Siemens Healthineers came to our campus in September of 2021 for SDE role. The process consisted of 4 rounds: online assessment, 2 technical interviews, and an HR round. Pre Placement talk was on 8 September and the assessment began the next day.
Round 1(Online Assessment): It was on 9 September at 8 A.M. It was of 60 minutes and consisted of 20-40 ( I don’t exactly remember ) MCQ questions and 2 coding questions.
- MCQs were on course topics like OS, DBMS, Computer Networks, and general aptitude. Each MCQ question was worth 1 mark, the Coding questions were worth 30 and 20 marks respectively.
- Coding questions were easy, only problem was that input was given as a string of comma-separated integers and you needed to convert it to an array to do anything and time was very limited. I used python which quickly turned the string into a list using the “.split()” function.
35 people were selected for the next round
Round 2(Technical Interview 1): Interviews started at around 12 noon my turn came at around 5 p.m, I was informed that it was my turn just 2 minutes before the interview via email. It was on the HackerEarth platform. The platform had an IDE and tools for making diagrams.
- The interview started with my introduction. Then he asked me about object-oriented programming. My interviewer said that he was not interested in theory and asked me about how I used it practically. I copy-pasted my code from my GitHub to the IDE as screen sharing wasn’t available and explained the code. I also explained how I would have used that in another project in which I didn’t use OOPS and how it would have helped.
- I was asked two coding questions. The first was to make a function to calculate the charging time of a phone, the condition was the rate of charging decreased with the amount of charge in the battery. I designed a recursive function with 4 parameters time quantum ( amount of time after which we check charge ), rate ( a function that’ll return of rate of charge ), current charge, and the target charge.
- The second question was to make a function to output the longest ( longest not largest I specifically clarified that ) number possible from given digits without repeating the digits. I missed the only edge case where the number begins with zero.
- I was asked a question about abstract classes. I told the theory. Next, I was asked a question about abstract classes in java. I said that I didn’t know java but I had a rough idea about abstract classes in java and told what I knew. Then he gave me an MCQ about abstract class in java and a bit of a hint which helped me answer the question.
- Next, I was given a paragraph and an MCQ about data transfer and volatile and no volatile memory it was easy. I explained how when transferring data the data is read and then stored in a buffer in the volatile memory RAM and how the data stored in the hard drive is not affected if there is a power failure during the transfer.
- I was asked a question about multithreading again he was more interested in the practical application and not the theory. I told about how I would have used multithreading while making a project, why I thought it needed multithreading, and how the task was appropriate to be parallelized.
He asked if I had any questions and I asked for feedback.
Round 3(Techincal Interview 2): 1st Interview ended at around 6 pm, this round was at 7:45 PM. The next round was on MS teams. I was informed 5 minutes before the interview via email.
- The person interviewing me had 20 years of experience and told me about the exciting projects the company was working on. Then I was asked to introduce myself while he went through my resume. He asked me what was my plan about doing MS. I replied that I don’t have any plan because I want to try new things in life, I said that after class 10th I went for coaching and it expanded my horizons, after that, I went to college again my horizons expanded. I said I feel that doing a job would expand my horizons more compared to an MS.
- Then he asked me what language do I code in I said I use both python and c++ based on what I am doing. He asked if I was using a python library how would I check if the library functions are working properly or not. I answered that I’ll read the docs and check that expected behavior and test the function by setting up dummy inputs and expected outputs.
- Next, I was asked to derive a formula to calculate the angle between the hands of a clock at a given time. I was asked to do it on pen and paper and explain my approach.
- After that, there was another puzzle about dividing shapes into n equal sizes. I solved all the complex cases but I wasn’t able to solve a simple one. Then we discussed why I wasn’t able to solve the last problem.
This round was very fun as we talked about some lighter stuff too
Round 4(HR): 2nd technical interview ended at around 8:30 PM and this round started at 8:45. I wasn’t expecting another round that day as it was pretty late. I was caught off guard and was informed only 2 minutes before the interview started. I wasn’t ready so I emailed that I’ll be 5 minutes late.
- I was asked to introduce myself and was asked to say things that weren’t mentioned in my CV. I talked about my motivation for doing engineering and what motivated me. I also talked about my family background. She asked more about my family and my hobbies. Then she asked me about my projects, which one was closest to my heart, which was a failure, and which solved a real-life problem. I had projects for each of the questions and every project had a story attached to it. So the project part of the discussion went great.
- Next, she asked me how my motivations aligned with the company. I answered that I wanted to make things that affect actual people’s life and the health tech industry is great for that.
- Then lastly she asked about my internships and if I got selected on things I would like to improve myself on before joining the company.
Results came at 11 am the next day, 7 people were selected and luckily I was one of them.
Conclusion:
- Be confident, I never thought that I’ll be selected for this company as my DSA is not good and I focused more on the development side of things.
- Do your best, don’t give up even before the process starts.
- Be confident in yourself and try to show your best qualities.
- Be genuine.