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Sabre Interview Experience | NIT Patna – SDE

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Total 180 students appeared for Sabre onsite recruitment, Out of which 5 were selected. The process involved total four rounds. I will try to walk you through my experience and also give you some tips/advice for each round.

Round 1 – Online Test

Short Description – This round consisted of 40 MCQs and two coding questions. Webcam was ON during the process.

Details –  

MCQ section covered all the main subjects of computer science (DBMS, Operating System, Data Structures & Algorithm, Computer Networks) and range of aptitude questions from various topics (BODMAS, Permutation, Distance and time, Compound Interest, Data Interpretation, Percentage, Loss and profit, Time and days). Few MCQ consisted of predicting output of C programs.

Coding section had two coding questions. First question was of 50 marks (easy). Second question was of 100 marks (super easy).

Coding Question 1 statement – You are given an array of integers of length n. Find the value G for the array. G is the maximum value of the magic number for each element of the array. For some element A[i], the magic number is the maximum prime divisor of x, where x is the number of elements in the given array strictly smaller than A[i]. Magic number = 0 {if x is 0}, Magic number = 1 {if x is 1}.

Example 1 - 
Input -
A[] = {1,4,5,6}
Output - 5 

Explanation -
magic number for 1 => 1
magic number for 4 => 2
magic number for 5 => 5
magic number for 6 => 3

so g = maximum of all = 5

Note – Language is confusing but question is easy.

Solution – Sort the given array. Initialize g = 1. Start iterating from 1st index. Maintain a variable (LESS=0, because there is 0 element smaller than smallest element) to store the number of elements smaller than the previous element (A[i-1]). If current element(A[i]) is equal to previous element(A[i-1]) then LESS remains same, else if current is greater than previous element then LESS = i (if we are on index 4 and A[3]<A[4] then all 0,1,2,3 are smaller). Find the max prime divisor for the value LESS. If this value is greater than g, update it.  To find the max prime divisor for some number you may use divide till square root of number method. This isn’t the best solution but it was sufficient to pass all the test cases.

Coding Question 2 statement – You are given a string (sentence, may contain spaces) S1 and string S2. And a character variable C which can have value ‘Y’ or ‘N’. If the value of C is ‘Y’ , find if string S2 is present as a complete word in sentence. If the value of C is ‘N’ , find if string S2 is present in sentence S1 (not necessarily as complete world).

Example 1. 
S1 = “geeksforgeeks is the best” 
S2 = “geeks”
C = “Y”
Output : not present
Explanation : as the value of C is ‘Y’ so S2 should 
be present as a complete word.
S2 is present in S1 but not as a complete word.

Example 2. 
S1 = “geeksforgeeks is the best” 
S2 = “geeks”
C = “N”
Output : present
Explanation : as the value of C is ‘N’
so, S2 should be present and not necessarily
as a complete word. S2 is present in S1. So output is present.

Note – Constraint is pretty small (|S1|,|S2| <= 50) so it will pass easily.

Solution – Check if the S2 is present in S1 or not by considering each index (i) of S1 as starting position. If C is ‘Y’ then check additionally if the S2 is complete word ( { i-1 < 0 or S1[i-1]==’  ‘ } and { S1[i+1] == ‘\0’ or S1[i+1]==’ ‘ } ) 

Advice for this round –

  1. Most of the aptitude questions are easy to crack. No extra preparation is needed. But you may try a few data interpretation questions.
  2. Study time complexity analysis problems thoroughly.
  3. Study Operating System seriously.
  4. Don’t forget to practice SQL syntax problems.
  5. You may leave or give little time to Computer Networks.
  6. It will be better if you write unoptimized code in this round. It will help you in the next round when the interviewer will ask you to optimize your solution.

Round 2 – Technical Interview

Description – In this round interviewer asked me to explain the solution of both coding questions which I wrote in the previous round. He also asked to do time complexity and space complexity analysis of my solution. He asked if I can optimize my solution. I was already ready with an optimized solution. He asked a few questions about header files that I included in my solution. I have used the STL sort function so he asked me which sorting algorithm is used in the implementation of this sort function in C++ (I wasn’t able to tell this exactly).

He then asked a few questions about data structures and algorithms.

Q1. What is data structure?

Q2. Tell a short description about the data structures that you know.

Q3. What is your favourite data structure and why?

Q4. Tell a use case where a binary tree can be used.

Q5. Which is the best sorting algorithm?

Q6. What is the difference between stack and queue?

Q7. How can we implement stack using linked list and array? What is the difference in both implementations? Do time complexity analysis of both. Which is better?

Q8. What is an articulation point?

Q9. Few questions about the heap.

The interviewer then asked a competitive programming question. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/the-knights-tour-problem-backtracking-1/  I was supposed to write pseudo code.

He then asked my favourite subject. I told him the operating system. He further followed to ask a few questions from the Operating system.

Q1. What is a deadlock?

Q2. Essential conditions for deadlock.

Q3. Types of process scheduling.

Q4. He then gave a few processes arrival time and burst time and asked to schedule them using SJF and SRTF.

Advice for this round –

  1. Study DSA thoroughly.
  2. Prepare at least one of the four subjects (DBMS, Operating System, Data Structures & Algorithm, Computer Networks)
  3. Be ready with optimized solutions of the previous round coding problems.
  4. Be confident and accept your mistake humbly if you don’t know a few answers or you tell wrong answers.

Round 3 – Management Interview

Description – This round mainly focused on questions from project and internship. As the interview started, the Interviewer asked to introduce myself. I told only technical details about me in the introduction. He was disappointed. I asked for permission to introduce myself again, This time I told everything about me starting from hobbies and interests to technical knowledge I have.

Then he asked me to explain two of my projects. Followed by a few questions from the project.

Advice for this round –

  1. Be prepared for questions about your project.
  2. Be ready with an introduce yourself question but don’t learn it.

Round 4 – HR interview

Description – This is one of the most fun rounds where you discuss yourself. Every question and answer is about you. So this won’t be tough.

Advice for this round –

  1. Be ready with an introduce yourself question but don’t learn it.
  2. Prepare for all usual HR questions but don’t cram the answers.
  3. Be spontaneous.
  4. If you are asked to tell strength or weakness, tell yours and not the ones that you read on the internet. Also be ready with use cases which proves your strength.
  5. Do not contradict yourself.
  6. Be confident.
  7. Keep smiling.
  8. Special : If asked where do you see yourself in 5 years? Don’t tell the exact position or anything exact instead tell what you aim for. One of the possible answers can  be – “Being a college student and having no experience in industry it is near to impossible to predict the future but rather I can say that I am aiming to learn from highly experienced, innovative and creative employees of XYZ company. I am excited to learn from my team and develop my skill set.”

My verdict : selected

Good Luck


Last Updated : 17 Aug, 2020
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