Qualcomm On-Campus Interview Experience(2019)

Round 1: ONLINE ROUND: 3 sections, 20 questions each(Time: 30 mins/section: 90 mins overall, Contains negative marking)

Section 1: (Aptitude) : Questions were from topics like: Time, Speed and Distance, Time and work, Number Systems(Basic level), Boats and streams, Trains, Averages, mixtures, Probability(1 question:basic level), permutation and combinations. Practicing solved questions from RS Agrawal for these topics is more than enough.

Section 2: (C Programming MCQs): Output finding questions from topics like pointers, switch case(eg: what if ‘case’ is written inside an ‘if ‘ condition), data types, functions, linked list based fill in the blanks code snippets, and some vague ambiguous questions.

Section 3: (Core CS MCQs): Basic questions of CS from topics like OS(synchronisations, memory management), Computer Organisation(set associative Cache memory: calculating tag memory size), DBMS(1 question was from B+ tree), SQL queries, and basic data structures and algorithms(time complexity etc).

Preparation tip: For section 2 and 3 practice questions from GeeksForGeeks as much as possible, in each section solve at least 14-16 questions correct(THERE IS NEGATIVE MARKING IN THIS ROUND SO ATTEMPT QUESTIONS ONLY IF YOU ARE CONFIDENT ENOUGH). Practice solving questions faster as time alloted may not be enough for some students. There might be sectional cut-off so attempt all the sections equally.

Round 2:(Technical Round-1): 

• Coding: Basic questions like: WAP to find loop in a Linked List, finding merging point, removing loop etc,  WAP for race condition.(I was able to solve all the questions)
• OS related question: Since Real Time Systems was written in my resume, the interviewer asked me questions like difference between conventional and real time sys, types of real time sys, what is priority inversion and priority inheritance.(Explained in detail by giving examples)
• Asked me to explain C memory map, the interviewer gave a program and made me point out which variable goes to which part of memory.(Explained him correctly).
• Asked me what are the different intermediate files while compiling and running a C program.
• WAP to find whether a machine is little endian or big endian.(Explained him my approach, but he stopped me while I was trying to code it)
• Apart from this, general discussion on my projects and resume.

Round 3:(Technical round 2):  In this round the interviewer was friendly and first asked me to introduce myself.

• Bit-Manipulation question: swap MSB and LSB of an integer, asked me to code it.(Explained him my  approach and again he stopped me in between while I was writing code)
• Gave me one aptitude question on time, speed and distance.
• Asked me about my biggest fear of my life.
• Virtual functions
• functions overloading, overriding.
• Detailed discussions over my projects.
• Asked me whether I had microprocessor as my  subject or not.

ROUND 4:(HR Round): Just like any other HR interview:

• Tell me something about yourself.
• what makes you different from other candidates.
• strengths and weakness.
• biggest challenge faced till now.
• Why do you want to join Qualcomm.
•  what is the name of recently launched 5G chip of Qualcomm.

For HR round specially read about the company’s background and products of that company, be prepare to ask some questions about the company or your role in the company.

There were few panelists who were grilling candidates in topics like OS and there were questions like write a code for implementing autocomplete text box. Some panelists were also asking general puzzles (solving 20-25 puzzles from geeksforgeeks is enough), questions on macros in C, inline functions etc.

Technical Round Preparation tip: Be ready to face questions on your resume. Read interview experiences on geeksforgeeks as much as possible. Don’t say I dont know to any question, at least try and explain whatever your approach is to the interviewer and think out loudly for every question. The difficulty level of questions depends on which interviewing panel you get. Having systems and  hardware oriented projects in your CV would help you a lot in Qualcomm interview process.

Result: 6 students were selected including me.

Thanks to geeksforgeeks for providing every possible resource for interview preparation that too in such an organised manner.