Sandvine Interview Experience | Off-Campus 2021

I applied for the placement drive off-campus through Naukri website but I don’t remember the eligibility criteria. Please refer to other writer blogs for the same. The test link was available in a few days soon after the application was verified by the employer.

Round 1(Online Test): The test was conducted on HirePro platform and consisted of 3 sections. There was sectional time limit and navigation between the sections was not allowed.

Section 1: The 1st section was 15 MCQ questions on General Aptitude the level varied from medium to hard.

Section 2: The 2nd section had 20 Technical MCQ questions primarily designed to test the core concepts. It had output-based and syntax-based questions from C, C++, Java, Python language. Other questions were from DBMS, OS, CN.

Section 3: The 3rd section had 3 programming questions in 30 mins to be written in text editor:

1. Write a program to accept a string and check whether all the letters were unique.
2. Given a singly linked list that consists of string data. Check whether it is a palindrome linked list.
3. Write a function to flip the bits of an integer.

I could only solve the first 2 within the time limit.

After a couple of days, an email dropped that I have cleared this round and the technical interview is scheduled for next day.

Tips:

• Learn Aptitude tricks from YT. Trust me it’ll help.
• Get your programming language fundamentals right. It will help you answer the output question correctly. Strings, File I/O, Socket programming, etc.
• If you know the code then write it and mention the programming language as comments in the very first line.
• Otherwise, write the pseudo-code or in the worst-case scenario at least explain the algorithm/ approach in words.

Round 2 (Technical Interview 1: 60 mins): Tech-I was conducted on video conference platform and it started with a brief introduction. These were the questions asked during my interview:

• Explain your projects in brief.
• Share your internship experience of the previous company. The technologies you learned there and a brief explanation about the project, impact factor of the project.
• Databases. Its functionalities, types and differences. Use cases of SQL and NoSQL.
• Why did you use MongoDB for your project?
• OOPs concepts, call by value, call by reference, function overloading vs function overriding, garbage collection, heap vs stack memory, recursion.
• Choose one programming language you are comfortable with and open its respective IDE with share screen enabled. I choose python.

By this time 30 minutes had passed and rest of the time my technical proficiency was tested in python. Around 6 – 7 programming and syntax questions were asked. This continued along with viva-styled questions with examples.

• Python data structures: Sets vs Dictionary, Lists vs Tuples
• Python reserved keywords: with, yield
• Python functions: lambda function, decorators, generators, super()
• Method overloading and method overriding in python. It’s a trick question python does not support method overloading and method overriding can be done by using super().
• Deep Copy vs Shallow Copy (I couldn’t answer this one.)

One of my projects was a web-app so I was asked to explain the client-server architecture. Explain the working methodology and differences of a client-server model deployed on a single machine vs deployed on separate machines (I.e, client code deployed on one machine and server code deployed on another one and they interact over a network/internet in general). Interviewer was satisfied with the explanation I gave.

Then he asked me if I had any questions for him. I asked him about the technologies they use in their products. I did my best and was confident in myself. I cleared this round and the next round was scheduled for the next day.

Tips:

• Go through your resume at least once and have some idea about buzz-words written in it. There may be some things you have studied long time back and don’t remember the exact details. That’s why REVISION IS IMPORTANT.
• It is perfectly OKAY if you can’t answer a question. Just say you don’t know or never heard of it. Not a single candidate is expected to give all the answers. As the level of question increases there can be some misses.
• Be aware of tricky questions.

Round 3 (Techno-Management Interview: 60 mins): This round started with a warm welcome. Then, he gave a brief introduction about himself where he also talked about the Sandvine products portfolio which can also be found in the company website. His first question was if I was nervous and honestly I was a little bit nervous at that time.

• Give a brief introduction about yourself including your strengths and weakness. Briefly tell about your journey till here.
• What are your hobbies and how do you make time for it.
• Why do you want to join Sandvine?
• Briefly explain your projects.

Afterwards, he gave a coding question to be solved on collaboration notebook:

Input: A = [1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 10], B = [1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10]

Output: [1, 2, 4, 7, 7, 8, 10]

My Approach:

• After thinking for about a minute I explained him the solution using nested loops and started implementing it. But it was rather inefficient coz the time complexity went to m*n. After discussing on how to optimise the solution little by little he hinted me to use Hash Tables which would drastically reduced the time complexity and make it the order of m+n.
• Post completion, we discussed about Hash Tables, its beauty and its relevance as a Data Structure.
• Lastly, he asked me if I had any questions for him. I asked him about the work culture of his country and how it’s different than that of India. I also asked him about my performance and then we concluded.
• Since this interview was scheduled according to his Time Zone so I had to wait till the next day for results.

I did receive a confirmation mail the next morning saying that I have been selected for the HR round and will be conducted on the same day.

Tips:

• For the coding question, do not rush to code the solution. Take a couple of minutes to think about the problem, and then explain your approach. It will help the interviewer assess your problem-solving ability which in turn will help you on a positive note. It will also display your ability to communicate even if you don’t know the answer.
• If you are struck on optimization, then kindly ask the interviewer for a hint.
• If given a chance to discuss your hobbies feel free to dive in. This type of discussion lightens the room and also speaks about your personality traits, leadership, and social skills.

Round 4 (HR Interview: 20 mins): This round was short and concise. It started with a brief introduction on my part as well as some insight into my educational background. I was aware of the fact that sometimes puzzles are asked which are kind of SAT. As always, Google opens a lot of doors. It is better to be over-prepared sometimes.

Some of the questions were:

• Why wasn’t my previous internship converted to PPO?
• Are you willing to relocate if given a chance?

The session continued with the generic HR discussion and I was hired. I also received the confirmation mail later that day.

Tips:

• Practice some HR QnA with someone before the actual interview. At least you’ll have an answer with a short story based on your experience.
• Do not give cheesy answers like “Something broke during the production and my team came to the rescue.” Instead say something like “Something broke during the production. Upon bringing the issue to the lead, he quickly guided me to troubleshooting part and I was able to fix it.”
• There might be some puzzles you haven’t heard. In any case one could always explain the approach. Luckily, I wasn’t asked any puzzles.
• Answer the questions slowly and calmly. Rushing might cause panic which is bad.

Credits to other writers for inspiration.

Thank you everyone!