Qualcomm FTE On Campus Interview Experience (Virtual)

Qualcomm visited our campus on 28th Aug 2020. It was the first company of the placement season 20-21. They hired for both hardware and software profiles and open for both B.Tech as well as M.Tech (FTE and Internship). All rounds were conducted online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Round 1 (Written Test): There were 3 sections in a written test consisting of a total of 60 questions to be solved in 90 minutes. Please check all the instructions before attempting the exam, as some of us were thinking that it’ll be only 40 questions (based on interview experiences of friends, etc) and they were surprised to see 20 extra questions at the end.  It was conducted on HirePro platform – video proctored. Each section had 20 questions and 30 min

1. Section 1(Aptitude questions): Topics like Ages, Time and work, number series, Data Interpretation (6-7 questions), percentages, mixtures, and so on. Practice aptitude regularly as questions were not that easy. Solving questions from RS Agarwal, indiabix is more than enough to clear this section. 
   
2. Section 2 (C/C++ questions): This section had questions from c/c++ topics. Some questions were lengthy (especially questions involving pointers, function pointers), so try to see all the questions before you spend time on a particular one. Do easy questions first and keep the difficult questions for the end. You can expect some difficult questions as well. Do prepare all the topics – structures, union, enum, pointers, references, OOPS, and so on. 
   
3. Section 3 (Technical Questions): Questions from OS, Algorithms, Data Structures were asked in this section. Do revise your Gate notes and gate MCQ’s as sometimes you may get a numerical question from Job scheduling, etc. 

Overall this test was not so easy, I would say medium level round. So be prepared. 

Round 2 (Technical Interview 1 ~ 1 hr 20 min): Out of approx 200+ students, 58 were shortlisted for technical interviews. The first shortlisted 23 students 4-5 days before interviews. Later, they selected 35 more students just a day before the actual interview. I got a call one day before the interview. 

I had very little time to prepare for the PI. In this case, be calm and try to revise from previous interview experiences. The interview was scheduled at 8.30 AM with 2-panel members. (For most of the people, it was only one). 

1. They first introduced themselves and told me a few things about Qualcomm and then asked me to tell something about myself (formal introduction and academic work)
2. They gave me a code (It was basically taking a packet and calculating checksum on it. I figured it out at later point in time) and asked me to find out errors in it. We were discussing it for approx 20 min. They were finally satisfied with the proper working code. Some questions were as follows : 
   1. Returning ref of the local variable from the function.
   2. Declaring an array using constant passed to a function.
   3. They asked me to dynamically allocate memory and make appropriate changes.
   4. Question on where each variable will be stored.
   5. Pointing out errors and asking whether it is a compiler error or runtime error.
   6. About void pointer (since I allocated memory using malloc)
   7. Little Endian and Big Endian techniques.
3. Questions from Paging, TLB, Virtual memory.
4. What is cache flush and cache invalidate?
5. How TLB is implemented, what are the entries present inside a TLB?
6. Some discussion on the work experience I had.
7. Told me to write code: Adding one to number represented as an array of digits
8. One puzzle similar too: 100 people in a circle with gun puzzle.  Even though I was not able to solve it at first, he kept giving me hints, and hence finally I was able to crack the same.

That’s all for the technical round 1. He asked me if I have any questions for him. I asked him about his experience in Qualcomm and how it has changed his career. 

I was directly called for the HR round. Other people had to go through 2nd and even 3rd (in some cases) technical rounds as well. 2nd round was common for everyone. I am providing some of the questions asked to other students in the next 1-2 technical rounds: 

1. Code to reverse a linked list.
2. Code to reverse bits of a number.
3. Networking questions: TCP, UDP, OSI Layers.
4. About Embedded systems.
5. OS concepts like Semaphores, Mutex , Producer-Consumer Problem (with code).
6. Almost every student was asked a puzzle at the end. So do all the puzzles from GeeksforGeeks.
7. C/C++ concepts – dynamic memory allocation, void ptr, Memcopy, and so on.
8. Code to reverse an array (They do ask such questions as well).

Round 3 (HR): It was just a formality at the end. I do not think that they eliminated students in this round (again I am not sure). It was for approx 10 min. 

1. Tell me about yourself.
2. How was your interview experience?
3. Why Qualcomm.
4. Do you have any issues with relocation?
5. She told me a bit about the job location and job description.
6. Do you have a plan B?

That is all !! A total of 12 people was selected (including me) out of those 58. 

Confidence is the key. I had very little time to prepare for an interview still I was called directly for HR after the first technical round, so be calm and answer confidently. It is okay if you do not know the answer, honestly tell them that you do not know the answer. Keep your focus throughout the interview process. You might not spot a simple thing because of the interview pressure. Do not worry, they will give you hints for difficult questions – they just want to know how you approach the problem in front of you. I needed hints for many questions in the interview, but I was able to answer everything after that. So do not get discouraged even if you are stuck. They will support you in these cases – just do not lose the grip. All the best. 

I would like to thank Geeksforgeeks which played a crucial role in this success.