Codenation

Role: SDE

College: Not Specified (On-Campus)

Interview Date: Not Specified

Interview Type: On-Campus, Full-Time

Result: Not Specified (Implied successful based on detailed breakdown and tips)

Difficulty: Hard (Coding round questions were tough, abstract brainstorming round)

Rounds: 5 rounds

Topics Asked: Data Structures, Algorithms, Resume Projects, System Design (abstract brainstorming), HR questions, Machine Learning/Deep Learning (discussion based on projects).

Experience:

This experience details an on-campus recruitment process for an SDE role.

Round 1: Coding Round (HackerRank) (75 Minutes)
There were 3 questions. The candidate remembered two:

1. Given two strings `str1` and `str2`, find the length of the smallest circular substring in `str1` containing all characters of `str2`. Example: `str1='hackerrank'`, `str2='kh'`, answer is 2. Expected time complexity O(n).
2. Given an unsorted array, find the number of unordered triplets with product equal to a given number `k`. Expected time complexity O(nlogn).

The candidate needed to solve at least 2 questions to be shortlisted. Out of 80 people, 6 were shortlisted.

Round 2: Telephonic Interview (30 Minutes)
This round focused on the resume. The interviewer asked the candidate to describe their most challenging work and asked in-depth questions related to their internship and project domain.

Round 3: Skype Interview (1 Hour)
This round tested Data Structures and Algorithms. The interviewer gave 2 problems and asked the candidate to code on collabedit.com. One question involved cloning a linked list with next and random pointers.

Round 4: Skype Interview (1 Hour)
This was an abstract brainstorming round. The interviewer asked the candidate to describe a time they were stuck on something and overcame it, leading to a discussion about their internship. Given projects were based on ML/DL, the interviewer asked: "What would I do if I am a data scientist working for Facebook with access to all of Facebook's data?" The discussion focused on thinking and improving ideas rather than actual implementation.

Round 5: HR Round with CEO (25 Minutes)
Questions included: describe a tough situation, most interesting project, and a design question related to detecting raga in a song (less technical, more music-based). Finally, "why CodeNation?".

Tips: Discuss all solutions with the interviewer before coding the best one. Discuss approach first. Write bug-free code with comments. For open-ended questions, state assumptions and reasoning, and find pros/cons in your ideas. Be thorough with your resume.