InfoEdge is a popular Internet based company offering services in various fields such as recruitment (naukri.com), real estate (99acres.com), matrimony (jeevansathi.com), and education (shiksha.com). InfoEdge conducted a virtual recruitment drive in my college on 24-25 Aug 2021 for the role of Software Engineer along with 6 months internship. Around 60 students were eligible to sit for Round 1.
Round 1(Online Assessment – 94 minutes): This round consisted of coding and MCQs. The 2 coding questions were-
- Medium Level (25 min)– A list of items of different types (integers) in an array is given. The program asked to remove k different types of items from the array such that the resulting count of items left is minimized and print this value. This can be done by finding the frequency of each type of item, sorting the frequency array and then removing the k largest frequencies. Adding the left over frequencies gives the minimized count of answer. For eg, if the array is 1,2,2,3,3,3 and k is 2, we can remove 2 and 3, thus removing 5 elements in total.
- Hard level (45 min)– Given 3 vectors, A (the time taken to make the ith sweet), B (the sweetness level of ith sweet), C (the time that the sweet-maker has to make the sweet). We had to return the max sweetness level of the sweets that can be made by satisfying all the conditions. I used binary search and greedy approach to solve this problem.
There were 4 sections of MCQs- Linux Environment, Cyber Security, SQL & Data Structures. Each section had 6 MCQs to be done in 6 minutes. Those who were able to solve both the coding questions (10 students) moved to Round 2. Interviews were scheduled the next day.
Round 2 (Technical Interview 1): I introduced myself. Then I was asked to explain my projects and tell about my previous internships. I was asked the programming language I was familiar with. I told Java. Then 2 coding questions were asked-
- https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-elements-present-first-array-not-second/amp/ – I solved it using Hash Map.
- https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/longest-palindrome-substring-set-1/ – First I explained the brute force approach orally and then I started writing the optimized code. I solved it in O(n2) time and O(n2) space complexity. The interviewer pointed that space complexity could further be optimized. But since I had explained my code quite well, he ws satisfied and moved ahead.
Few theoretical questions were asked one after the other I was able to answer all.
- What is a Linked List? Differentiate between arrays and linked lists.
- What is a binary tree? Give a use of trees in real world. What advantage do trees have over other data structures?
- Explain the ACID properties.
- What is Normalization? Explain the 3rd normal form.
- What is a Semaphore?
- What is the use of final keyword in Java?
- Why are strings immutable in Java?
This round lasted for around an hour. 5 students including me moved to the next round.
Round 3 (Technical Interview 2): I introduced myself. Then a coding question was asked-
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/print-all-triplets-with-given-sum/amp/– I started coding the optimized solution directly using 2-pointer algo. The interviewer was satisfied with O(n2) time complexity. This was followed by theoretical questions-
- What is a deadlock? What are the conditions which cause deadlock?
- How to prevent deadlock?
- Difference between delete and truncate.
- What are indices in database? What is the underlying data structure used? (I told BST mistakenly. The interviewer prompted that you are close to the answer but I wasn’t able to recall B-Tree.)
- Name the layers of OSI Model order wise.
This round lasted for around 45 minutes. 3 students including me moved to the next round.
Round 4 (Technical Interview 3): I introduced myself. Only one coding question was asked in this round. It was based on Stack. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/expression-evaluation/amp/. It took me around 30 minutes to code. When I compiled the program, it showed run time error which I was unable to debug as the program was very lengthy. But then I went on to explain the entire program, each line in detail along with the logic and an example. The interviewer seemed to be satisfied.
This round lasted for around 40 minutes. 2 students including me moved to the HR round.
Round 5 – HR Round: This round was a friendly discussion with a senior HR which lasted for 10 minutes. First I was asked to introduce myself and tell about my projects and internships. Then the following questions were asked:
- Why do you want to join InfoEdge?
- What makes you feel you are satisfied in your job?
- Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
- Do you have any questions regarding InfoEdge?
After an hour, I got the message that both the students were selected :). All thanks to the useful resources on GeeksforGeeks for both theoretical subjects and coding.