Publicis Sapient came to our campus in August 2021 for a trainee engineer role. The process consisted of 3 rounds an online coding tests, technical, and HR interviews.
Round 1: Coding Round
It was on 14 August after the pre-placement talk. Coding round hosted on the HackerRank platform. There were two 2 questions. To be solved in 90 minutes.
- First was an easy question.
- The second was of medium difficulty. The question was something like There is a chess pawn and it can move only in one column, every tile has a value assigned to it. the pawn can move either one step or steps equal to any prime number ends with 3. We had to maximize the sum of values of all tiles we step on
17 were selected for Domain interviews
Round 2: Domain Interview:
It was on 29 August at 10 A.M. I was asked to introduce myself. I was asked about my projects and then there was a discussion about my internships. Things like what things I did and what tools I used for integration and testing etc. I didn’t use any tools like that so I told my interviewer that we did not use any tools and everything was manual. This was followed by questions on Testing, Software Engineering, OOPS, and OS. I was not able to answer all the questions but I tried to figure answers on spot. The question I remember was:
- What is unit testing?
- What is AGILE software development?
- What are software design principles?
- They asked me about some terms of Software Engineering but I didn’t remember them at that time
- Difference between thread and process?
- What is deadlock? How do you solve deadlocks?
- What scheduling algorithms do you know?
- How does a website work?
- How would you work on a website that is in production?
- What are states and events?
- What are the principles of OOPS?
- Some questions related to java I don’t remember
I was not able to able to answer all the questions completely but I did have a rough idea of most of them. If I wanted to guess the answer to a question I said ” I don’t know the answer but taking a guess” I was able to figure out a lot of answers like that.
- I was asked if I know DSA I was honest and said that it was not my strong point.
- He asked me that if I knew sorting and searching algorithms I said I knew search algorithms. I mentioned binary search and I was asked to explain it.
- Then I was asked to choose a language of my choice and open the IDE of my choice. I chose Python and VScode. I made the class but it had some syntax errors, I asked them if I can use google he refused. He asked me to run the code and there were errors as expected. He asked me about the errors I said that I know where the errors were and I didn’t know the syntax.
- He also asked me to code HTML. To arrange 3 divs in columns. I wrote the basic structure and used flexbox again most of it was correct but again I did not remember some syntax so it did not work. I was also asked what other ways to arrange 3 divs in columns I said that I only knew I flexbox and why I used it.
- He asked me if I had any questions I asked about the IoT projects they were working on and also asked if he had any feedback for me. This was the end of my technical interview.
6-7 people were selected for the next round.
Round 3: Core Value Interview
I got the link for this interview immediately after the first interview. I was asked about how did in my first interview I said it went okay and said I did some mistakes. He asked me what mistakes I said that I did not remember some syntax and had I had a rough idea about how most of the things worked but not exact knowledge. Then the interviewer introduced himself and asked me to introduce myself while he looked at my resume. I introduced myself and talked a bit about my family background and my robotics club and internship experience. Then he asked me some questions, the questions I remember are
- How I handle conflict
- What is the role of a leader?
- If an organization is doing well, who should get the credit?
- What was your proudest moment?
- You and two other teammates have made a proposal and now you have to make a final proposal, how would you convince your teammates of the final proposal?
- You have a call with a client and he is talking about something you have no idea on and he wants deadlines on the work, how do you respond?
- Is honesty always the best policy?
- What is your ideal day off?
- What is your decision-making process?
- Have you ever picked up slack for others?
- Where do you see yourself in 5 years? dev or management?
- If you have the option to choose between a project on IOT ( my interest ) and JAVA ( I don’t know JAVA) what would you choose?
- How do you measure your success?
- Have you made any mistakes?
- What are your weaknesses?
I answered most of the questions by telling stories about my experiences during coaching, during my time at robotics society, and the various competitions I participated in other colleges’ tech fests.
Result: Selected
5 people were selected and luckily it included me.
Tips: Be confident and honest. Try to focus on your strong points and don’t take too much stress. Always try to tell a story like I tried to link my answers to any of my projects, failed projects, and real-life experiences both in the technical and HR round.