CDoT came for the post of Research Engineer at IIT BBS. There were 2 technical rounds and 1 HR round
In the first technical round(online) they mainly focused on technical subjects. The following questions were asked in
Round 1(Online)
- What is a kernel?
- Difference between kernel and OS
- How mode bit shift happens(who does, how it does everything)
- Difference between privileged and non-privileged instruction, fragmentation, why the logical address is required
- Basics of oops-abstraction, overriding vs overloading with example
- Networks TCP error control works and the fields in TCP header and their use such as PSH, URG
Out of nowhere, they asked me about SDLC gave certain scenarios, and asked me to choose which model was good for this. It went on for around 40mins and I was shortlisted for the next round
Round 2(Offline round in front of 3 panel members)
They asked my favorite subjects and I intentionally kept Computer Networks at last as soon as they heard they gave me a scenario:
Suppose you are sitting in your lab connected to your institute’s internet. You have to gain access to a system in the CDoT organization.
First, they gave me a pencil and paper to sketch out my thought process which I did but after that, they handed me a laptop and asked me to gain access to the system on the spot. I was in a state of shock ( 1 minute of silence and staring was maintained from both ends). After 1 min I returned the laptop saying I didn’t have any hands-on experience but said we could make use of ping and they started asking about ping and all.
they also asked if you are asked to gain access to a system in your lab now, then how will you do it?
(I didn’t mention anything about Hacking or any such stuff in my Resume)
Coming to OS they asked
- Do shell scripting again handling the same laptop to which I replied I don’t have any hands-on experience.
- Then they asked certain commands in Linux (use of -g), how to compile using GCC and rename the .exe file , import libraries such as math.h from terminal
- What is ELF and where it is used
- Various other LINUX commands that I haven’t heard earlier
- Certain conceptual compiler questions
Programming they asked about
- RED black tree where it is used in real life
- Difference between struct and union and its use in real life
- Difference between calloc and malloc and new
- Create a structure with 2bit variable (using bitwise operator)
- Write a C code to add 2 linked list using a stack(stack has to be used) and explain all the complexity
- Write a C code to find the first 2 triplets whose sum is close to ZERO
- Various C output questions
- What is segmentation fault and write a program that will generate a seg fault and what and how it happens
Coming to projects they only asked about 1 project which they found relevant to their domain
Asked to go for HR round where I got an indirect confirmation of rejection.
(I never imagined being asked to hack a system during a technical interview for a company like C-DoT, especially since I have no prior experience.)
(Tip:always expect the unexpected and maintain a good CGPA to get shortlisted)