I got info about HackWithInfy in the 3rd yr 6th semesters at end of 2019. So I’ve registered as soon as possible using my personal mail ID. There was a total of three rounds in it. I made sure before taking the test for every round I get used to the environment. They usually provide a test environment to get used to that interface.
ROUND 1: I attended round 1 and there were 3 questions for 3 hours. I tried my best to solve most of the questions using arrays as I was well versed with them. This was not the case with many of my friends and I’ve even heard people say they got questions based on list and other data structure formats. I solved 2 and the 3rd with partial test cases passed.
- 2nd question was a pattern-based question in which I used trial and error by giving my own input instead of the actual test cases and the advantage here was I can see the expected output for my input even though my output is wrong. With that, I figured out a pattern and formulated one equation to solve it.
- Here’s one more Question set to practice for round 1: https://akashwho.codes/blog/hackwithinfy-round-1-experience-with-questions/
- Soon I was selected for 2nd round.
ROUND 2: Almost all the process in 2nd round was same except that they won’t be showing any test cases. So in this, we are on our own. They didn’t show even how many test case passed.
- Here’s the pattern for round 2: https://prepinsta.com/hackwithinfy/round-2/
- Since I can’t see how many test passed I made sure that my code doesn’t have any bugs and ended up in compilation error. At least it runs. The questions were somewhat easy and I’ve tried all three questions and submitted the test in 2.5 hrs instead of utilizing the full 3 hours. I also made sure that long parameters are passed instead of int so the programs work for long integers.
- With this, some days later I was told that I got selected for SES – System Engineer Specialist(Currently DSE – Digital Specialist Engineer) role from both the company and via the placement team from my college.
- After a month-long break, the company presented a pre-placement talk in August 2020 and told the interview process will start in 10 days.
- They also gave a list of topics to prepare that they might be asking during the interview. After that I didn’t receive any mail for over a month. But meanwhile, during this, I used to ask a lot of interview experience to those people and try to prepare the hr questions they ask to them. To get a clear view, naukri.com has an AI-based tool that provides answers for most of the HR Questions and we just have to feed in profile details. Else you can prepare on your own scripted versions too.
ROUND 3(Technical + HR Interview): Around September 17th-18th I got a mail saying the interview is on the 25th. And I started panicking day by day as the time got reduced.
- I also started revising back the core subjects. I asked for more interview experiences especially on technical questions and I also had a mock interview with my known senior who works in Microsoft and arranged one of his colleagues in the same company to act as HR. They both acted as HR for the mock interview and it helped me a bit to calm down and to focus on where I lag.
- The following next day on 25th the interview was scheduled on 12 pm. I made sure I was in formals and groomed well and smiling.
- I waited till 12:30 and the link didn’t work so I started mailing to the support team and asking another telegram group where all the interview selects were there from all over India. Finally, I contacted my placement cell and they contacted HR and told me that it was postponed and they will contact me. Soon I got a call from HR saying my interview is rescheduled for 4 pm. So I attended that. Since this is my first interview I was nervous on one side.
The interview process went this way.
- Tell me about yourself. Replied. Highlighted few points from the resume.
- Tell me about my internship project. Answered. Before I completed answering he interrupted me and went for the next questions. Also he didn’t ask anything about projects since he asked about internship.
- Data Structures-based questions. (Since I mentioned in my resume) no coding was asked but the basic theory concepts on what is Data structures? why it is used? where it is used and types and their definitions, etc., I guess he was not satisfied with my answer since he last told me that “I think your area of interest is not Data structures but it might be your fav. Subject what you are saying is inside the content of the book, if it is your area of interest you might have researched more into it …”. I started losing the hope from here on.
- He also asked me questions about cloud computing. I mentioned this in my resume and I didn’t prepare well for it. But managed to answer somehow. If I don’t know any I mentioned I don’t know to him frankly.
- Few HR-based questions. Will I be going abroad? Answered saying doing recognized certifications (Eg: Cisco, Microsoft certifications) is better than doing an abroad course.
- Will I be quitting anytime in the future? Answered.
- Why am I a good team leader? Answered.
- Surprisingly he asked whether I was aware of current affairs and asked me to explain the situation about the farmer’s bill dispute and where do I stand. I answered. I also mentioned him the points only I was aware of and told him honestly I don’t know what exactly the 3 bills are. But gave an overview of it.
- Then he asked me, do I have any questions for him.
- I was already prepared with few questions for him. One was about the company co-founder’s comment. “Mr. Narayana moorthy the co-founder of the Infosys gave a statement 2 days back that work from home isn’t effective. What do you think of that? And how was experience and will you be preferring it?” He answered.
The interview got over. He said to wrap it up. I was kind of surprised the interview got over in 20-23 mins. Also he didn’t ask me any coding-based questions or java questions.
As per the experiences I got from the telegram group, most students said it took approximately a Minimum of 40 mins to complete the interview and most of the interviews got a coding questions. I regretted after the interview that I should have asked “why he didn’t ask me any coding questions?”.
12 days later I got the result from the college placement cell saying I got selected for the same role.
There is a total of three roles Power programmer(currently Specialist Programmer) role, SES role, and SE role. Those who did well in round 2 got selected for the power programmer interview. Those who didn’t qualify for PP role might be offered SES role or SE role. The same goes for me too, i got selected for SES role but if I haven’t done well i might have been pushed to SE role or not offered.
References:
PP – Power Programmer
SES – Systems Engineer Specialist
SE – Systems Engineer