So, Everything started in the first week of April 2021 and I along with my friends registered ourselves in the Flipkart Runway Program which was open for women in the 2023 batch. Around 14500 women across the country registered themselves for this program. After this, on 18 April there was an online quiz of 30 minutes containing 30 questions. The questions of the quiz were as follows :
- Questions related to predicting the output of the given program.
- Questions related to finding out the errors in a given program.
- Questions on Graph, time complexities, DBMS.
Also, there were some questions on Flipkart (e.g. where was the first office of Flipkart).
After a few days, on the official site of D2C, the results were declared. The top 154 out of the 14,500 candidates were selected for the further selection process. Yes, I was also in the top 154 candidates. After this, all the selected candidates were required to submit the SOP (Statement of Purpose). They also shared one Interview Preparation tips mail in which the interview process was mentioned and also the structure of the interview they also conducted one Interview preparation session to take our queries and doubts.
So, around 2 days before my interview I received my interview schedule and appeared for the interview.
The interview pattern was very simple. They started with my introduction and right after this, they gave me 2 DSA questions (one by one). The interview duration was 45 minutes.
So, The 2 DSA questions were as follows :
- Given a dictionary (nothing but a vector of strings) also given two words I was supposed to find the minimum distance between these two words in the given dictionary. I solved this problem in O(n) time complexity and the interviewer said that he was satisfied with the approach. So my task was to write the pseudo-code.
- For the second question the interviewer drew one tree (binary tree) and explained it to me problem just by drawing the tree told me to find out the special nodes that fulfill the conditions as described by him. I solved this problem by the extended version of preorder traversal and applied all the conditions in it. The interviewer again said that he was satisfied with the approach.
After the interview, I asked for feedback. He said, “YOU ARE WAY AHEAD THAN OTHERS”. This is exactly what he said. So, I started assuming my selection after the interview
After a few days on JUNE 1, I received my interview results. ………………… believe me, after giving a very good interview and solving both the problems within the duration and also with the best time complexity I couldn’t clear the interview.
But they put me in the SATISFACTORY_PERFORMER category (not EXCEPTIONAL_PERFORMERS — those who were selected for 2nd Year’s summer internship). Also, there was one more category (The Augmenters — who were out of the race now).
So, as a SATISFACTORY_PERFORMER they gave me a PPI ((Pre Placement Interview) opportunity (i.e. a direct interview opportunity) for their Winter Internship (Jan to Jun) OR next year’s Summer Internship (May-Jul) based on what’s allowed by your institute). They have also mentioned that “Subsequently, the PPI round will be conducted around the end of July — early August”.
After this, I was hardly having 1–2 months to prepare more for the 3rd year’s internship.
On 22 July, I again received an email from them, and in that, it was written that they were starting interviews on 23 July. Also, a form was attached it, in which there was one question saying “Are you comfortable giving an interview on the 23” and I chose “NO”. After this, I started revising everything that I learned so far. But on 24 July, around 11 pm, I received an email from them that “YOU HAVE YOUR INTERVIEW TOMORROW”. I was shocked, how could they inform me a night before my interview?
The next day, I again appeared for my interview (less confident this time because even after solving both the questions last time I couldn’t make it).
This time the duration of the interview was 60 minutes. Also, the level of difficulty of the questions was higher. The 2 questions were as follows :
- The first question was DUPLICATES IN BST. So I again came up with an O(n) approach using inorder traversal and then storing it in a vector and then just applying an “IF” check in it. She told me to code it. I completed writing my code within a few minutes. She then told me not to use any vector this time. I again came up with the approach in less than a minute. This time I just keep track of the previously visited element in O(1) space complexity. I again completed writing my code within a few minutes. She again made changes to the question she now told me not to print it as many times as it appears. For this, I used one more variable to keep track of the already printed answer. She now told me to dry-run this on the given test case. And she seems to be very satisfied with all of my approaches. I already took 10 minutes to code all three approaches and dry-running them.
- The second question was finding the longest substring with all the unique characters. I used the variable-sized sliding window algorithm to code it in the O(n) approach. She again seems to be very satisfied. Then I was again asked to dry-run the algorithm against the given test case.
After this, we had a 5–6-minute conversation about Flipkart and the work culture there.
That’s it, my interview was over in just 36 minutes out of 60 minutes.
So, On the same day around 11 pm, I received a meeting invitation. The title was “PPI DISCUSSION” Nothing else was written in it regarding selection or so.
The next day, I attended the meeting and got to know that yes finally I am selected.