We received the recruitment process notification of Hashedin by Delloite in mid-May 2021.
Coding Test: The registered candidates need to clear the coding test. which was held around 20 May.
- There were 3 questions and the time is 1.5 or 2 hrs.
- I was able to solve 2 complete questions and some of the test cases of the 3rd question.
- On 26th May we received the list of about 20 shortlisted candidates for the further interview round.
Interview Round: My interview was scheduled for 29th May. I joined the interview on zoom.
- The interviewer introduced himself he was really nice and asked me to introduce myself. I introduced myself, he appreciated me and told me that he will begin with some theory questions.
- He asked 8 theory questions from subjects like DS, DBMS, OS. Questions were like ACID properties, Paging, Inheritance, Difference b/w Final, Finally, Finalize, one question from garbage collection, and a few more. I was able to answer about 5-6 questions out of 8 questions.
Then he shared a doc link with me and asked me to share my screen. He then gave me 2 coding questions on the doc.
- Write a function to check whether two given strings are an anagram of each other or not. For example, “listen” and “silent” are an anagram of each other. This was a really easy question and in a minute I got the naive approach and told my approach he said it’s a little expensive approach but allowed me to code it first. I wrote the code properly and it was able to pass all the test cases BUT then he asked me about it’s space and time complexity, I was not sure but I tried my best to tell the correct answer. He just said ok and asked me to optimize the solution. Here is when the problem starts with me, I was stuck and not able to optimize the question I thought for a couple of minutes but couldn’t find any way, he then gave me a hint of using HashMap, BUT I was not well prepared with HashMap (worst mistake). I knew that I can’t solve the question with HashMap hence, I just tried to convince him that I can solve this question in any other approach (in simple words I just ignored his hint). Another mistake it was. After few minutes I told him that this is the best solution I can give and he said okay. He then shared another question on the doc.
Till the time I became nervous but I was trying to keep myself calm and hoping that I would be able to solve the 2nd question better.
- Given an array of integers all numbers occur twice except one number which occurs once. Find the number which occurs once. Input = {3, 5, 4, 5, 3, 4, 7} Output: 7. This question was totally new to me. He asked me to think about the solution which is the least expensive (optimized). I started thinking about the solution, and don’t know why, I said that I can solve this using HashSet. He discussed a little and said “so you mean you can solve this using the same approach as in the previous question” I said “yes!”. But he was willing to get another approach and optimized one. Till the time I started to panic and taking long breaths to calm myself. I know I can solve this question but I was feeling very much under pressure. Then I started to code using HashSet (another mistake). After coding for few lines I got stuck at a point and realized that I chose the wrong approach I got very much panicked then. I eventually got blank for 3-4 minutes and just can’t do anything. I then decided to tell the interviewer that I can’t solve this and so I did, I said “sir, I am stuck” he misunderstood me as he thought that I am stuck with the compiler so he said “no problem just code it in the doc” I did not correct him. I thought a little more and said that I would like to change my approach (another mistake). Then after few minutes, I said “sir I don’t want to eat your time, if you want I can leave it here” he refused and told me to take my time (he doesn’t want me to give up like this). After that, I wrote some code and described the whole code and he understood it asked me space and time complexity.
He then asked if I have any questions, so I asked about the training and requested feedback on my interview. he did not say it directly but acknowledged me to improve my coding skills. He was really nice to me throughout the interview. I knew my interview was not good but his answer to my questions was like he may consider.
I have not received any mail after the interview, but it was a really good experience, and understood where I have to improve myself.
Tips:
- Do prepare DSA well.
- You should be knowing the highlighted topics of your subjects like ACID, Normalization, Scheduler, Paging, Transaction, Deadlock, session, etc.
- You must be having good knowledge and information about your programming language that how is it better and different from other languages and its uniqueness.
- If the interviewer gives you some hint don’t ever ignore it, if you can’t implement his hint just acknowledge him it would be better to tell that you don’t know instead of just ignoring him.
- Don’t just jump to code think well the approach and discuss it with the interviewer. Always ask a sensible question at the end of the interview if the interviewer offers.