Interview Experience

Accolite Digital Interview Experience Software Engineer | Set 1

Company Name: Accolite Digital

Job Role: Software Engineer

Years of Experience Required: 0 Yrs (On-Campus)

Drive: On-campus

CTC: 11 LPA

Preparation for Accolite Digital

Topics: DSA/OS/CN/DBMS/OOPS  and mainly Problem solving also System Design.

Duration: 2 – 3 weeks

Source of Preparation: GeeksForGeeks, Leetcode, InterviewBit. Youtube:- takeUforward, CodeBeyond, GauravSen(System Design).

[BONUS]:

Interview Rounds

Accolite conducted their virtual hiring process for our campus during the last week of August. The recruitment process comprises 5 different rounds out of which the first two screening tests are conducted on Accolite’s own platform. The On-Campus hiring process is very much similar to the Accolite Hiring challenge(Off-Campus) which they conduct every year.

Round 1: Online 30 MCQ’s in 30 Minutes

This particular round was of 30 minutes and it is conducted on Accolite’s own platform Eduthrill. The questions were of easy-medium level difficulty. The questions were from the CS Core fundamentals like OS/CN/DBMS/DSA and one or two from the aptitude. Around 150 students qualified the Round 1 and were shortlisted for the coding round.

Round 2: Online Coding – 1 Problem in 1 Hour

This round had one coding question that is expected to be solved in an hour. It was conducted on Accolite’s own coding platform called Codelyzer.

The problem statement given is as follows :

I have N buckets having 0 fruits in each bucket initially. I will give you n numbers denoting fruits required at nth position But you need to keep two simple rules:

Either you can increment fruit count by 1 in each bucket i.e. Incremental Operation or you can double the fruits in each bucket i.e. Doubling operation.

Example:

Input:- [2, 3]

Output:- 4

Explanation:- The array can be reduced by the following operations  
and it is considered to the minimal, the operations are as follows

Increment fruit in 1st bucket – [1, 0]
Increment fruit in 2nd bucket – [1, 1]
Double the entire fruits – [2, 2]
Increment the fruit in 2nd bucket – [2, 3]

The output is the no of operations required i.e. 4

The coding part was okay, but the catch here is that the platform doesn’t provide us with any test cases we need to write up our own test cases in the test case folder. Any confusion while writing the unit test cases can make you lose lots of time. So you have to be meticulous during this process.

My advice for the coding round is to better visit the questions that were asked during the previous hiring challenges as there is a high chance of getting previously asked coding problems.

Round 3: Technical Round 1 (Video Call), Online Technical Interview 1

Time: 40 Minutes

One good thing about Accolite is that the interviewers are very friendly. She started the interview by introducing herself. She gave a brief outline of the interview process.

She began the interview with a few theory questions on Operating Systems and DBMS.

  • What is Virtual Memory, need for VM?
  • Types of OS
  • Distinguish between Process and Program
  • Synchronization techniques
  • Paging and segmentation
  • Normalization and Denormalization
  • Differences between SQL and NoSQL (As I mentioned MongoDB in my resume).
  • These are some of the theory questions she asked and the discussion went on for about 20 minutes. Next, she asked me to share my screen and gave me a coding question.
  • Given an unsorted array and a target value, you are required to find the subarray with the given target sum
  • This was a basic array question, initally I gave here the brute force technique of generating all the subarrays and checking the subarray with the sum equal to the target sum
  • Then I told her i can further optimize the logic through sliding window technique and explained her my logic by taking a sample test case. Then she asked me to write the code for the same.
  • Then she asked me tell where this code fails. I told her the fact that sliding window doesn’t handle negative elements. Then i gave a logic using Hashmap.
  • https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-subarray-with-given-sum/
  • Then she asked me the most standard and popular question
  • Reverse a LinkedList
  • https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/reverse-a-linked-list/
  • Then, the interview ended by the discussion of the time and space complexities of my approaches.

Round 4: Online Technical Interview 2

Time: 1 Hour 15 Minutes

This was the longest and slightly challenging round compared to the others. The interviewer started with a brief introduction of himself and asked me to do the same. Then he asked me to provide some insights on the projects I have done, Then he started asking me about my Full-stack project.

This was an in-depth discussion, he focused completely on the tech stack, how I learned them, and what are some of the alternatives, advantages, disadvantages of the tech stack I have used. Then he asked me to explain the workflow of the project, then he asked me for the details about the database schema and all. He asked me a few concepts of networking as my project involved the usage of socket programming.

The same in-depth discussion was continued on my machine learning project as well. The discussion went on for about 40 minutes after which I was asked to write a few SQL queries based on joins. He asked me some of the types of queries. He asked a few basic questions on Transaction Management and Concurrency control in RDBMS and NoSQL Databases, some basic questions on Normalization were also asked.

After all the technical discussion, he asked me to share my screen and write code for the following problem statement.

  • Given an array comprising of even and odd numbers, you are required to segregate the even and odd numbers.

Initially, I gave him the brute force approach but he wasn’t satisfied with it and I took some time and told him the two-pointer approach and he got satisfied with it and I was asked to write the code for the same.

  • Then he gave me a scenario-based problem, the problem goes as follows There is a cable operator there are few customers around various cities, and his task is to connect all the cities (that he has customers) with the cable TV station in such a way that the cost incurred on the cable wire is minimum.

I took some time and gave him the idea of the Minimum Spanning Tree (MST). Where the graph can be converted to a network of edges with an overall minimum cost. I was asked to write the code (just the function). He was satisfied with my approach. Then he asked me whether I have any questions, and the interview concluded.

Round 5: Online HR Round

Time: 35 Minutes

  • The interview began with my self-introduction. The interview comprised of very standard template-based HR questions.
  • She asked me what I know about Accolite. In the end, she gave me the details regarding the CTC offered and few insights on the internship that is being offered.

Verdict: Selected

My Suggestions:

  • Firstly, i would suggest everyone who are in their 1st/2nd year to cultivate the coding habit because coding is the most vital thing to get to the interview rounds.
  • Even if you are excellent in academics and have extraordinary CGPA, once you fail to submit your code in the given time in coding round you are not even allowed to showcase your subject knowledge.
  • Try to do competitive coding right from your first year which really helps you in managing your time.
  • For DSA i would recommend you to go with the striver SDE Sheet after completing it go for other problems, I can assure you that you can solve other problem if you solved 70% of strivers SDE sheet on your own.
  • Before writing the solution understand the intuition behind it
  • And coming to the CS core fundamentals i recommend you to have basic knowledge on few important concepts that would be enough, you can check the questions for strivers CORE sheet
  • Never ever fake others project as yours as the interviews can easily identify whether the project is genuine or not, even after doing the project be ready to answer any kind of questions from the project. Also prepare for few challenges you faced during the project.
  • I suggest every one to watch strivers CodeBeyond master classes for difficult topics like Graphs, tries etc.
  • For HR round i suggest everyone to know about the company well. And while speaking about why you want to join the company try to align your values with the company values and make them believe that you are the perfect fit for the job by showcasing your strengths.

Author – Rahul

Rahul – LinkedIn Profile