Zomato Interview Experience | On-Campus 2021

This is an On-campus hiring round. The total process consisted of an online coding round and a F2F interview round.

Round 1: This is an online assessment round consisting of 4 DSA problems of medium-hard range. The duration of the round is 60 minutes. After completion of the round, they were asked to fill a google form consisting of Jee rank, Coding platform ratings, GitHub profile, CGPA. A total of around 50 students were shortlisted from this round.

1. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/unique-paths-in-a-grid-with-obstacles/
2. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/allocate-minimum-number-pages/
3. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/count-ways-to-partition-a-binary-string-such-that-each-substring-contains-exactly-two-0s/
4.  I don’t remember the exact question, but it is similar to https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/largest-rectangle-under-histogram/. Can be solved using stack.

Round 2: This round happened on day 1 of on-campus interviews. 

• This is a F2F interview round through google meet. The interviewer started with asking my intro and then asked a DSA question. Slightly modified question of https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/lru-cache-implementation/. 
• He first asked me to discuss my approach. I started with a basic brute force approach using 3-4 hashmaps and in linear time. Then I optimized it to O (log N) time complexity. I tried to convert it into O (1) time complexity using LinkedList. But my logic will not work for a few edge cases. He then gave a hint, and I am able to solve the question properly. It took around 30 minutes for the discussion of the approach to get an O (1) solution. 
• As the round is only for 40-45 minutes, he told me not to write the code as he is satisfied with the explanation. Then he told me about his work at zomato and his recent achievements. I asked a few doubts regarding his work and how did they tackle a few problems (about the search option in the Zomato app as the interviewer worked on this particularly). This discussion went on for another 5 minutes and he ended the interview by adding a few points on work culture at zomato.

Verdict: Accepted.

Remarks: After shortlisting for the F2F round, they completely focused on problem-solving skills and approach towards the problem. There is no discussion on past internships or projects. Try to communicate continuously with the interviewer throughout the interview. Paying attention to their work at Zomato and asking a few interesting doubts will be a bonus point that pushes your selection.

PS: If you are not from a CSE background, try to keep 2-3 software-related projects or internships on your resume and GitHub profile. This provides a medium to talk about your work in HR and HM rounds.