Hello everyone, I applied for the position of Associate Software Engineer (Intern + FTE) at Tekion Corp, via Referral. I received a call from HR around 10-12 days after that I have been shortlisted and wanted me to get an Interview.
My first Interview round was scheduled on zoom 3 days after I received the call.
Technical Interview Round – 1 (DSA And Problem Solving): I was asked to introduce myself in terms of my technical skills and the technologies that I have used to date. And then he asked me in which language I was comfortable with the most. Told him that I was comfortable in C++ for DSA and JavaScript for Development. He was cool with that. He then asked me some questions related to python (yeah I never mentioned I was good at python but he asked). Questions were like
- What is Exception Handling ? Why is it so important?
- In my last internship I worked in python I knew Exception Handling and told him about that.
- Then he asked me about debugging, How will you do in these situations? and questions about that.
- Later he asked me to open some SQL compiler. And asked me for a total of 3 SQL queries.
- The question plot was, there were two tables: Customers and Orders which are linked to each other via a foreign key.
- Get the list of customers who has more than 1 orders.
- Get the top 3 orders in terms of amount.
- Get the list of all unique items.
I solved all the above queries and he was satisfied with my solutions.
- Later, he shared a Google Doc with me and asked 1 DSA question, the question was kadanes algorithm. I started with O(N^3) solution (yeah I never thought I’d be doing with N^3) and later asked me to optimize and I optimized to O(N^2) and then to O(N). He was pretty satisfied with my code and explanation.
- After the coding questions, he asked if I had some questions for him.
The round went well and the interviewer was very friendly I enjoyed the discussion with him. I got an email and call that my interview was scheduled for the evening.
Technical Interview Round – 2 (DSA And Problem Solving): This round is purely based on DSA. Started with an introduction and asked me about the projects I worked on and Tech I used in them.
- Later he then shared a Google Doc with me and asked me this question Longest Zig-Zag path in a Binary Tree? I clarified the question statement with him so that I don’t approach in the wrong direction, after that I asked him to give me a couple of minutes to think and come up with an approach.
- After around 5 minutes I explained to him my approach, my approach to the problem was recursive. I start with both the possibility from the root node first go to the left direction and then in the right direction.
- And in dfs call switch the direction and keep a counter that increments whenever we change direction consecutively. He then asked me to code and I struggled in between while writing code but he was very helpful and helped me in between. He was satisfied with my solution.
- After that, he asked me another question which was based on DP the question was Buy and Sell Stock II. The question was not straight forward the same as stocks but the terms were different. I knew this problem and started explaining the recursive idea and he asked me to code.
- I wrote the code, and he approved it and asked me to optimize it as I was using Auxiliary stack space for the recursive stack.
- I later explained to him about the linear solution and how we can make a profit by just seeing if yesterday’s price was low than today’s stock price, by just buying yesterday and selling it today and making a profit. And then I code this logic and he was pretty satisfied with my solution.
- In last 15 mins, he asked me about OOPs.
- What is Polymorphism ? Types of Polymorphism ?
- What are Overloading and Overriding? and main difference between them.
- What is Abstraction?
- Asked me for real-life examples of that. I answered all the questions he asked. I got bit confused at one point but he corrected me there.
Overall my Interview was good and I was positive that I’d get a call for further rounds too.
My suggestion for Technical Rounds are:
- Be very clear with the question they ask.
- Solve Strivers Sheet. They are pretty enough.
- Also have a good grip on Core Fundamentals.
I got a call the very next day and they scheduled the HR Managerial Round with me.
HR interview 3: This round lasted just for 20 mins.
- I was asked about my previous internship experience and the projects there I worked on, he asked some questions regarding that.
- What tech stacks I have used so far and in which domain I am more inclined?
- I told him that I have worked on the Backend and am also inclined to work on the backend side.
- And the last question was Why Tekion? I answered that pretty well I guess.
I would suggest preparing the core subjects and DSA from the striver’s sheet. To learn about company interviews, dig deeper into the gfg interview experiences. Keep calm and all the best for your interviews.
Final Result: I received a call from HR team next day and they told me I was SELECTED.