Publicis Sapient came to our campus in August 2021 for a trainee engineer/SDE role. The process consisted of 3 rounds an online coding tests, one technical, and an HR interview.
Round 1(Coding Round): It was on 13 August after the pre-placement talk, regarding discussion on placement processes, doubt clearing, etc. Coding round hosted on the HackerRank platform.
There were two 2 questions. To be solved in 90 minutes. Both are of medium difficulty.
- Given an array of numbers, sort them in zig zag order.
- https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/maximum-area-of-a-cake-after-horizontal-and-vertical-cuts/amp/
I was able to solve both the problems and hence selected for the next round. Even solving one full and one partial was also acceptable to reach the next round.
Round 2(Technical Round): It was on 16 August at 11:30 A.M. I was first asked to introduce myself.
- The interviewer asked about my projects and my interest areas in development. This was followed by questions on Multithreading, OS, Computer Networks.
- Then, he asked almost every concept of OOPs in C++ (as I told that I preferably code in C++) including virtual functions, overloading, overriding, inheritance, etc. I was given real-life situations and using classes and objects, I have to implement them in code. He was also looking at my coding style, indentation, variable declaration, comments and was pretty much impressed by my code.
He asked almost 3-4 real-life questions to be turned into OOPs code.
Then, he was asking some computer fundamentals and about different techs if I am familiar/ worked
- Difference between thread and process?
- What happens when you write url www.google.com.
- How does a website work?
- What are the principles of OOPS?
- Basic protocols and networking
- How operating system works
- understanding of HTML, CSS and Javascript
- asking if I am familiar with Flask, Django, Node, .NET, Springboot, etc.
I answered pretty much all theory questions and clearly stated what tech stacks I am familiar with.
Round 3(HR Round): On the same day, I got an email regarding that I have selected for the next round to be held at 1:00 pm.
- I introduced myself and my areas of interest in programming. He was asking about my internships and problems faced, difficult situations, challenging tasks and how did I resolve them. Basically, he was checking on my soft skills, teamwork skills, and how I deal with workload and fast pace changing techs.
- Then he started asking situation-based questions that if any organization comes with an idea of developing a product, what potential questions I will ask him, what will be my approaches, what will be the target audiences etc. I was given time to think and form questions and ideas. The interviewer was very helpful and we had a discussion upon this.
- I answered most of the questions by telling stories about my experiences during an internship, group projects, etc. I was confident in answering and honestly related it with real-life incidences.
RESULT: Selected
Overall, it was a great interview experience. The interviewers were very friendly and supportive.
Tips:
- Be confident and honest.
- Try to focus on your strong points and focus on what are you good at.
- Do not get nervous as every human makes mistakes.
- Always try to tell a story like I tried to link my answers to any of my projects, internships, and real-life experiences in the HR round.
- If you are not familiar with a tech stack, say it clearly but do not give wrong assumptions.