Kotak

Role: SDE-1 - Backend (JAVA)

College: Not Specified

Interview Date: Sept 2023

Interview Type: Full-Time

Result: Rejected

Difficulty: Not Specified

Rounds: 1 Technical Round

Topics Asked: Data Structures, Algorithms, Java, System Design

Experience:

The candidate applied after seeing an internal openings post on Twitter and reached out to multiple people on LinkedIn for a referral. HR contacted the candidate on September 11, 2023, for a screening call, asking about the current tech stack, CTC, and basic questions related to time and space complexities. The interview was scheduled for the following Friday.

Technical Round (Bar Raiser): This round was outsourced to a BarRaiser Team. The interviewer, a 6-year experienced professional, started with an introduction and then posed a DSA question: "Given two strings, say s1 = 'ab' and s2 = 'hdeuudba', you need to tell if any permutation of string s1 occurs in string s2 or not." The candidate initially proposed a brute-force approach (generating all permutations), but with hints, identified the optimal sliding window approach. After coding an O(N) solution, the interviewer asked about the internal workings of HashMap, which the candidate struggled with, only recalling collision detection. Questions about Lambda Functions in Java were also asked. Finally, the interviewer delved into System Design, asking 3 questions that the candidate found unfamiliar. The interview concluded with feedback discussion. The candidate received a rejection email on Monday morning (September 17, 2023).