DE Shaw Internship Interview Experience | On-Campus 2020

De Shaw visited our campus Tier-2 college for hiring summer interns for the position of Quality Test Engineer intern in the first week of August 2020.

Round 1: Technical Test on the Hackerrank platform

• Aptitude Questions (20 minutes) hard level 15 aptitude questions.
• Technical MCQs (15 minutes) medium level 15 questions.
• Coding round 2 questions are given 1st is a medium DP question and had to solve in 10 minutes and the 2nd is a hard level DP question and had to solve it in 20 minutes. the questions are:

1. Medium level https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/problems/stickler-theif-1587115621/1
2. Hard level  https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/minimum-positive-points-to-reach-destination/ with a very slight modification, that we can also move in a diagonal direction)

Round 2: Technical Interview 1 CodePair Hackerrank

• Started with my introduction and then they asked me some of the very easy coding questions like check palindrome, the sum of 1st n numbers to boost my confidence.
• Then some very few easy questions on OOPS and Operating System, but as I have not prepared for the theory part so I was unable to answer almost 70% of the questions. Then they started asking coding questions in which first we have to tell the approach and then I have to write code for the same.
• Given a sum and you have to find the no. of ways to form that sum using only consecutive numbers.

For ex: sum = 21
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 (count = 1)
6 + 7 + 8 (count = 2)
10 + 11 (count = 3)
Ans: 3 (total counts)
I was able to solve this question using two pointer method.

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/word-break-problem-dp-32/ Word Break Problem. Firstly I tried to solve it using Trie but they are not satisfied and after that, I came up with the DP solution and they got satisfied and then told me to write the code. After writing the code we discussed time complexity and what else we can do to improve time and space complexity.
• At last, they asked me if I have some questions, and I asked about 5 questions about the company 

Round 3: Technical Interview 2 CodePair Hackerrank

• Started with my introduction and then some simple questions about the C++ template and STL. After that, they started asking coding questions-
• We have given a chessboard and there are two pieces on that one is a knight and the other is the bishop. And at last, we have to tell if the Knight can reach the given position or not.
• They told me to block the movement of the bishop by the positions of the knight.
• Approach: bishop moves in diagonal directions and knight in L shaped directions and initially their positions are fixed and whenever bishop and knight position coincides then this knight will become an obstacle for a bishop and hence they move in that direction is blocked.
• I was able to tell them the approach and they are satisfied also but I was unable to write the working code for the same. Due to this, I got stressed 
• you have given bombs and you have to find the min intensity of all the bombs such that you can skip max 2 bombs.
• I have told them the DP approach for this and they got satisfied also and then they told me to write code for it. And as I was stressed due to the last question, I made silly errors in my code and hence was unable to code this one also 🙁
• At last, they said ok we got it that what are you trying to do, Thank you. and the interview ended 

Verdict: Not Selected

Tips:

• Be confident and don’t panic even if you are unable to answer any question just try your best to answer the question.
• Always ask your queries about the company at the last of interviews.
• Communication skills matter a lot like the way you deliver or explain your answer.