One Day, Four Rounds, Countless Challenges | Commvault Interview Experience

Company: Commvault

Role: SDE Intern + PPO

Full-Time CTC: ₹32 LPA

Internship Stipend: ₹50,000/month

Location: Bangalore

Hiring Mode: On-Campus

Hi everyone!

Commvault visited our campus for the SDE Intern + PPO hiring process, and I got the opportunity to go through multiple rounds, starting with an online assessment and ending with the HR interview.

Round 1: Online Assessment (OA)

The first step was an online assessment conducted on our college campus.

Before starting the test, we had to fill out a form and select our preferred programming language. I went with Java.

The assessment had a few MCQs followed by three DSA coding questions, with just 40 minutes allotted for the coding section.

The questions were based on topics like Graphs, Trees, and Dynamic Programming. Some of the questions included:

• Course Schedule I

• Number of Corner Rectangles

• A variation of Longest Palindromic Subsequence

Honestly, managing time was the biggest challenge here. Solving three DSA questions in 40 minutes wasn't easy.

I managed to solve two questions completely and made partial progress on the remaining one.

Thankfully, I cleared the assessment and was shortlisted for the next round.

Round 2: Machine Coding Round

This turned out to be the most challenging and exhausting part of the entire selection process.

We were asked to report to our college lab at around 10 AM, and the process continued until approximately 6 PM.

Each candidate was assigned an interviewer and given a machine coding problem to solve. My problem was to design a complete Cricbuzz application.

The expectations were not limited to writing code. We had to:

• Understand the requirements and clarify any doubts.

• Design the complete application.

• Explain the architecture and overall approach.

• Write clean, working code.

• Run test cases and make sure the implementation worked correctly.

The interviewer first explained the problem statement and gave us some time to go through the requirements.

Before jumping into coding, I was asked to explain my understanding of the problem. This helped ensure that both the interviewer and I were on the same page.

After that, we discussed the design and implementation approach, including:

• Overall application architecture.

• Class structure and responsibilities.

• Object-oriented design principles.

• Design patterns wherever applicable.

• How different components would interact with each other.

Once we were aligned on the design, I started implementing the application.

Throughout the round, interviewers would periodically check our progress, roughly once every hour. They asked questions about the decisions I had made, the implementation, and the reasoning behind my approach.

One thing I realised during this round was that simply getting the code to work wasn't enough. I also had to justify why I had designed something in a particular way and explain the alternatives.

I spent almost the entire day designing, coding, debugging, and testing the application.

By around 6 PM, I had managed to get almost all the test cases working successfully.

It was honestly quite exhausting to spend nearly eight hours continuously working on a single problem, but it was also a great learning experience.

After the round, the results were announced, and I was shortlisted for the technical interview.

Round 3: Technical Interview

After clearing the machine coding round, I appeared for the technical interview.

The interviewer started with a medium-level DSA problem:

Question: Sliding Window Maximum

We discussed the approach and solution, after which the conversation shifted towards my Cricbuzz machine coding implementation.

The interviewer wanted to understand the reasoning behind my design decisions. Some of the questions were:

• Why did you choose that particular design pattern for your Cricbuzz implementation?

• Why did you structure the application in that way?

• What alternative design patterns could you have considered?

• Explain some commonly used design patterns.

• Questions related to OOP concepts.

We then moved on to my college projects. The interviewer asked about their implementation and went into quite a bit of technical detail.

Other topics discussed included:

• Core Java concepts.

• Java internals and OOP.

• SQL and database-related concepts.

• Project architecture and implementation decisions.

I would say that having a clear understanding of my projects helped a lot here. The interviewer wasn't just interested in knowing what I had built but also wanted to understand how it worked internally and why I had made certain technical choices.

Based on the overall technical performance, candidates were evaluated for the internship and PPO opportunities. There were different selection outcomes, including performance-based PPO and regular PPO pathways.

Round 4: HR Interview

Finally, I reached the HR round.

Compared to the previous rounds, this one was relatively relaxed and mostly focused on getting to know me better.

Some of the questions and discussion points included:

• Tell me about yourself.

• Walk me through your college journey.

• Why do you want to join Commvault?

• Questions about the internship.

• Availability and joining details.

• Compensation-related discussions.

• A few general HR questions.

The conversation went smoothly, and after completing this round, the final results were announced.

My Preparation Strategy

Coming to preparation, I had started working on DSA during my second year of college.

I started building my DSA fundamentals in my second year and gradually moved towards solving more challenging problems.

My primary resource was Striver's A2Z DSA Sheet

It helped me cover important topics systematically, understand different problem-solving patterns, and build confidence in approaching unfamiliar problems.

I focused on understanding the logic behind each solution rather than just memorising code.