Unthinakble Solutions Interview Experience for Jr. Associate

So it all started on the morning of 4 August 2019 at 9:00 AM. Unthinkable Software i.e. Subsidiary company of Daffodil Softwares came to visit our college. I am pursuing Diploma in Computer Engineering From Seth Jai Parkash Polytechnic.

So Here Are the 4 rounds in this Company to clear the interview.

Round 1 (Online Test — Hackerearth)

The first round was conducted at HackerEarth and the duration was 60 minutes. There was 3 pretty simple Programming question.

1 Double the Vowels The task was to double the vowel characters in the string

Input: Sequoia
Output : Seequuooiiaa

Python3

string = input()
out = str()
vowels = [’a’,’e’,’i’,’o’,’u’,’A’,’E’,’I’,’O’,’U,]
for i in range(len(string)):
   if(string[i] in vowels):
       out += string[i]*2
   else:
       out += string[i]
print(out)

2. Find the closest number

An array of size N and an integer x will be given and the task was to find the closest element to x in the array. In case of a tie, print the greater number.

Input : 8 4 1 3 6 5
Output : 6

Python3

arr = list(map(int,input().split()))
x = int(input())
temp = []
for i in range(len(arr)):
   temp[i] = abs(arr[i] - x)
mn = min(temp)
rslt = []
for i in range(len(temp)):
   if(temp[i] == mn):
       rslt.append(arr[i])
print(max(rslt))

3. Calculating the minimum notes

A currency system consists notes of following denominations — 2000, 500, 200, 100, 50, 20, 10, 5, 2, 1. The task is to find the minimum number of notes required to satisfy the entered amount.

Input : 153
Output : 4

Python3

n = int(input())
c=0
while(n>0):
   if(n in range(1,2)):
       n-=1
       c+=1
   elif(n in range(2,5)):
       n-=2
       c+=1
   elif(n in range(5,10)):
       n-=5
       c+=1
   elif(n in range(10,20)):
       n-=10
       c+=1
   elif(n in range(20,50)):
       n-=20
       c+=1
   elif(n in range(50,100)):
       n-=50
       c+=1
   elif(n in range(100,200)):
       n-=100
       c+=1
   elif(n in range(200,500)):
       n-=200
       c+=1
   elif(n in range(500,2000)):
       n-=500
       c+=1
   elif(n>=2000):
       n-=2000
       c+=1
print(c)

So these were the three programming questions and my approach. Any better approach and/or suggestions are welcome 🙂

Round 2 (Coding on Paper)
In this round, two Programming questions were given that were to be solved on paper.

Pattern-based question
Given an array of size N, based on that you have to print a specific pattern.

Input : -3 4 3 1 -4
Output :  ****
            *****
            ****
            **
        *****

Python3

arr = list(map(int,input().split()))
mn = min(arr)
space = 0
if(mn<0):
   space = abs(mn)
for i in range(len(arr)):
   if(arr[i]<0):
       print((space - abs(arr[i]))* " " + (abs(arr[i])+1)* "*")
   elif(arr[i]>=0):
       print(space * " " + (arr[i]+1)* "*")

2. Balanced String

The task in these questions was to find that the string consists of brackets is balanced or not.

Input : {[()]}
Output : True
Input : {[}()]
Output : False

Python3

string = input()
l = len(string)
r = l-1
flag = True
for i in range(l/2):
   if(string[i] == "{"):
       if(string[r] == "}"):
           r -=1
           continue
       else:
           flag = False
           break
   if(string[i] == "["):
       if(string[r] == "]"):
           r -=1
           continue
       else:
           flag = False
           break
   if(string[i] == "("):
       if(string[r] == ")"):
           r -=1
           continue
       else:
           flag = False
           break
if(flag):
   print("True")
else:
   print("False")

I know these are not the best approaches to solve the above question so I would be thankful if anyone gives me tips to improve my solution.

Round 3 (Technical Interview)
Out of 350+ candidates prior to the First round, 15 candidates were selected to have an in-person Technical Interview (including me ????).

Okay, so Interviewer was young, sensible, and very cool. He knew how to make a fresher comfortable. So he started asking with “Tell me about yourself?” followed by a series of technical questions.

So, he saw I have mentioned Git in my resume so he started by asking what is ‘Checkout’ in Git? I didn’t know the answer at that time so I told him I know only the basics of Git. He then asked about ‘Clone’ so I told him that we use Clone in Git to clone a repository into our Machine. Amidst this, a girl(another candidate) came into the cabin from nowhere showing her code of the problem to the interviewer which he gave to her previously. The interviewer told me to dry run her code that was in an infinite loop consisting of ununderstandable logic. He firmly asked her to fix it.

So coming back to Interview, he then asked me about various scenarios where I could use Linked List and Array and also the Queue and its applications.

He also asked me about some OOPS concepts like Inheritance, Data Abstraction & Data Hiding.

Then he looked into my resume and asked me whether I am comfortable about Javascript. I firmly said No then he asked about Blockchain. That’s where I feel it started going wrong because one should never mention things in his/her resume that he/she is not comfortable or prepared to answer in the Interview. At last, he asked me about malloc & calloc in C which I answered partially.

Then he gave me a problem statement and asked me to write code for it on the paper.

Input : aaabsbbbeer
Output : 3a4b1s2e1r

The task was to find no. of characters in a string and output them in this format: Total no. of characters in the string followed by that character
At first, I approached the problem with a space-inefficient solution (don’t exactly remember the code) for which Interviewer asked me to fix the code.

Then I came up with this solution.

Python3

s = input()
l = [s[i] for i in range(len(s))]
l = set(l)
out = str()
for i in l:
   t = s.count(i)
   out += str(t) + i
print(out)

I explained the above code to the Interviewer and he partially agreed with the code and said: “Thank you Manik”. So it was a signal to leave. :p

So, the final verdict was I got Selected.

Thank you for reading.
May it help somebody
Any suggestions/ tips are welcome.