Hello there, In Oct’21 SRIB visited my college NIT Jalandhar for recruitment of SDE1 (6 Month Intern + FTE).
There were 4 rounds in total.
Round 1(Online Coding Round): Two coding questions were there which we needed to complete within 1 hour.
- The first question was based on the logic of Multiple Source BFS in Graph. There was some story was written I don’t exactly remember the question.
- The second question was the variation of Aggressive Cows (from SPOJ).
200+ students appeared for this round and 38 were shortlisted.
Round 2(Technical Interview 1): The technical interviews were held on Google Meet.
- The interviewer joined the meet and greeted me very politely, there was some small talk, and then he introduced himself (he was SDE-3 at Samsung R&D) and asked me to introduce myself.
- I introduced myself. Then he asked the story behind my username (Heisenberg) of coding profiles. I told him the story behind that, he responded in a very positive way.
- Then he started asking me which Data Structures and Algorithms do you know about – I said Array, stacks, queues, Linked List, Graph, Tree, Heaps, Dynamic Programming, Greedy, etc.
- He asked me about heap first and how heapify works and how will I implement the heap. I answered him the whole process and he was happy with my answer.
- Then he asked me which Graph Algorithms I know, I answered, DFS, BFS, Dijkstra, Bellman-Ford, Tarjan’s Algorithm, Floyd Warshall, Kosaraju, etc.
- He instantly jumped to the next question:
He said, “In mobile phones, you should’ve used pattern locks, so according to you how many different combinations do you think you can make while using 4 dots out of 9?”.
I answered with the logic of combination and applied the formula nCr.
He asked, ” Do you think that the answer you are giving is the total number of patterns you can make using 4 dots out of 9 dots?”
I answered, No, these are just the number of combinations but the number of permutations using 4 dots out of 9 will be much larger than the answer I am giving. He asked me to give the number of permutations in the possible combinations?.
I answered after calculating. He said, “Do you think this number is exactly the number of total patterns using 4 dots out of 9 ?”
I answered yes first and then changed my answer to no because there can be invalid patterns as well. He said, “Give me 1 invalid pattern you can think of?”
I answered that imagine dots as numbers from 1 to 9, then using four dots out of 9, the invalid pattern can be 3->1->2->6. He was happy and said you have good observational skills.
Then he said can you write a program to generate all the patterns using 4 dots out of 9. I told him the approach using matrix and backtracking. He said, how will you rectify the invalid patterns, I answered that, if some dot is in the same row/column/diagonal and have a distance greater than 1 from connecting dot, it will be invalid. He said good, but don’t you think while writing in a program it will be difficult. I replied, Yes and gave another approach using graphs. He was happy and then he said to write the pseudocode. I explained the pseudocode and he was impressed. - He asked me that, can I guess what will be his next question?
I said I think it will be something easy as he was grilling a lot. He laughed sarcastically and then jumped to the next question. - He said you have two cans one of 7litres and another of 5litres. Can you give me 10litres?
I answered it easily. Then he said now give me 11litres? It took some time and then I answered. (Standard puzzle right?)
He said now can you write a program that can give me the minimum number of steps to give me some volume (value given by the user) and you can assume the cans of 7litres & 5litres.
I was stuck for some time and asked many cross-questions to better understand what he wanted. Then given an approach using recursion, he was not completely satisfied so he gave a hint to me, and then I answered him it the way he wanted. - We already crossed the time limit, so he said do I had any questions for him?
I asked about the opportunities within Samsung and working culture.
I got the call after just 5 mins of the interview completed, for second round shortlisting.
Round 3(Technical Interview 2): The interviewer was late for around 10 mins. The interviewer introduced himself (he was SDE-2) and asked me to introduce myself.
- After the introduction, he asked me about my favorite CS subject – I answered, “Operating Systems, DBMS, HLD, and LLD.
He asked me about Thrashing, then he said how does the CPU knows in paging that it needs to execute which page, I explained the whole process of Logical Address and Physical Address and how MMU manages it. - He asked me a simple question of Linked list. He gave me input like: 25->30->20->12->35.
And said convert this to 25->35->30->12->20.
I gave him two approaches, and then he said to write the code. I wrote the code and ran it, he tested it on several Test cases and it was working fine. - He asked me a standard question of tree All Nodes Distance K in Binary Tree(https://leetcode.com/problems/all-nodes-distance-k-in-binary-tree/).
I gave him the approach and wrote the code as well. He was happy. - He said do I had any questions for him.
The interview was over and I was confident about the positive results but I did not get the HR call for further rounds on next day and I thought that the chance is gone. But after two days I got the call for further round and I was soo thankful.
Round 4(HR Interview): This round was telephonic for me. It lasted for 15 minutes.
- He asked my brief intro and said tell me something which is not in your resume, I answered “Travelling, video editing, and cooking.”
- He asked me my dream destination, I answered Bali. He asked, why? I answered that I think that place is full of peace and I can be very close to nature there.
- He asked me why do you want to join Samsung?
I answered him that as Samsung works in a lot of different domains, I think I will get a lot of opportunities within Samsung, also it is a very well-known brand in world, so I think Samsung will treat its employees in that way. - I asked him what is his personal experience about working at Samsung. He answered honestly and the interview was completed on a very positive note.
After 3-4 hours we got the results and there was my name as well, and I was in tears (first job ritual).
Tip: Samsung loves graphs, so be well versed with that, and learn everything with proper logic they will grill a lot, so mugging up will not help.
All the best!!!