Societe Generale Interview Experience for SDE (On-Campus)

Societe Generale visited my college (COEP) for a “Software Engineer” profile. 180 people applied for the company. The criteria for application was 6 CGPA, 60% in 12th, and 60 % in 10th.

Written Test: There were a total of 37 questions

• 35 questions on Aptitude, English, Reasoning, Computer Basics output
• 2 questions on coding questions.

Out of 180 students, 55 were shortlisted for the Technical interview.

Technical Interview (35-40 mins): The interviewer first asked me to introduce myself. Then she went on to ask questions about the topics that I mentioned in my self-introduction. I had mentioned C++, DSA, OOPS, and DBMS. 

(For some of the people, the technical interview went more into their projects/internships, but this is true only for those candidates who have medium to hard-level projects/internships on their resume, in my case the projects were 2 basic C++ projects and there wasn’t any internship in the software domain, so interviewer didn’t ask me anything about my projects). 

My technical interview was divided into 3 parts. (She also asked me if I knew HTML/CSS/ Web Dev, I said no to which she replied “not an issue”)

Part 1: DSA: She asked which is my favorite data structure. I said, Linked List. She asked me to write a code:

•  To create a Linked list 
•  Delete a node from Linked List.

 I quickly wrote the codes and explained my approach to her. For deleting a node, I explained 2 different approaches, which made a better impact.

Part 2 : OOPs: For a considerable amount of time, the interview revolved around the OOPs concept. (I reckon this was because I had mentioned OOPs in my self-introduction multiple times). Some of the questions were:

• Is C++ a language that covers all features of OOP?
• What is the use of constructors, and destructors, differences in their syntax?
• What is a friend function?
• What is a virtual function? what is the need for a virtual function?
• What do you know about polymorphism? (This was the last question as I explained polymorphism very confidently, with conceptual clarity and in-depth explanation along with real-life examples. Starting from compile-time polymorphism, and run-time polymorphism, to function overloading, its types, operator overloading, method overriding, virtual functions, etc.)

I was able to answer all the OOPs questions and DSA questions which made a positive impact.

Part 3: SQL: I pretty much messed up this part. She asked me if I knew about Joins. I said, “I know it theoretically, but I’m not sure about the syntax”. Still, she gave a question on joins and asked me to write a query. I attempted it, but it was wrong. Then she asked me to query the employee in the table with maximum salary, where the 3 fields in the table are employee ID, employee name, and employee salary. Despite being an easy question, I wasn’t able to answer it correctly. 

Part extra:( I think this was the turning point)

Then the interviewer asked me if I had any questions for her. The fumble in the SQL questions could have cost me a lot, so I decided to drop the interview on a positive note. I said “I don’t have any questions but I just wanted to say something. I am not that great in terms of my horizontal knowledge, but I am a hardworking person. I will learn any technical stack that is required if I get selected in SocGen.” After this, she said “ok, of course”, and asked me to leave the room. But I again said “one more thing, ma’am”. Since the interviews were virtual I invited her to Pune and specifically our campus, the College of Engineering Pune. She was happy and turned on her camera. She talked about her relative in Pune.

I was shortlisted for the managerial round.

Round 2 (Managerial Round) (35-40 mins): Firstly Interviewer introduced himself then he asked me to tell him about myself. After that, he moved on to my Project and after explaining the project he cross-questioned me about the logic used in the project. He probed more into the project. I was able to handle those questions pretty decently. Then he moved into my extracurriculars. 

He loved the fact that I play football for my college team and also the fact that I love sports and extracurricular activities. He asked me about my experience while playing in a team. He also explained to me how in Bangalore there is a footballing culture and how SocGen promotes sports. The interview turned into a discussion. We discussed various topics on my resume and about SocGen.

But Interviewer very cheekily put up 1 question “What if any other company is offering more salary than SG? What will you do?”  I replied “I am looking for a stable, long-term job with a good learning experience, I think SocGen does provide me that. So I won’t go switching (at least in the initial few years of my corporate career). I will stay with SocGen”. Many of my friends messed up this part because they said, “If the growth is good, I might switch”. This is not expected, because why would a company choose you if you are someone who’s always looking for switching jobs? Even they want long-term employees if they are investing in your training! 

The rest of the interview was just like a discussion on random topics!

Round 3 (HR Round)(15 mins)

• Tell me about yourself.
• Why Societe generale? Why should we select you?
• What location will you prefer? Any problems in relocations?
• Would you offer bribe if there is a project that is too important for your career?
• What will you do if you get some better opportunities than Societe generale?

25 students were shortlisted for the final offer and luckily I was one of them!