Persistent Systems | Software Engineer | Pune | Sept 2020 | (On-campus) Selected
I had appeared for Persistent Systems written test + Interview in September 2020 through college placement for a Software Engineer role. Total 3 rounds conducted.
Eligibility Criteria
Year of Graduation – 2021
Candidates from BE – CS and IT streams only
No live ATKT in any subject (Theory / Practical / Oral / any other) at the time of the selection process
10th and 12th Marks: Minimum 60%
BE Min 60% (aggregate till 3rd Year)
Round 1(Test MCQ + Coding): So Round 1 will be easy for you if you are good in aptitude (it comparatively had more weightage).
- Along with it, as usual, there were some MCQ on core subjects like Operating system, Computer Network, Object-Oriented programming, and C/C++ Programming. These were not very hard questions; you just need to know the basic concept. Then there were 2 or 3 Coding questions. I got all of them correct. They were easy, or we can say easy to medium level. So around 20-22 people cleared this round.
- Among these those who cleared this test with very high marks were asked to appear for an advanced coding test for a higher package. So, again 2 coding questions for 1.5 hours were given one was easy one was medium. I got first fully correct and missed only 2 test cases of a second.
- I remember the first question was like this: There is a line defined on the X-axis with (x1, x2) as x1 as starting and x2 as the ending point of a line. Now you will be given an array of such lines A [ [x1, x2], [x3, x4], [x5, x6] ……] and you have to find max no. of overlapping lines. Only one among 20-22 appeared, cleared this advanced coding test (that was me).
Round 2(Technical): Round 2 was after 5 days after the results of round 1 and lasted for almost 50-55min. There was only one person who is going to interview me.
- First, he introduced himself and asked to introduce me.
- He asked to Tell me one of the good projects that I have done in the past. I told him I have done loan prediction using machine learning, but that was a bad idea. I knew machine learning only that much that I have used in my project. So, I was able to explain that much, but he then started to ask some in-depth questions which I could not understand. So, it kind of backfired me.
- Then he said “Assume I have employees/hosts in my office interconnected via a network, and I am giving you the data such as their bandwidth, total data consumption, etc. in an excel file to you at every hour runtime. Can you think of any machine learning model/algorithm that you can use to utilize this collected data??”. I was clueless, but I tried something and that wasn’t helping a tall.
- Then he asked me to rate myself in the following skills on a scale of 0 to five. C/C++ Programming 4/5, Databases 3.5/5, Object-oriented Programming 3.5/5, Operating systems 4/5, Computer networks 3/5, Data structures 4.2/5
- Then he asked one or two questions from each. First asked to write node structure for a binary tree then asked something about an inorder, preorder. Then some question/discussion on pointers and dangling pointer problem. Then said he has a record of 50 employees how to store in c++. I said we can store them in objects or in files. I wasn’t very sure he was looking for that answer only on some another. Moving to next he also did ask something about B/B++ trees. Then one SQL query he asked from databases and a difference between having and where clause. Then asked for a 64-bit processor what is the largest memory size we can have. And that is all about it.
Round 3(HR): This round lasted for almost 15 min. There was an HR.
- So firstly, they asked me to introduce myself.
- Tell me a little bit about you, your background?
- What are your strengths?
In the end, he extended the offer to me and told me the onboarding formalities will be started shortly. Currently, I am working as an Intern at Persistent systems. (I am in the final Semester right now)
Personal Opinion: Overall, I would suggest preparing the resume and at least one project very thoroughly with code. Core subjects like Programming Concepts C/C++ OS, CN, DBMS should also be thorough (even though we know concepts, but sometimes we could not phrase them in proper words so keep this also in mind).