Infosys Interview Experience for Power Programmer Role | HackWithInfy 2020

HackWithInfy is basically an online competition conducted by Infosys. It includes two coding rounds and a hackathon.

Based on the performance in the coding round, further stuff is decided. The top 100 students get the opportunity to participate in the hackathon and additionally, they get an interview call for the Power Programmer role. The top 500 students get an interview call for the Power Programmer role only and around 2000 students get a call for the System Engineer Specialist role.

ROUND 1 (Online Coding Round): It was conducted in the month of March and it was hosted on the HackerEarth platform. We were given 180 minutes to solve. It consisted of 3 coding questions and solving two questions was enough to qualify for the next round.

ROUND 2 (Online Coding Round): It was conducted in the month of May and it was Web-Proctored. The twist Infosys made this year was that we were not able to see if our solution was passing all the private test cases. All we were able to know if the solution is giving the correct answer on a particular test case. So after solving two questions I devoted the rest of my time just running on the various test cases and checking if the output is correct or not.

Questions in both the coding rounds were easily available upon searching at Google. Either they were from codeforces or they were from the previous year’s HWI.

During the month of July, we were given the result of round 2. I was in the top 500 and so I got an interview call for the Power Programmer role.
The interview process and hackathon were completed in the month of August for the top 100 students. Our interview was in the month of September.

ROUND 3 (Technical Interview 1): Got the mail 3 days before. It was a 1-hour interview and was conducted at Infosys’s own platform known as ‘Infosys Meridian’. I joined through the given link. There was only 1 panelist.

• Introduction
• Then the interviewer shared coding questions in the chatbox and asked me to share the screen and start writing in any compiler.

Question No. 1: There is a tree with n nodes and n-1 edges. Two integers u and v are given. We need to find the number of valid unordered pairs. The definition for a pair to be valid is given as follows: A pair {x,y} is valid if, in the shortest path from x to y, if both u and v are present then in this path v must come before u. If u or v or both are absent in the path then the pair is valid. 

Sample:

Input: n=3, u=1, v=3  edges were 1<->2,  2<->3
Output:5

Explanation: (Explanation was not given by the interviewer)
The given tree:
1
 \
  2
   \
    3
Valid pairs: 
{1,2}: v is not present, therefore the pair is valid
{2,1}: {2,1} and {1,2} are considered diff pair
{2,3}: u is not present, therefore the pair is valid
{3,2}: {2,3} and{3,2} are considered diff pair
{3,1}: Path from 3 to 1: 3->2->1. In this path v (i.e 3) comes before u (i.e 1)

It took me around 15 mins just to grasp what the question was asking me to do. After coding for the next 45mins I was able to run my code. The interviewer gave me 3 test cases in the chatbox and asked me to run my code on them. It gave the correct answers in 2 test cases and wrong in the 3rd test case. 

(After the interview I came to know that this question was asked to 4 of my friends and none were able to run it).

Question No. 2: Given a 2GB file and RAM size is 1GB. Design an algorithm to sort the file. This question was known to be and I quickly explained my algorithm to the interviewer.

Question No. 3: This question was from DBMS. What is equijoin?  What is the rank function in SQL? Even though I studied DBMS and worked on SQL, still I was not aware of both the questions and eventually was not able to answer.

The Interview lasted for around 75 mins. And with some basic HR questions like goals, aspiration… the interview ended.

ROUND 4(Technical Interview 2): I don’t know if technical round 2 was there for all the students, but from my college, all were called for another round. In this round also there was only one panelist. Questions were from DBMS, OOP, projects, internship experiences……….

We got the result after 10 days, and I was offered a Systems Engineer Specialist Role,

TIPS:

• Make sure in the coding rounds you open the test link in the browser with no other tabs opened. If by mistake your browser gets minimize or you open a new tab, you will be getting a warning. If they find out that multiple tabs are opened and you switched your tab( by mistake or intentionally) the test ends immediately.
• Be confident at what you answer and the most important thing be genuine and honest.

  Good Luck!!!!