IBM Interview Experience for Associate Software Developer (On-Campus)

Round-1:

• For the first round, we had a Cognitive Aptitude Test. These cognitive tests comprised of various puzzles and lots of mental maths. It heavily challenged one’s analytical skills. One of the puzzles that carried a lot of weight was simply related to how fast you could do maths. So the puzzle starts off with an expression on the screen and we would have balloons rising to the screen, the balloons might have some value or an expression inside them. You will need to quickly compute the value of the expression and see which all expressions match the expression in the bubbles before the bubbles pop(within 1-2 mins). The remaining puzzles were basically, how to reach from one point to another using min number of sticks, or was it possible at all or not.

Round-2:

• Once the First round is cleared, we were to give a Psychometric Test. So, this is not an actual test and actually has no right or wrong answers associated with it. The questions are purely personal and you will be given 50 questions to answer. So an example question would be the statement- “My friends think I am creative” and there would be 2 ranges…Strongly Agree and Strongly Disagree. We will have to put the marker along the line nearest to the correct answer. But this test is tricky as it actually checks how consistent you are because in the latter part of the tests, you will have repeated questions but they will be framed differently. So if you mark differently for the same questions, that’s where companies filter off people with respect to Psychometric tests. So, be extra careful when attempting these tests.

Round-3:

• Once you have cleared Psychometric tests, you will have to pass a Coding and a Verbal Test.  In the Coding test, you have 1 Easy to Medium level problem and 5 MCQs related to Object-Oriented programming. Data Structures one must know – String, Arrays, Vectors, Graphs, Maps, Trees, Linked Lists.

Coding Question: Given a string of length n, find the numbers in the string and check if it’s an Armstrong Number or not.

• For the Verbal test, we would initially be given 2 mins and pairs of words on the screen where we have to select the word that is correctly spelled. After that is done, we will have to select synonyms of words given in blanks and have to fill sentences with the correct choice of words.

Interview Round:

• For the Interviews, we were asked generic Data Structures and Algorithms questions or projects related to what we listed in our resume and personal questions. There would be 1 to 2 Interview rounds depending on how one did in the first interview.

Interview DSA Questions:

1. Design a parking system using Object-Oriented Techniques.
2. Explain the difference between operator overloading and operator overriding.
3. Reverse a linked list using Object-Oriented language.
4. With respect to my resume, I was asked why I chose Node.js as my choice of framework for the backend. Why not Java?
5. With respect to my resume, asked me about the hackathons and my most complex project. What were the issues I faced while doing the project and how did I overcome them?