Zeta (Directi) Interview Experience for SDE-1

I applied for SDE 1 (backend) position at Zeta Suite (Directi) through referral. After almost one week I got a call from the talent acquisition team of Zeta. It was kind of a telephonic round where the talent acquisition specialist asked me behavior what type of technologies I have worked on, how much I would rate myself in DSA, and some other technical questions. After almost one week the actual interview process started. There was no online test in the hiring process. In total, there were 3 rounds of interviews.

Round 1: DSA and problem-solving round

This round was totally based on DSA and problem-solving skills. The interviewer started with a basic introduction of himself and asked me to do the same. There were 2 DSA questions in total. The first one was of a hard difficulty level and the second question was a medium-level question. At the beginning of the interview, the interviewer clearly stated that he expects candidates to tell the brute force approach along with time and space complexities first and then think about an optimized solution. The questions were

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/count-number-of-ways-to-partition-a-set-into-k-subsets/

It was the first question. First of all, I told him about the brute force approach using backtracking. The naive solution has an exponential time complexity. So the interviewer asked me to optimize it further.

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-a-sorted-subsequence-of-size-3-in-linear-time/

First of all, I told the naive approach using nested loops and which takes O(n^2) time and constant space. I then optimized my solution using a prefix array. He asked me to code the approach. He was satisfied with the approach but since some time was left he asked me to do that using constant space and linear time.

Suggestion: Whatever approach is going on in your mind, just speak out and share your thoughts while you are coding. Communicate properly so that the interviewer can give you hints in case you are stuck somewhere. The interviewer judges you on your thought process.

Round 2: Technical and object-oriented design round

This round was taken by one SDE 2 from Zeta. He was quite friendly. The round started with a basic project discussion. He asked me some questions regarding multithreading. Then he asked me the following questions regarding Javascript as I have used JavaScript in my projects.

• If NodeJs is single-threaded, how does it handle concurrency?
• How does the event loop work?
• Why async – await is better than promises?

After that, he asked me one design question.

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/least-frequently-used-lfu-cache-implementation/

First, he asked me to come up with the logic of putting and getting elements from the cache. Once he was satisfied with the approach, he asked me to code the whole class.

The interviewer also tested my knowledge of OS, DBMS, and networking. Some of the questions, he asked, were as follows:

• What are the CAP theorem and its significance?
• Explain TCP/IP and UDP protocols along with their differences.
• Explain ACID properties in transaction management.
• What is race condition? What are the reasons for its occurrence and how to deal with it?
• How to achieve thread synchronization?

Suggestion:

• Do revise your CSE fundamentals regularly and before the interview, go through top interview questions for a quick brush-up.
• Be prepared to answer any questions from the project that you have mentioned in your resume.

Round 3: Fitment round

First of all he introduced himself and asked me about my background, and my experience in my previous company. Then he asked me some questions on the Java OOPs concept. They were as follows:

• What is the difference between method overloading and overriding?
• What is a functional interface and how many methods can exist in that?
• Explain the access specifiers in Java.
• What is abstraction?
• What are the differences between abstract class and interface?
• Explain ‘super’, ‘static’, and ‘final’ keywords in Java.
• Can a constructor be ‘final’ in Java? Explain.
• What are the differences between SQL and NoSQL databases? Which one to use in which case?

I answered the questions with confidence and the interviewer seemed satisfied. Then he switched to behavioral questions.

• How would you deal with and resolve conflict with colleagues?
• Why do you want to join Zeta Suite (Directi)?
• What do you know about the company?

After that, he asked me about my notice period and told me to ask him if I have any questions.

After some days I received the offer letter for SDE 1 (backend) from Zeta Suite (Directi).