IBM Interview Experience For Associate System Engineer (Off-Campus) 2023

IBM conducted a total of 4 rounds for the selection process. Which first 2 were online and the other 2 were offline mode.

Round 1: Coding round (online)

• 45 mins, 1 coding question.
• A total of 12 test cases, in which 11 test cases passed. ( to clear you need to pass at least 10 test cases)
• Medium-level question.
• Based on sorting, practice easy and medium-level leetcode and gfg practice questions.
• Ques: Elevator Floor Sequence
• An Elevator with its direction (up upwards, down downwards) and on which floor it standing is given. If the elevator is moving upwards, then it will stop only at the requested floors in the upward direction unless the topmost requested floor has been catered, after which it will move in the downward direction. If the elevator is Downwards and the person wishes to move in an upward direction, the elevator checks if there are stops on lower floors. If yes, it will continue moving downwards and cover all floors.
• Eg: UP, 6 (curr floor), [3, 10, 7, 8] (sequence requested)
• Output: 7, 8, 10, 3

Round 2: English Assessment (online)

• 4 sections – Fill in the blanks, Correct Spelling, One-word Definition, Synonyms
• Time Allocated – 10 mins.
• Try to answer as many questions as possible, you can skip questions whose answers are not known.
• No negative marking.

Round 3 – Group Discussion ( Offline )

• Topic: Android vs IOS
• Divided into groups of 8, as per the student count. The group was mentored by one of the HR of IBM.
• This was an elimination round. So try to speak with confidence and add your opinion. Take clarifications if required beforehand. Don’t be just a listener. If you don’t get any point, try to carry on the same point and take it forward with your experience or other example.

Round 4 – Interview Round (offline)

This was a Technical + HR interview. The Interviewer was friendly but the difficulty level was different for different candidates.

The questions I was asked were –

• Firstly he gave his Introduction.
• Tell me about yourself.
• What is the major difference between Mongo DB and SQL Databases? Which Database is better?
• Explain Sorting Techniques. He gave me a pen and paper and asked me to explain
• Bubble, Selection and Quick Sort with examples.
• Based on my projects. He asked – What is JWT? What is its use in a web application? Explain token.
• How are cookies different from tokens?
• He also asked me how I would rate myself in DSA. I rated myself as 6-7 as I can solve easy and medium-level gfg questions. Also mention that I took a crash course for DSA and practice gfg, and leetcode questions.
• As I mentioned problem solving in my resume. He gave me a question – there is a ball that is dropped from a height of 8m. The ball has the property of bouncing back to half of its height. What will be the total distance ( height ) covered by the ball?
• At the end, he asked. If I have any questions for him. I asked –
• Any feedback for me? (he didn’t answer this question)
• What technologies IBM is currently working on?
• Then he asked me if I was willing to relocate (south).

Final VERDICT – Selected

Tips:

• Other students also got questions based on oops, Java and software development and testing. So try to prepare well for all topics and core subjects. It depends on the interviewer on what topics he/ she will have more focus on.
• At the start, I wasn’t able to explain the sorting correctly, but the interviewer helped me and encouraged and told me to explain each iteration properly. After that, I was able to explain the main gist of all techniques.
• You should know your resume very well, if any questions are asked from your resume, you should be able to explain it properly.

All the very best!!