This year ChargeBee visited our campus in the month of September and allowed CSE and IT students to apply for their process. They are a great start-up which has a good work culture
The entire process consisting of the online test and interviews all took place on the same day, and results were also announced on the same day
Round 1:
1 hour round on hacker-earth consisting of 10 MCQs, and 2 coding questions
- The MCQs were of easy to moderate difficulty which had negative marking (+5, -2) and was based on aptitude like percents, a mixture of liquids, etc.
- The coding questions were of medium-level difficulty. One of them was based on dynamic programming related to finding partitions in an array. Very similar to this – https://www.hackerearth.com/problem/algorithm/measuring-weights-54c2dc75-b4ccf064/
- The second question was something I came across in 3-4 companies’ placement tests which were also hacker-earth tests. It’s called the maze runner, and the question is similar to this – https://www.techiedelight.com/find-shortest-path-in-maze/. Instead, here there will be two types of obstacles and we need to find the shortest path distance to reach the destination(matrix[rows-1][cols-1]) considering one obstacle at a time and return the shortest path distance for each obstacle.
About 150 students had sat for the first round. 40 students made it to the next stage which was interview rounds
Round 2: Technical Interview 1
- In this round, the interviewer first asked me to introduce myself and then asked me to explain my approach to solving both the coding questions from the previous round. I had made an error in the maze runner question and was given a chance to make a correction and try running some test cases again
- The interviewer questioned me about my choice of C++ over Java or Python, asked me the differences between python and c++. Few other C++ questions followed, like can we use main() instead of int main(), what is namespace std why do we need it, and what is a namespace in general
- I was also asked few managerial questions like what are good qualities of a software engineer and why I want to work at ChargeBee
- For some students, their basic Java knowledge was tested(difference between ArrayList and LinkedList, when to use ArrayList, etc.), however, I was not asked about Java.
- Overall they check your approach to solving both the coding questions and maybe some basic Java knowledge. Be thorough with the approach to solving the problems and explain them in an effective manner and you will move to the next round. You should also be able to handle sudden HR questions if you are asked.
Around 12-15 students made it to the second interview round which was held on the same day.
Round 3: Technical Interview 2
- Here they first asked me to introduce myself and my journey as a student. I gave my usual intro and spoke about my most recent project which I had done as part of my internship. They questioned me a lot about this project and how I implemented various aspects of it
- Next, I was posed with a coding question, similar to subarray-sum equals k. It was an oral discussion without any coding , and I explained the brute force and then optimal approach along with an example of how it would work
- The interviewer then asked me if I’m comfortable with OOPs and asked me to code out a basic OOPs layout for a description that she provided. It appeared as though it is a coding question, however, it was about the implementation of OOPs and to check if I can satisfy the requirements provided. It is very much doable if you are strong in OOPs coding side(in Java or C++ doesn’t matter which one) and are comfortable coding out an OOPs design.
- Following this, we had a database design-based discussion for a movie booking system. Here the focus is on what tables will be created, and how are they going to be related. As and when I was giving my answer the interviewer would throw more constraints at me and I had to link tables or create more tables to accommodate those constraints.
- Finally, the interviewer asked me if I have any questions, and make sure to ask questions here. It will not be appreciated if you do not ask anything. I asked her about her journey to reach the position she was in, and also about the work culture and tech stack used at ChargeBee
Tips:
- 7 students received the offer as final selects for an internship of 6 months following which full-time employment would begin.
- My tips would be to be thorough on what language you use to code, be sure of your approach to solving problems, have a decent knowledge of both theory and implementational side of OOPs, and don’t worry if you are getting stuck, speak out your thoughts and the interviewer will help you. Best of luck!