Accolite Interview Experience (On-Campus)
Round 1 (Written)
Around 190 students appeared for the online test which consists of 30MCQ’s to be done in 30minutes, questions were basically from data structure, networking, dbms, and 2-3 questions of apti also. You need to pass out the cutoff in this round, also remember negative marking was there.
They shortlisted 12 students in this round.
Round 2 (Coding)
After that online coding round was there in which 2 questions were given in 1hour.
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Two strings i.e. one parent and one child string, you have to find how many child subsequences can occur in the parent string, there can be different combinations if a character repeats itself. For ex:
Parent[]= ABABDCAD
Child[]= AD
Then your answer should be 5.
I applied modification of LCS here and coded it. - Given a 2D matrix, you have to find maximum elevation of water and no. of ways to achieve it. Water can flow in all four directions only if value there is less than its own. Maximum value can be found out by subtracting the last value where you stopped from the value from where you started. Consider all elements of the given array and not a specific position.
I applied DFS.
They shortlisted 4 students in this round and I got lucky J.
Round 3 Technical Interview (1.30 hour)
I was the first to be interviewed.
- Tell me about yourself. Meanwhile he(interviewer) looked into my resume and asked about my projects.
I have done 3 projects so he started discussing first of them which was a TLB website,semester based library system made in PHP, he asked me to explain the working with proper approach and algo applied in the main module of allotment. It lasted about 25-35 minutes. - Then he asked me to implement APPENDIX of the book(thick one, cormen types 😛 ). He told me take your time and think. I first came out with hashmap and told him the approach and complexity, then he asked to optimize it, I told him that it can be done by dictionary based method and so I told Trie data structure with full code and complexity and he was satisfied. About 30 minutes discussion.
- Now the easy one, Tell whether a string is a rotation of another string in O(n). I wrote the code.
- One array based question was also there which I don’t remember.
Round 4 Technical Interview (2.30 hour)
- Tell me about yourself in detail, my goals etc.
- He then asked about my second project made in JAVA. He basically asked me to write Ajax module of that and then somewhat discussion related to hibernates and servlets and MVC model that I used in my project went on. (about 30 minutes)
- Difference between implementation and inheritance with proper example in java.
- 25 horses, find first 3 positions puzzle.
- You have to design a software for a big restaurant, all database, UI for manager as well as for customer assuming customer has access to Kiosk machine and can book the table, order and option of payment as well. He told to optimize table booking from manager point of view. I first designed the database and showed him, then I designed interface for both , he asked how to implement it in code, he was very particular in table booking optimization. I came out with BFS related algo, then he asked how customer can have option of various tables showing him many different positions in the restaurant and table number stored in db. I told it by code but it then become specific for a particular restrau he asked general solution, I said I can take input from manager in graph form. This discussion went on for about 45 minutes.
- Given a 1D array, you have to print multiplication of all the elements of array except that position element. There was a condition not to use division operator and solve it in O(n). I did it in 5 minutes, it was the easy one as I read it on geeks
- You are given two 1D arrays, one is of heights( h1,h2,…..hn) and other is of distance(d1,d2,…..dn-1). Water is poured in between the heights, you have to find maximum volume of water it can hold. I told him the approach by using STL map and vector. Then he asked me to write full optimized code considering all the corner cases.
- Given a row-wise and column-wise sorted 2D array, find a given element. Write code and tell complexity. Again on geeks
- Why should we hire you? They don’t want any bullshit of HR related crammed answer, they want genuine technical answer.
They took 2 rounds of all 4 candidates, then selected 2 for the third round, I was being one. 😀
Round 5 (Technical+HR) Interview (2 hour)
- Tell me about yourself, key strengths and examples justifying it.
- He was going though my resume and finally he asked about my last 3rd project of ANDROID, and saw running app installed in my phone, asked what I used in it, and why it is only static. I directly told him that I was not interested in android and it was the team project.
- After that from resume itself he asked about one of my achievements, and then I showed him my certifications that I was carrying.
- Then he asked about sql injection and dos attack and how to remove them, it was due to as I had mentioned hacking as a part of my extracurricular in college startup company kratikal.
- Then he asked my written online coding round second question, and the error in it as it was not submitted due to time limitation, which I knew and told him.
- Reverse a linked list firstly in iterative manner and then recursively also(strict with corner cases). Write full working code and analyze space and time complexity. It was easy, you can read it on geeks
- Given a sum, write a code to find a path in a binary tree from root to leaf whether it exists or not. And then he expanded it to m-ary tree finding the same. I wrote code for it also.
- Any questions from us? I asked about the work culture, technology and the areas that I have to work on and location 😛
I would suggest that your approach and concepts must be strong as they always give questions with some variations and tell them your thinking process and interact with them and ask more and more questions.