Kotak Mahindra Bank

Role: SDE-2 (Frontend)

College: Not Specified

Interview Date: October 2024

Interview Type: Full-Time (Applied after hiring manager posted on LinkedIn)

Result: Hiring Freeze after clearing interviews (effectively Rejected)

Difficulty: Medium to Hard

Rounds: 3 Rounds (Bar Raiser, Machine Coding, Design)

Topics Asked: Data Structures, Algorithms, JavaScript fundamentals, React, CSS, Machine Coding, System Design, Authentication, Performance, Debouncing

Experience:

The candidate, with 3.3 years of experience, applied for this SDE-2 Frontend position after the hiring manager posted it on LinkedIn. The entire interview process took over two months, with repeated contact needed to schedule interviews.

Round 1 (Bar Raiser): This round was a mix of two problem-solving questions, JavaScript fundamentals, React, and CSS.

• Coding Question 1: Longest substring without repeating characters (LeetCode).
• Coding Question 2: Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum (LeetCode). The candidate couldn't solve this, noting that tree-based questions are rarely asked in frontend interviews.

Round 2 (Machine Coding): This round was taken by the company panel.

• Problem 1: Reverse vowels in each word of a string.
• Problem 2: A React coding problem to search and highlight a given string in a list of cities.

Round 3 (Design): This final round was rescheduled twice due to the interviewer's unavailability.

• System Design: Design Netflix minus the video streaming part. The candidate struggled a bit with the authentication logic.
• Other Questions: Questions on performance and pseudocode for debouncing.

Two days after the final round, the candidate received an email stating they had cleared the interview and were asked to share documents for offer discussion. However, three weeks passed with no response. Upon reaching out, HR informed them that the company was under a hiring freeze and uncertain about proceeding with the offer. The candidate described this as the worst interview experience, wasting nearly three months.