I got a PPI interview opportunity for the role of Digital Specialist Engineer after clearing the first round of HackWithInfy 2021. The first round was held on 9th May 2021 and consisted of 3 questions- 1 Easy, 1 Medium and 1 Hard. I solved one question completely and another question partially(I do not remember the exact test cases) in this round. My interview was scheduled for 17th July 2021. I was informed seven days before about the 40-minute interview.
The Interviewer joined the room and firstly introduced himself. Then :
Interviewer: Introduce Yourself.
Me: Told my name, college name, hometown, college location, the fact that I had to relocate there for study purposes, my stream, my technical field of interest.
Interviewer: Great. Let me think which code to give. Okay, write the code to input 2 strings and check if they are anagrams or not. You have 10 mins.
Me: Did in a couple of minutes. He checked with 3 examples and it was alright. Here is the code: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python-sorted-check-two-strings-anagram-not/amp/ (My choice of language is Python. Also he had no issues with it).
Interviewer: So you are in your 3rd year last sem. Do you know Computer Networks?
Me: No sir it was an elective subject in 5th sem. And so I chose Telecommunication Systems.
Interviewer: Alright. (Asked a couple of questions about my college syllabus as he also belongs to the same state).
Interviewer: Do you know what is Double Linked List?
Me: Answered. Only the basic definition was fine.
Interviewer: Do you know SQL?
Me: No not exactly, but I know some basic concepts of DBMS.
Interviewer: Okay. By any chance do you know what is Normalization?
Me: It is used to remove redundancies(i.e. repetitions) in data. Also I talked of the forms.
Interviewer: Tell about 3 NF.
Me: 2 NF – Transitional Dependencies
Interviewer: What is Transitional dependency?
Me: I tried but then I said “Okay I confess I don’t have a very clear understanding.”
He explained me and said No Issues you will learn about these at a later stage. Do research and try to know.
Me: Sure Sir.
Since I was from ECE he then asked me some questions from ECE.
Interviewer: What is the need for modulation or demodulation?
Me: In case signal has to travel long distances, the original signal might get tampered. So we modulate it to ease the transmission process and retrieve it accurately at longer distances.
Interviewer: Right right. What are the types of modulation? Do you know?
Me: Amplitude Modulation, Frequency Modulation.
He asked me to explain what happens in each so I said in AM the amplitude or Voltage is varied while in FM the frequency or Time period is varied.
Interviewer: Yes right. By any chance do you remember Avalanche breakdown? And its significance?
Me: Yes it happens in case of reverse bias of PN junction diode. At a certain Voltage we get a huge current and the graph steeply goes down so it is used when we need a huge current.
Interviewer: Okay! Next question, what is a transistor?
Me: It is an electronic device with lots of uses and….
Before I could continue he asked, Tell me it is a 2 or 3-terminal device?
Me: 3. Base, Emitter & Collector.
Interviewer: Great great!! Okay that’s all. It was great talking to you. Do you have any questions for me?
Me: Based on this what are the points I should work on further for improvement?
He gave me an honest very brief reply concluding with, Practice makes a man Perfect. And then he concluded wishing me a Thank you for your time. Have a great day ahead.
- Overall, this was my 1st interview. And I must say the interviewer was very friendly.
- He literally asked me to call him by his name(though I didn’t 🙂 ). In fact he focused on the fact that one should remember what domain you are actually studying for the 4 years and just because you are thinking of getting into an IT job does NOT mean you should forget the basics of your subject.
- It was clear that they emphasize on the fact how much prompt and honest you are, how much efforts you are willing to put, and NOT on how much you already should know when you sit for the interview. Even they know that the knowledge can be gained by anyone at a later stage(he even said so!), what just matters is how much enthusiastic you are towards it.
- So I would rather suggest be honest. No harm in that. And show your willingness to try and learn. THAT’S THE KEY.
Thanks for reading. All the best for your interviews.
P.S. Please ignore my mistakes as this is the first-ever article written by me.