Gupshup Interview Experience for Software Engineer (On-Campus) 2022

Gupshup visited our institute in the last week of February for hiring. As the Offered CTC of the organization was over the highest slab of our institute and institute criteria of 75 percent of total eligible and interested students placed was met, Most of the eligible students sat in the hiring drive of Gupshup.  

Round 1 – Online Assessment: Unlike other online Assessments which include MCQs, DSA-based Coding Questions, SQL queries, etc., it was a different type of Assessment. There was a single coding question asked and the time allotted to solve the problem was 3 hours. The problem was from the domain of OOPs and we had to implement classes for the given problem statement.

The problem statement had the following components:

• Business Problem: It looked like an actual problem, developers might face while working. 
• Business Solution: The business aspect solution of the problem was explained here. 
• Technical Solution Overview: In this section, the technical solution was explained(they told us the approach to the solution).
• Technical Solution Details: Here, The classes and their members’ functions that we were to implement(along the lines of a Technical solution overview) were explained. 

Input and Output formats, Scoring Criteria, and other details

I Don’t remember the problem statement now as it was pretty large and had a lot of details to play with.  

They provided you(for real) with the problem, the solution, the classes, and member functions and what they are supposed to do in the problem statement. It looks like it is a simple problem as everything is already provided, but it wasn’t. The main thing which I tested here was our attention to detail, level of understanding, and patience to solve a real-world problem. The implementation of the solution was pretty simple, anyone who understands the core concepts of oops can easily code it given that, they were able to understand what the problem is and what we want as the solution. 

I was able to partially score for the solution in about 2 hours. 

Around 90 students gave the Online assessment and 28 students got shortlisted for the next round and I was one of them. 

Tip: Attention to detail, ability to understand the actual problem and its solution and your patience were tested here. Being Patient and writing everything in a notebook, connecting the dots, and understanding the problem thoroughly was the key here. 

Round 2 – CV Screening, Manual Code Check: According to the HR, The CVs of all the selected students were screened and the code of all the selected students was manually read, checked, and graded by the team of Gupshup. The solutions were checked for plagiarism, code readability, implementation of the asked classes and member functions, etc. In a nutshell, it was kind of around that focused on eliminating the candidates. 

Out of 28 students, only 3 students including me cut the final round. 

Round 3 – Technical Interview: This round lasted for approximately 45 mins. It was a fairly easy one. For me, the round started with a basic introduction about myself. Then the interviewer sent me a google doc link and proceed directly DSA based questions. 

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/sort-an-array-of-0s-1s-and-2s/
• I don’t remember the second question but it was also a fairly simple Array-based question like the previous one. 
• Explain to me the difference between stacks and Queues and where are they used. 
• Implement the Stack data structure and its functions from Scratch. (As he didn’t specify either using LL or array, I proceed to implement it with Linked List.)
• What are hashmaps and how are they implemented? Follow-up questions were, will a hashing function always give distinct output? What are collisions and how can we avoid/solve them?

Then the interviewer asked me if I have any questions, I asked him what according to him could be the next big thing that can bring a revolution in the industry like the one ML/AI brought in. He gave a pretty satisfying answer about the scope of the work Gupshup does as an organization.

All the 3 candidates were selected in this round and the interview experience of the other 2 candidates was also pretty similar, standard Array-based coding questions were available on GFG, and Theoretical DSA-based questions and a bit about their projects were asked.  

In all, I liked the hiring process of Gupshup as instead of focusing on DSA-based knowledge only, They also focused on other aspects of the candidate which according to me are important for a person beginning his/her career in development.