National Instruments Interview Experience (On-Campus)

Round 1 (Coding Round): The platform for this round was glider.ai. There are 2 questions, both the questions were easy and the time duration for this round was 1hr 20 min.

Though the questions were easy, it was a little tricky to understand what it actually wants you to do. Both questions were from Array. 

1. A robot WALL-E wants to collect garbage in a colony (an array of 0’s and 1’s, 0 denotes no garbage, 1 denotes there’s garbage), it can detect garbage at distance (1 unit, 2 unit and so on iteratively ), but cannot detect which side (left/right). If in a case where WALL-E detects garbage but not the direction then it won’t collect garbage. Clearly, if garbage is present in both directions (at some x unit distance), then WALL-E will collect it. Given, the position of WALL-E in the array, you have to find maximum garbage WALL-E can collect.

   Note: If the starting position of WALL-E is at either end of the array, then surely it knows that if there is garbage, it must be in the rest array positions. For example, if WALL-E is at the left end (at 0), then if WALL-E detects garbage, then it will surely know that garbage can be found in the right direction.

2. Given an array of cabins (train) representing the maximum number of the person, it can accommodate. And another array, representing passenger position at the platform. You have to allocate the nearest cabin where a person can fit in. (do it for all passenger and print the result).

Only me and one of my classmates got selected in this round.

Round 2 (Technical Interview): Interviewer has formed some R&D team at NI. He was nice and very interactive. After the formal introduction, he asked me basic questions from Python like mutable and immutable data types. Questions were mostly from my previous projects and internship, like what kind of libraries I used, what was the motive of the project, what kind of difficulties I faced, and how I overcame it. Then he asked from object-oriented concepts like polymorphism, their types, and real-life usage. He asked about where can I use algorithms like a greedy, knapsack, prim’s, and Kruskal’s.

Round 3 (Behavioural): In this round, interviewers were mostly, interested in how you are behaving and responding in a given situation, that you may face as an employee of an organization. He gave certain scenarios mostly conflicting ones and asked me about my solution to overcoming it. They asked what I want after 5 years, and why so?. This round was a little longer because they were questioning back to back (questions mostly from the answer you give). The interviewer was impressed with the projects and my Github profile. Your innovative projects and ideas, really going to help you. Even if your theoretical knowledge is not that good.   

Round 4 (HR): This round was a combination of the technical and behavioral round. After the formal intro, he asked me one coding question.

1. Minimum Number of Platforms Required for a Railway/Bus Station

He asked me the approach to solve it and then the algorithm. At first, I was a little nervous and was solving it mistakenly with the wrong method (assuming it to be some similar kind of question), but he then helped me and gave hint that I am in the wrong direction. Finally, I was able to solve it. 

At last, he asked if I have any questions. I asked about the work-life balance and the benefits of joining NI. He smiled and cleared my query. 

I got selected finally.

Suggestion: You don’t need to be very much good at theoretical knowledge and definitions, just be good and innovative for practical life applications. Be confident and suggest your innovative ideas during the behavioral round.