Mindtickle

Role: SDE-1 (Backend)

College: Not Specified

Interview Date: July 23, 2025

Interview Type: Off-Campus

Result: Rejected in 4th round

Difficulty: DSA not very tough, LLD can be tough

Rounds: 4 rounds (plus an additional round)

Topics Asked: DSA (LeetCode problems, Graph-based question, Topological sorting), Low-Level Design (Gaana/Spotify portal), Resume-based discussion

Experience:

This off-campus interview process for SDE-1 (Backend) involved multiple rounds.

The first 2 rounds were taken by the InterviewVector team.

Round 1 (DSA - Online Round): The interviewer asked the candidate to share their screen and write code for problems directly on LeetCode. The specific problems are not detailed, but the candidate notes that DSA questions were "not very tough."

Round 2 (Low-Level Design): The task was to design a portal similar to Gaana or Spotify. The candidate was asked to list all requirements first, then design the system accordingly, brainstorming and coding it within a 1-hour timeframe. Only function and class names were expected unless specifically asked for complete function code.

Round 3 (Personal Interview - 1 hour): This round was conducted by a senior Mindtickle employee. It began with a resume-based discussion, followed by a coding question. The question involved an employee-manager hierarchy where some employees don't have managers, and the goal was to output a sorted array such that no employee comes before their manager (a graph-based question requiring topological sorting). The candidate figured out the approach and wrote the code but made a 0-1 based indexing error, causing the code not to run within the time frame. Despite discussing the appropriate approach, the interviewer directed the candidate to another round not initially scheduled.

Round 4 (Personal Interview - 1 hour): Similar to the 3rd round, this started with resume-based questions, then moved to another coding question. The candidate was unable to code the optimal approach within the timeframe, and the interviewer was not receptive to other approaches. The candidate was rejected after this round.