Accolite Digital Interview Experience for SDE Intern + FTE 2022

Round 1: This was MCQ round with 30 questions with 30 minutes time. 

• The question level was easy to medium.
• Questions were based on CS fundamentals such as OS, DBMS, Data Structures, and general aptitude.
• After 45 min, we got a list of students who were qualified for the coding round.

Round 2: This round had one coding question which was to be solved in 1 hour.

The question was –

1. Mustafa wants to cross N caves. There are M monsters in each cave. To cross one cave, Mustafa has to kill one monster in that cave. Each monster has some power p. Mustafa can only kill a monster if he has more power than the monster (Mustafa’s power >= monster’s power). If Mustafa kills a monster, his power decreases by the amount of the monster’s power. Whenever Mustafa kills a monster, he gets some experience points E which in turn, increases the power of Mustafa. so what should be the minimum initial power of Mustafa so that he can cross all N caves.

   Given –

   2-D matrix P[N][M] – power of monsters.

   2-D matrix E[N][M] – Experience points gained after killing the monster.

21 students were shortlisted from this round for technical rounds.

I got mail at 7:00 PM that my technical round 1 was scheduled at 1 PM the next day.

Round 3: In this round interviewer asked me about myself. Then she asked me about my projects. We had discussed my projects for 15-20 minutes.

Then she asked questions from different-2 subjects.

DBMS –

1. What is normalization and tell about different-2 normal forms.
2. What are keys in DBMS?
3. What is the difference between candidate key and primary key?
4. Why is foreign key used?
5. What are different types of join?
6. 2 SQL queries
7. ACID property in DBMS.

OOPs –

1. What is OOPs?
2. what are the different pillars of oops?
3. What is the difference between method overloading and method overriding
4. Discuss different types of inheritance
5. How to achieve abstraction in c++
6. What are access identifiers

Data Structure and Algorithms –

1. Why tree data structure is important
2. What is BST
3. How to insert elements in BST
4. preorder, postorder, inorder, level-order
5. Tell me about sorting algorithms
6. Approach of Quick sort

Implementation – 

1. Implement selection sort and Quick sort
2. Write a program to check if a string is palindrome or not.
3. Write a program to implement method overloading
4. Write a program to show constructor calling in inheritance
5. Write a program to implement method overriding
6. Print the following pattern

          *
         * *
        * * *
       * * * *
      * * * * *

Puzzle: There are 2 jugs. one is of 3 liters and another one is of 5 liters. how to make a measurement of 4 liters.

This round lasted for 70 minutes. After 10 min, I got an email saying that my next round is scheduled at 5 PM.

Round 4: This round started with a formal introduction and then the interviewer asked me about my projects. My projects were based on machine learning. He really asked some tough questions about NLP and why we need NLP when we already have a rating system.

• Project discussion lasted for 20 minutes.
• Then he asked me to open ide.
• He asked me to write code for following question- Two numbers N and SUM are given. N denotes the number of digits in a number while SUM denotes the sum of those N digits. so what is the maximum number possible which has N digits and sum of digits equal to SUM.

  Testcases 1 -  
  Input - N = 2 , SUM = 12
  Output - 93
  Testcases 1 -  
  Input - N = 4 , SUM = 20
  Output - 9920

• I wrote the code which initially failed for some corner cases. I corrected it 2-3 times and finally, I was able to pass all test-cases.
• Then he asked about the complexity of the program.
• The discussion for this question lasted for 20 minutes.
• Then he asked me a system design question: He asked me what will be my approach to design snake and ladder games. I suggested a class-based solution where the class holds the information about the state of the block ( whether there is a ladder or snake or nothing) and destination row and column(if there is a snake or ladder).
• He asked me to write the code for that class and form the board for the game. He raised 3-4 concerns about my approach. I was able to answer a few of them. He also helped me to think about specific conditions related to the game board.
• This discussion lasted for 15 minutes. My interview was over in 55 minutes. 

This round didn’t go well for me but luckily I got an email from HR that my next round is in 10 minutes.

Round 5(HR Round): HR round was very short it lasted for 10 minutes.

• The interviewer first introduced her then asked me to introduce myself.
• Then she asked me about my family background, the difference between Hard work and Smart work, What are the difficulties I faced working in a team while doing projects.
• After this, she discussed salary and other details.
• She asked some situational questions like – you are leading your team and there is conflict in your team and you have to submit a project in 2 days. what will you do to finish your work in time?

Finally we got a list of students who were selected, 6 students were selected I was one of them.

Takeaways:

• Be confident even if you don’t know the solution don’t give up, tell them your approach.
• Prepare your projects well
• Prepare DBMS and OOPS well.