First Round – Online Coding: This was an online round comprises of 4 coding questions, hosted on HackerRank. The maximum time allowed was 75 minutes.
Around 1400 students from various branches gave the test and out of which only 43 students were shortlisted.
Second Round – Technical Interview 1: The interview was scheduled based on the rank obtained in the First round, I had to wait for 6 hrs before I could have my first interview. It was around 8:30 pm when I entered for the interview. The interviewer greeted me with a smile and started looking at my resume.
He saw the project section and asked me to explain the projects in detail. I explained around two of my projects in details (Gist of the project, technology used and my individual contribution)
Then he started with the typical interview questions that are asked in every interview.
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What do you rate yourself in coding?
As all of my projects were based on Web, Android, Data Mining and Machine Learning, he has to ask this question. I answered him “I will rate myself around 7 on a scale of 10”, He also has the codes and the complete analysis of the codes that I wrote during my first round so you cannot boast in front of him.
- What do you rate yourself in Data Structures? I again told him around 7 on 10.
- What is your favourite subject? I replied that I liked Operating Systems more than other subjects. Then he asked me for other favourite subject expecting that I would say DBMS or Data Structures but I answered him that apart from Operating Systems I also like Machine Learning as it is the trending technology and lots of innovation is happening around the globe in this field.
- What are Semaphores? I gave the definition of the semaphores and explained him with an example of dining philosophers problem. He looked satisfied. Then he started with the coding questions to test my problem-solving ability.
- Given two array A and B. How will you find out B is a subarray of A? That is, A contains all elements of B in the same order. GeeksforGeeks Link
- Given an array of length (n-1) having elements sorted from 1 to n with exactly one value missing between them. How will I find the missing value?. GeeksforGeeks Link
- Given a number that can be represented in the form of 32-bit binary, we have L and R lying between 0 to 32. I need to reverse the bits from L to R and return the integer with the obtained binary value. GeeksforGeeks Link
- How comfortable are you with DBMS? I said I have an idea about the queries and can give it a try.
- He asked the question that involved join, group by and subqueries. I answered all the questions with a naive solution initially then he asked me to give an efficient solution which I gave after analysing the problem closely. Though I did some mistakes with the code he was impressed with the logic and helped me to obtain the efficient solutions. The interview went as a conversation rather than being a typical question and answer session.
- At last, he asked if I had any question for him? I asked about the department he worked and technology stack used. He then introduced himself and gave me all the information. At last, we had a handshake to end an hour-long interview.
By the time I finished my first interview, everyone was done with his or her three rounds of interviews. After 15 minutes I was called for my next round of interview.
Third Round – Technical Interview 2: The interview started with the question to introduce myself. I told him about my native place, schooling, interests and college life. The main intention of this question is to make us comfortable and check how much do we know we know about yourself, This has to be fluent and prepared in advance. I told him I love to participate in hackathons and technical events, he got the questions to ask based on my introduction.
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What is the project I made in hackathons? Explain it in detail.
Make sure you are well versed with your projects including the schemas and the smaller API integrations. By the time I described my project he went through my resume and the questions that I have solved in the second interview round. He noticed that my interest is in Machine Learning.
- Are you good in Machine Learning? I said Yes, because he already has all the information from my last round and hence backing off might have a negative impact on the interviewer.
- What is Logistic Regression? What is the Maximum value that can be obtained in Logistic Regression? I recollected the concepts and answered the questions. He then gave me a scenario where I have to give the difference between the normal classification and classified based on the regression line. Luckily I could find the case where outliers affect the regression while `having no effect on classification. He looked impressed.
- Then I had two DBMS questions again on Joins, Grouping and Subqueries. I explained to him the approach and wrote the queries.
- Then I had a department specific coding question, where I have to write the code to get the same result as the DBMS queries. The round went smooth and then he asked if I have any questions for him. I asked about his department, he belonged to the data department then I asked him if there are any dedicated teams working on Machine Learning as he had asked me a question related to Machine Learning. He answered all of my questions and the handshake finished the interview.
The round went for around 75 minutes. It was around 11:15 pm on the clock when everyone was waiting for the results, but I just had my 2 rounds and was unaware if I have any further round as every round is an elimination round. I was asked to wait while the panel had their discussions.
Fourth Round – HR Round: I was called for my fourth round at 12:30 am
The questions that the interviewer asked were:
- “How fresh are you?”, I have not expected this question but I could answer in a decent manner. The further questions were,
- Tell me about yourself.
- Tell me about the recent hackathon you have attended.
- What motivates you?
- What demotivates you?
- Why VISA?
- What if you are not selected?
- What were my mistakes today?
- Tell about a situation where I demonstrated team spirit.
- Why do I like to go to hackathons?
After 15 minutes the results were announced and I was among the 8 developers who were selected for a full-time offer at VISA Bangalore.