HP Inc Interview Experience | On-Campus (Internship+FTE)

HP Inc visited our college in November 2020 for an internship plus performance-based PPO for Bangalore. The internship is of 6 months duration.

Round 1: Around 300 students gave round 1. It was a 1 hr test. It was held on hirepro platform. It had 2 sections :

1. Aptitude
2. Technical

The technical MCQs were medium-hard since the answers were very close to each other.

50 students made it to round 2.

Round 2 (60 minutes-technical): 1-1 Face to face interview. Was asked questions from DBMS. Difference between lock and semaphore. Was asked to write a code: A variation of merge sort (don’t remember the exact question). Discussed in-depth deadlocks. Discussion about volatile storage, its need, what would happen if it was not present. What is its need if I have 24hrs of power on? Asked about big O complexity.i++ vs ++i.Which is faster and why.

Round 3 (45 minutes-Managerial): Asked about OOPs concepts, their applications in the real world. Explained each of them with suitable examples. Gave two puzzles:

1. Puzzle 7 | (3 Bulbs and 3 Switches).
2. Puzzle | Elevator Puzzle.

I was not able to answer the 1st one, but he gave a lot of hints, and then I was finally able to guess. Then there were other questions like how would you manage a team, about projects, role in them, how did you convince one of your team members as she was more inclined towards preparation for UPSC.

Also, I had a good discussion of what a product based company is and how it is different from service-based companies.

Round 4 (30 minutes)-HR: It was a general hr interview.

1. Tell me about yourself
2. Your interests
3. What do you know about HP Inc?
4. Why do you want to work here?

The next day the results were declared. I was not selected but 5 other students got selected for Bangalore.

After an hour later, 7 people from the remaining 45 were again called for an interview for the Pune location. I was among one of them. Got no time for preparation.

Round 1 (Technical 1hr-1:30): Face to face. It was difficult compared to the previous rounds. I was asked in-depth from DBMS. I was asked to write an SQL code. A table was given. I had written it using the “WHERE” clause. The interviewer asked me to re-write using IN clause. Then I was asked to write a few codes and at the end asked to give the time complexities.

1. Bubble Sort.

2. Find if there is a subarray with 0 sum.

3. Given an array :

   3 2 2 1 5 2 3 5

   Delete all 2’s from it

4. Counting frequencies of array elements

5. Find the repeating and the missing | Added 3 new methods

6. I was asked about the OOPs concept.

7. Asked about polymorphism and its types.

8. Compile-time polymorphism

9. Write a code to show operator overloading.

10. Difference between method overloading and method overriding.

11. Threading, multilevel scheduling, and its drawbacks and how it can be overcome.

Round 2 (Managerial 60mins): Asked in-depth about my project. I was also asked to show it using the screen share. After that, the interviewer also saw the codes. Picked up lines and was asked to explain. Since it was a web development project, on the menu page, she asked me to add another menu and show her. Difference between get and post methods. Why I code HTML, CSS, bootstrap, etc, and why not react. What would I study web development when I could easily build sites using WordPress etc. If there is a huge project and I had to fix an error, how do I find out in which file the error exists? If suppose your manager comes and tells you that you have made a mistake and that your code is not working properly, how would you handle it? What would you do if you were placed in a team, where the work is monotonous and there is nothing new to learn and you have been placed there since you made mistakes in other groups before.

Round 3 (20 mins)-HR: This was a very friendly round.

1. Tell me about yourself, your hobbies, and interests.
2. I also told him since I had no time to prepare, I did not think the interviews went very well.
3. Since I said I liked helping the underprivileged and helping nature, he said that HP also made laptops using ocean-bound plastics. It was a very short and friendly discussion.

After hour results were announced, 3 people were selected, and I was one of them.