NCR Corporation Interview Experience for SDE (On-Campus)

Round 1(Online Coding – Platform: HackerRank): Date: 12th Oct 2021

• 20 MCQ’s based on OS, DBMS, Data Structures and Algorithms
• Two Coding questions based on number theory and strings.

Coding Question-

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/equilibrium-index-of-an-array/ (Modified version of same question)
• Don’t remeber exact question, but it was based on Array data structure.

Total time allotted was 90 min, there was no sectional time limit

28 students were shortlisted after this round.

Round 2(Technical Interview – Platform: HackerRank): Duration: 1hr+10 min.

Interviewer was pretty chill, firstly he made me comfortable by asking basic questions about me, pune and about my day. 

1. Given a standard question on file handling. (i wasn’t able to solve this question completely as after fy i never revise file handling). But still the interviewer was okay with this.
2. Question:  largest sum contiguous subarray. link-https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/largest-sum-contiguous-subarray/. I told both brute force solution and optimize solution(Kadane’s algo). Finally coded optimize solution.
3. Question: find all the repeating alphabets in a given string. I firstly discussed the brute force solution and finally discussed the optimized solution(using hashmaps).finally coded optimized solution. He then cross-questioned me on how hashmap works internally, and also about hashcode. I answered both the questions.
4. The next question was new/unexpected for me, when he asked me to test whether the given object is a potato or not? So I have to list different parameters for distinguishing a potato. So, I told about parameters like its color, shape, weight, dry or wet, presence of bud, by cutting we can check whether any kind of deformation is there from inside and many more……..but he was expecting more parameters.
5. Then he told me in detail about what company do, what kind of products they build and what role i will get if i get selected.
6. Then the interviewer asked if I had any questions.

Suggestion: Don’t lose your calm, even if you don’t get your first question correct. Always keep list of good question ready to ask the interviewer at the end.

Received the mail for next round after 1 hr.

Round 3(Technical Interview – Platform: Microsoft Team): Duration: 50 min.

Interview started with a basic introduction of me, project, and skill. Again no cross-question on this.

Firstly asked me basic question on oops

• What is oops? about 4 pillars of oops and real-life example
• Difference between encapsulation and abstraction? With real-life example
• Then he asked me to code an example where encapsulation is used.
• Method overloading v/s Method overriding, along with examples (he asked few cross-questions)
• Discussion on Diamond problem in inheritance and how to solve this in java.
• Difference between java and C++
• Linked list V/S array list. Which is more efficient

Then he moved to DSA.

• Asked me to check if a given string is palindrome or not via 2 methods->  firstly by 2 pointer approach and second by recursion. And I have to code both the approaches on my laptop eclipse ide.
• To remove duplicate elements from a linked list. Firstly I discussed brute force solution which was taking O(N^2) time complexity and then I optimized solution which solved the problem in O(N) time complexity. And he then asked me to dry run a few test cases. Finally he asked me to solve the same problem using recursion, here nearly I took 10min just to come up with an approach. In the end he was satisfied with my approach and asked me to code the same on eclipse ide.

Then he asked me few question on DBMS

• About data constraints
• Difference between primary and foreign key
• Difference between MySQL and SQL
• Difference between SQL and NoSQL

I was not able to answer 1 question in the DBMS section. Then the interviewer asked if I had any questions. I received the link for the manager round on the next day.

Round 4(Manager + Technical Round – Platform: Microsoft Teams): Duration: 40 min

• There were 2 interviewers, one lady(Manager) and one gentleman(Technical interviewer).
• It started with my introduction, then we had a 5-10 min discussion on my project, git, GitHub, and a few cross-questions on machine learning, about the algorithm that I used in my project.
• Then ma’am asks me to tell more about the achievements that i have mentioned on my resume. It seems she was impressed with my achievement section.

After this, sir started asking questions on data structure, os, oops, and java. There were a lot of rapid-fire questions, below I’m mentioning a few of them, as I’m not able to recall all the questions.

1. what is the default length of ArrayList? how does the length of ArrayList increase internally?
2. question on string pool?
3. what is thread and multi-threads
4. what is stack and its application
5. What is class memory and heap memory
6. Basic question on linux and ubuntu
7. What is hashcode? How does it get generated internally? Can we generate our own hashcode?
8. difference between == and .isEquals()?

And many more. I was able to answer 80-85% of all questions. Anuj bhaiya’s DSA 1 course was very helpful in answering a few questions.

After this basic HR questions like ->

• Why NCR?
• Why do you want to shift from the electrical core to the software industry?
• What is your expectation from the company?

Then the interviewer asked if I had any questions.

• I asked the manager about her experience with NCR
• I asked the technical interviewer about technology that is currently used in NCR.

Round 5(HR – Platform: Microsoft Teams): Duration: 15min

• Firstly HR gave his brief introduction and then asked me to do the same. In the introduction I included non-technical stuff.
• Then he asked me about my fav sports ,I told tennis and then about my fav player, I told Novak Djokovic.
• Then we had a 5 min discussion on why he is the greatest player in the history of Tennis (Request to Nadal and Federer fans not to get offended ).

Final Verdict-Selected.

Total of 6 students were selected at the end.

Suggestion: As Non-comp students they don’t expect you to be expert in DBMS, OS, and CN. But you should be good with problem-solving, DSA, and OOPS.