Cashfree Interview Experience (On-Campus) 2022

Cashfree visited our campus in August 2022 for FTE for their Bangalore office. CGPA criteria were 6.5 and above.

There were 5 rounds.

Round 1 (Online Test – Hackerrank): It was an online exam that had MCQs related to CS fundamentals and 2 coding questions (I don’t remember).

Around 16 people were selected and I was one of them.

Round 2: (Technical Interview – Hackerrank, 1 Hour): This was a DSA round, the interviewer greeted and introduced himself and asked me to introduce myself. The interviewer pasted two questions in total on the hackerrank platform (the interviewer and I share the same screen) and asked me to read and understand the question. 

Question 1: Consider two arrays A and B where each consists of n integers. In one operation:

Select two indices i and j (0 <= i, j < n)
Swap integers A[i] and B[j]
This operation can be performed most k times.

Find the maximum number of distinct elements that can be achieved in array A after at most k operations.

Question 2: Consider array A. The cost at an index is defined as the number of distinct elements that are present in all the elements left to the index (including the element at the index). The cost of the whole array is defined as the sum of costs at all indices.

Find a permutation of the array A, which would give the minimum cost of the array.

Example: 

A = [1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 3, 1, 3, 2]
Cost of A = 1 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 21
A possible permutation of A = [1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3]
The cost for this would be 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 3 = 16, 
which would be the minimum possible cost possible.

Tips:

• The problems look pretty easy but during the interview, we might be nervous and might not get an idea to solve the problem. In such cases, it’s okay to ask the interviewer for a hint and proceed forward. Do not give up, keep trying.
• If you do not get the most optimal solution right away, it’s okay to discuss the brute force and start building on it. It is better to have some solution than none.
• Keep the session interactive. Let the interviewer know what is going on in your mind.
• I could not get the most optimal solution for the first question right away, I discussed the brute force which had a time complexity of O(n^2), and coded it out for which 13/15 cases passed. 
• As I was discussing my approach with the interviewer, I got another idea, discussed it, and coded it out which had a time complexity of O(n).
•  All of the test cases passed and moved on to the second question.
• The second question was straightforward, arrange the elements based on the frequency in descending order.
• Finally, the interviewer asked me If I had any questions, I asked him about the company, about his work, and asked for feedback.

Round 3: (Techincal Interview – Hackerrank, 1.5 Hours): This round had nothing to do with DSA but more on how strong are your CS fundamentals (DBMS, OS, CN).

• It was more of an interactive discussion rather than a normal question-and-answer type interview.
•  The interviewer greeted and introduced himself and asked me to introduce myself. 
• The interview started out with what are SQL and NoSQL databases and as I was discussing the databases, it gave the opportunity for the interviewer to connect the things I have told to a different topic.
•  This is how we were chaining through the topics and finally ended up at OS.

The interviewer mainly went through:

• SQL and NoSQL databases.
• Can you join collections in NoSQL databases like how we do in SQL databases?
• Foreign Keys in DBMS.
• How can you make the access of data faster in a database?
• What is indexing in a database?
• What is the difference between having multiple processes and multiple threads?

These are some of the topics I could remember.

Tips:

• Try to go into depth, when you are using some terms, you need to be able to answer anything the interviewer asks about them.
• It’s ok if you could not answer something. At least try to answer it in your own logical way and what would you think about it.

Finally, the interviewer asked me If I had any questions, I asked him about the company, about his work, and asked for feedback.

Round 4: (Managerial Round – Hackerrank, 50 – 60 mins): This round was more of a resume review round. The interviewer greeted and introduced himself and asked me to introduce myself.

• As I was introducing myself, I was talking about my interests and hobbies, being Game Development.
• I also had a course project for which I had to use this skill of mine. 
• The interviewer was very interested in this and started asking me some questions about this project. 
• He also asked me some general questions about some questions related to game development like How are collisions between objects dealt with? 
• With, and how do you represent an object in the 3D world? 
• If you were to design the game engine how would you do it?
• Finally, the interviewer asked me if I had any questions, I asked him about the company, and about his work. 
• Since he had some similar interests, I asked him if he plays any video games.
•  He said he owns a PS5 and was looking forward to the new spiderman game!

Round 5: (Hiring Manager Round – Google Meet, 40 – 45 mins): This round was a general talk with the interviewer,

• The interviewer greeted and introduced himself and asked me to introduce myself.
• He asked me some general questions. One slightly concerning question he asked was “I have interviewed a few of your friends and I notice that your CG is a little less, can you tell me why is that?” 
• I told him about my positions of responsibilities for which I had to spend a lot of time and also told him that I have tried not to just stick with my college academics, and explored what life had to offer me. He was pretty chill about it.
• Finally, the interviewer asked me if I had any questions, and I asked him a couple of questions related to the company.
• All of these were really fun! they were all interactive and the interviewers were really friendly and helpful throughout the interviews.
• All I would like to say is please be interactive, and never give up.