync from async
• After this he jumped to the Django and Web concepts in depth.
• Some of the topics in which we had deep discussion are - 
• API polling, long polling in detail.
• Websockets in depth -
• channels, groups, event listeners
• how to send message from consumer to consumer
• how to send message from API to consumer
• how to send 1 message to all intended participants
• Trade off between websocket and long polling.
• Django -
• select-related and prefetch-related internal working and inside queries.
• how to do group by.
• request response cycle and middlewares
• code architecture and files
• Then he asked me some database questions which I exactly don't remember.
• Apart from 2-3 questions where I stuck, this interview went pretty well and he was quite happy with me.

Round 4) Technical Round ( High Level Design )

• This round was mostly about the high level design architecture discussion. He started first with my previous project high-level architecture from beginning.
• I explained him about the web-servers, application-servers, processes, load balancers, caching, caching strategies, databases etc.
• He wanted to check my knowledge on high level system design.

Round 5) HR Round

• This round was again taken by the same CPO of the company, and he was having a casual discussion with me. Also he asked some trick questions regarding the offer and some questions around it to negotiate it. 
• This round was of 15-20 mins.

Round 6) Final Discussion

• This round was taken by the CPO and CEO of the company, majorly CEO was talking to me. He was asking me questions related to my background and all. And then he shifted his focus towards the reason of me joining the FRND. And he really wanted to understand why I want to join FRND and not other companies like it. He was looking for some genuine, passionate and dedicated individual with some realistic answer.
• After having 10-15 minutes of discussion with me, he had some private talks with CPO regarding me for 5 mins excluding me from meeting, and asked me to join the meeting after 5 mins.
• After their discussion they decided and proposed me the offer and asked me if I have any questions regarding that.

Verdict - Selected ! 

:)

Interview Experience | PrimeDigital Global

Interview Experience of PrimeDigital Global, Noida

Role - Software Engineer (Backend)

Package - 9 LPA

Experience - 6 months

It was completely the online interview.

It consists of 4 rounds.

 1. Online coding test

 2. Technical Interview (DS-ALGO)

 3. Technical Interview (DS-ALGO + System Design)

 4. HR Round

Round 1) Online Coding Test - 

• This test was conducted on the HackerEarth platform.
• It has couple of easy-medium coding questions that has to be solved within 60 minutes.
• Questions were related to strings, array etc.
• I was able to complete both the questions within 30 minutes.

Round 2) Technical Interview (Face-coding)

• It is the live face-coding DS and ALGO round containing 1 medium-hard level graph, DFS, and recursion question.
• It was conducted on HackerEarth.
• There was a problem statement and we have to give the approach and code it out.
• The webcam and the code-editor is shared with the interviewers.
• Question - 
• Given a house, which have certain walls, in which the fire broke out. The speed of fire spreading to the exit of the house, is  equal to the speed of the man running out of the house. So we need to find whether the man is able to escape the house before fire or not.
• I was able to give the approach quickly but it took a lot of time to correctly code it out, because of the some HackerEarth compiler issues.
• This interview took around 3 hrs.

Round 3) Technical Interview (Face-coding + System Design)

• It is same as the first round, consisting of 2 questions. [ 1 hr + 1 hr ]
• 1st question is the DS-ALGO question, of hard level stack, array, recursion, topological sorting.
• Question - 
• You want to invite your friends to your birthday party, but you are tight on your budget, and your friends have their certain conditions that A friend will only come if B or C is coming, C will only come if A, B, D is coming, and so on...
• So we need to find the minimum number of friends we need to invite to our birthday party.
• I was able to give the approach and code the solution with a minor mistake, but that was corrected by the interviewer.
• 2nd question was a design question, where we need to design the WhatsApp application database with features like group messaging, read receipts etc.
• I was able to design the architecture for it and with a discussion on that with interviewer we improved our architecture more.

Round 4) HR cum technical- 

• This was the final round that includes a bit of technical discussion on previous projects and some HR and behavioural questions.
• The interviewer started with my previous project discussion and 1 project he liked so the discussion went deep into it. The project was an optimised algorithm that I wrote to fetch logs from 280 TB of database within 1 second, using binary search algorithm. So the interviewer was fascinated by this approach and I gained a good point in my bucket.
• After this there were some behavioural and situational questions to check the cultural fit and how can we handle different situation working with other team members.
• I was able to satisfy the interviewer with my answers and they were pretty happy with me.

     

My whole interview process took almost a week.

Verdict - Selected! 

:)

Interview Experience | IBM, Bangalore

Interview Experience of IBM, Bangalore

Role - Associate System Engineer

Package - 4.5 LPA

Experience - Fresher (Pursuing MCA)

It was an off campus drive by RTU(Rajasthan Technical University). Students came from all over the rajasthan. Eligibility criteria was 60%+ in 10th/12th/Graduation.

It consists of 5 rounds, each round was an elimination round.

 1. Cognify Ability Test

 2. Learning Agility Test

 3. English Test

 4. Coding Test

 5. Final Interview

Round 1) Cognify Ability Test - 

• This test measures the candidates ability through game based assessments including problem solving, numerical reasoning, verbal knowledge etc. 
• This test is of 30 minutes in which several games assessments have to be completed. 
• Each game is having their own time limits, and you have to be really quick in solving the questions, with the accuracy.
• So it is basically a mental ability game, that checks how fast and quick you can solve the problems under the pressure.

Round 2) Learning Agility Test - 

• This is the personality test, in which you would be given 50 paired personality questions to be answered in 10 minutes, and you have to be (agree/disagree) with the statements that are most true to you.
• This test measures the personality of the candidates, so be honest and choose the statements that describes the real you.
• Most of the candidates were eliminated in this round.

Round 3) English Test - 

• This test measures your proficiency in English. This test is of 15 minutes,  having negative marking as well, so be careful with your choice.
• It consists of questions from several areas of English such as- 

                a. Spotting errors in sentences.

                b. Spelling errors.

                c. Synonyms/Antonyms.

                d. Fill in the blanks.. etc.

Round 4) Coding Test - 

• This round consists of 1 coding question along with 5 MCQs from computer science fundamentals (database, operating system, networking etc). It was a 40 minutes test.
• This test was conducted on hackerrank.com.
• Coding questions were random and was of easy level. You have to write the code in any language you want, and your code will be evaluated against 7 Test Cases, and your code should pass those test cases.(I think atleast 50% of them).
• My question was - For each element in array, find if that element belongs to the triangular subsequence number or not. (Triangular subsequence is any of the series of numbers (1, 3, 6, 10, 15, etc.) obtained by continued summation of the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.)

Round 5) Final Interview - 

• After clearing all the rounds, you would be called for the final interview, taken by the senior person of the company. He is asking questions from my resume only, mostly focused on the projects i built. Since i have a lot of those mentioned, he was pretty impressed.
• Overall this round was pretty easy, if you are confident enough with your resume and projects.

       Pro tip -

• Make your projects yourself, don't copy them from internet.
• Don't ever lie on your resume.

After this round, documents verification and bio-metrics were done, after which we were free to go, and the final results were declared after 2-4 days.

My whole interview process took 12 HOURS , was very tiring and time consuming.

Verdict - Selected! 

:)

Interview Experience | Auriga IT, Jaipur

Interview Experience of AURIGA IT, Jaipur

Role - Associate Software Engineer

Package - 3.7 LPA
Experience - Fresher (Pursuing MCA)

I applied through college. It have 3 rounds.

1st round (Written Test)
It was very easy, having 3 coding questions, you have to write the code in any language you want. They were checking your problem solving skills.

After clearing this round, they called us in the office for F2F interview. It was one on one interview.
He didn't asked much from my resume, basically they want to check your analytical and problem solving skills, how you solve problems, what approach you use, how you think?

2nd Round (Technical) 
Interviewer was very cool and friendly, glanced my resume (impressed) then started -
First he asked all 3 questions from my written test, asked to explain and optimize the code more, give better solution. I did it.

Then he gave me a puzzle(1), sort of mathematical, basically checking my analytical skills, i solved it, then he further modified the same puzzle, i stuck a bit, but he gave me a hint, and i solved it after some discussion.
Puzzle - A cage have some Chickens(C) and Rabbits(R), total head count and total legs count are given, find number of chickens and number of  rabbits.
        Modification - Find the relation between C and R, to find the answer without solving.

Then he gave me one more puzzle(2), again checking the problem solving skills. I solved it, then he ask me to optimize it, i did it after some discussion.
Puzzle -  N balls are there, and a scale(Taraju) and 1 ball out of N balls, weights heavier than the other, How would you find the minimum number of comparisons required to find that odd ball?
     (although i gave him O(log n) approach, but he still asked me for further optimization).

Then he asked me about Tic-Tac-Toe game, and asked me to design the algorithm for that game (i.e., how would you implement it in code), he just wanted to see the approach. I gave him the approach, then he further asked me to optimize it more, i optimized it.

After that, he gave me one more puzzle(3) and i was asked to solve it, i solved it easily.
         Puzzle -  You don't have a watch, instead two ropes are there, each burns for 1 hour(60 mins),  having varying density (means you can't say that half of rope burns in 30 mins), you are required to calculate the 45 minutes. Do whatever you want with the rope.

Then he asked some deep questions from one of my project(Harry Potter's invisible cloak), he loves that one, i think he wanted to check whether i have developed it or not. I gave all the answers and satisfied him.

Then some casual conversations, He was very happy from me, and asked whether i have some questions. Then told about the company, and recommended me for the next round.

3rd Round (HR) 
The director of the company took this round, he was very friendly and cool guy, just having some friendly conversations with me, talking about my life, he was writing down some keywords out of my talks, then asked some questions from that keywords. It was pretty easy, just be friendly, calm, talk to him, and keep a smile. and its ok, if you are not fluent in english. :)

My F2F interview took up to 2 hours. (bit tiring :p)

Verdict - On the spot Selected !
:)