Vyapar Interview Experience for SDE-1 (On-Campus)

I got this opportunity through an on-campus placement drive(tier-1 college).

Round 1 – Resume shortlisting 

Round 2 – (Online Coding assessment on HackerEarth)

• The duration of the test was for 2 hours and 5 minutes.
• The test consisted of 10 multiple-choice questions(based on programming and cs theory) and three coding problems.
• The questions were based on DSA and were medium-hard level.
• The coding problems were based on a two-pointer approach(had to find the maximum value of an expression on an array) which was similar to the maximum water that can be trapped between two towers), max heap, and bit manipulation (needed to pick two elements, perform a bit operation and replace them with the result. The answer was to find the xor of the whole array)
• Was able to solve all three questions and proceeded to the next round.

Round 3 – Virtual Technical Interview 1

• I joined the google meeting link 5 mins prior to the scheduled time, however, the interviewer was 15 mins late.
• The interviewer asked to give me an introduction and then asked me to explain a few projects that were there in my resume. (Don’t go deep into the technicalities of the project, usually, speak about 2 minutes for each project. Try to explain the problem statement that you tried to solve, your contribution along with tech stack used).
• Then, the interviewer asked me 4 dsa questions and asked me to code them down on google Docs. The questions were quite straightforward and were based on recursion, sorting an array of 0s, 1s, and 2s, the sum of two linked lists, and hashing.
• He asked me to design a database based on many-to-many mapping and tell how many tables were required and the primary key and foreign key for each table.
• I was able to solve all the above questions and went into the next round.

Round 4 – Virtual Technical Interview 2

• Had a different interviewer for this round and he asked me to give an introduction about myself.
• He asked me two DSA questions (medium-hard level) based on BFS and matrix transversal. The interviewer tried to help me, whenever I got stuck in some part and I was able to code the correct solution for both problems on a google doc.
• He asked me a bunch of questions on CS fundamentals such as OOP, and OS tested my knowledge about C/C++ language, and then shifted his focus to DBMS questions.
• In OOP, the interviewer asked me about different types of polymorphism, examples of method overloading, virtual methods, abstraction, 4 pillars, and 100 % abstraction. He kept on asking me about different cases for the above topics and got a little confused about some of them.
• Asked me about the differences between struct, union, and class.
• Asked me to differentiate between malloc, calloc, and new (I heard calloc for the first time).
• He asked me questions on DBMS such as Normalizations, Joins, different rules of normalization, and ACID properties. I was able to correctly answer some of the above questions but not all of them.
• At last, I took feedback from him and he told me that my problem-solving along with explanation was excellent, but he did expect a better knowledge of C/C++ language, and DBMS concepts. I wasn’t selected for the next round, which was again a technical interview round, where they did ask candidates to write and run SQL queries.

Important tips:

• Do wear formal and join the meeting 5 minutes prior to the scheduled time.
• Keep your introduction crisp and concise. Tell the interviewer about your achievement(GSoC, solved 800+ problems on leetcode/GFG, CodeChef 5*), previous internships(organization names), the field of interest(frontend/android/backend), and tech stack. This might allow you to drive the next 30 mins in the field you are confident in.
• Keep communicating with the interviewer, and tell them about your approach, doesn’t matter if you are able to think of a perfect working solution or not. In this way, you can avoid misunderstanding the question and the interviewer can guide you to move in the right direction.
• If you are facing any problem in understanding the question, don’t feel shy to ask again.
• Always do a dry run to check whether all edge cases are covered or not.
• Try to be confident throughout the interview, and don’t get worried, in case you are not able to solve or answer a question. You can always redeem yourself in the next question.
• At last, do let the interviewer know, how much are you passionate for the job, how you can add value to the organization, and what makes you different from any other candidate.