Hi LeetCode Community,
This post is going to be a little long, so please bear with me. The purpose of this article is to give this community back which has helped in my preparation and kept motivating me to hustle more after every rejection.
My Background - B.E in CS from an engineering institute in India. I got placed in a product company from my college placement. I started working for that firm in Jan 2019 as an intern and started working full time from 2019 July. I started looking out because the team that I was working in that my skills were getting wasted.
For the past 2.5 years, I was trying to switch from my current company with no success till last month. Now my TC is almost double of my previous company, so I think I can help many of my fellow people in the community who are struggling from rejections.
To date, I have given 50+ interviews after college placements and been through countless rejections in resume shortlisting or online assessment rounds.
Interview Experiences & Journey
Interview 1: ClearTax - SDE1 (Feb 2019) - Rejected
Profile Shortlisting:- Recruiter contacted me after seeing my profile from Instahyre.
Round 1 (Machine Coding Round) - Question was to design and implement Sudoku with Object-Oriented Programming Principles. I completed it with all the features listed in the questions
Round 2 - This was a review round for the machine coding round where they asked about my approach and how will I improve the code on some scenarios.
Round 3 - In this round, 2 questions were asked based on DSA.
https://leetcode.com/problems/best-time-to-buy-and-sell-stock-ii/
https://leetcode.com/problems/best-time-to-buy-and-sell-stock-iv/
I managed to solve 1st and discussed the 2nd one but was not able to solve 2nd one completely.
After this round, I was rejected.
Interview 2: Udaan - Software Engineer 1 (April 2019) - Rejected
Shortlisting - I participated in one challenge from HackerEarth and after solving it I was shortlisted in it.
Round 1 - Machine Coding Round - The question in this round was Implement Splitwise with OOPs Principles. I was able to solve it.
Round 2 - After this review was done and the interviewer suggested a few changes.
After half an hour HR told me that want more experienced then so I was rejected after this round.
Interview 3: Amazon - SDE1 (June 2019) - Rejected
Round 1 - One HackerEarth challenge where we were given 2 questions to solve, I managed to solve both the questions, and after 1 week HR called me for onsite rounds in Bengaluru.
Round 2 - Pen/Paper round - In this round, we were given 2 questions to solve on pen and paper. The questions were -
https://leetcode.com/problems/sliding-window-maximum/
Given a binary tree, the task is to count the number of Binary Search Trees present in it.
I was able to solve both of them. I don't know why they rejected me, HR told me I did not pass through this round.
Interview 4: GE HealthCare - Software Developer (June 2019) - Rejected
Online Test - HackerEarth test challenge was there with 2 questions. I was able to solve both questions. HR called after 1 week that I was selected for the onsite.
Interview Round 1:- Interviewer asked questions on networking, OS, DBMS fundaments. Then he gave 1 question on DP to solve. After that, we have an in-depth discussion of the project that I did in the internship. After he asked some question on C++ like (Virtual pointers, Virtual destructor, Virtual functions, and some oops questions)
Overall this round did not go well. So I was rejected after this round.
Interview 5: DE Shaw - Associate Developer - Life Sciences (June 2019) Rejected
I have applied through the careers website for this position, after that, I got an email from the recruiting team for the online assessment to be held on HackerrRank.
Online Assessment - There were 3 coding questions and 15 MCQs. I was able to solve all coding questions and almost all MCQs. After 1 week I got a call for onsite interviews.
Round 1 - One Coding question was asked based on DP. After that, he asked few questions on design patterns like the factory, singleton, builder, etc.
Round 2 - This was the DSA round. 2 interviewers were there. Questions were -
https://leetcode.com/problems/trapping-rain-water-ii/
https://leetcode.com/problems/move-zeroes/
I was able to solve 2nd one. 1st one I was not able to solve. I was rejected after this round.
Interview 6: Amazon - SDE1 (October 2019) - Rejected
Applied through an employee referral. Got an email for the online assessment challenge.
Online Assessment - There were 2 questions of medium-hard level based on DP and graph. I was to solve both of them and was called for onsite after 2 weeks.
Round 1 - The interviewer was an SDE-2 at Amazon. He asked me 2 coding problems.
https://leetcode.com/problems/rotting-oranges/
https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-largest-element-in-an-array/ I solved both of them.
Round 2 - Again it was a DSA Round with SDE-2 at Amazon. He also asked me 2 coding problems.
Given the arrival and departure times of all trains that reach a railway station, the task is to find the minimum number of platforms required for the railway station so that no train waits.
https://leetcode.com/problems/jump-game-ii/. Again I was able to solve both the problems
Round 3 - This round was with SDM at Amazon. He asked me about the projects I have worked on and asked questions about Amazon Leadership principles.
Round 4 - This round was also with an SDM at Amazon. He also asked me about the projects that I worked on in my internship and asked a few questions on Amazon Leadership Principles. After that, he asked 1 question on Trees.
I was able to solve the coding question. Overall this round also went well.
They told me they will contact me after 1 week for further details. I never got any email/feedback from their end.
Interview 7: Unacademy - SDE1 (October 2019) - Rejected
A recruiter contacted me after looking at my profile from Naukari, after that I was called for an onsite interview next week.
Round 1- All the shortlisted candidates were given a test link in which 3 questions were there. All the questions were on the easy-medium level. I was able to solve all of them.
Round 2- This was the DSA round. I was asked 1 question on backtracking and 1 on the graph. Both the question was of medium-hard level. I was able to solve both of them
Round 3- This round was a mixture of coding and technical knowledge-based. The interviewer asked me about my projects, C++, questions based on rest architecture, and 2 coding questions. 1 was from trees and the other was of DP.
I was able to solve both of them.
Round 4- This round was purely theoretical. He asked many questions on networking, OS, DBMS, and my projects
Round 5- This round was a normal discussion with one of the co-founders. This was more of a behavioral round.
After these rounds HR told me they will get back after 1 day. After 1 day I was told I was not selected. :(
Interview 8: PharmEasy - SDE1 (October 2019) - Rejected
I got an interview request from HR at PharmEasy on TopHire. I was interviewed 2 weeks after that.
Round 1- This was the DSA round. 2 questions were asked. One was to reverse stack using recursion, other question was to reverse a linked list in groups of a given size. I was able to solve both questions.
Round 2 - This was also a DSA round. One backtracking question was asked. I was not able to solve this question. The question was a variation on N-Queens Problem. I was rejected after this round.
After the above interviews, my profile was not getting shortlisted or I was not able to get calls after online assessments coding test or anything for 4-5 months
Interview 9: Amazon - SDE 1 (April 2020 ) - Rejected
Gave some rounds in startups that don't remember about the interview experiences. Companies were - HaikuJam, Shipsy, PaySafe, Rivigo, CallHub, Productiv, Rebel Foods, and a few more.
Interview 10: Amazon - SDE1 (December 2020) - Rejected
I have applied through an employee referral. After 2 weeks I got an online assessment link
Online Assessment - There were 2 questions. One was related to custom sorting and the other was a priority queue-based question. I was able to solve both of them, called for virtual onsite after 3 weeks.
Round 1 - 2 Coding questions were asked. One was based on DP, other was https://leetcode.com/problems/sort-colors/ I was able to solve both of them
Round 2 - Again this was DSA round 2 questions were asked.
https://leetcode.com/problems/flatten-a-multilevel-doubly-linked-list/ and,
https://leetcode.com/problems/integer-to-roman/ I was able to solve both of them.
Round 3- This round was taken by SDM at Amazon from Seattle. This round was based on Amazon Leadership Principle and ending with 1 coding problem.
After these, I was told one round would be taken, but I never got any feedback from them.
Interview 11: Grab - SDE1 (February 2021) - Rejected
Applied through career portal for Software Engineer backend role. Got a test link to complete in 3 days.
Online Assessment - 3 questions were there based on medium-hard difficulty. I was able to solve all 3, got a call for onsite after 3 weeks.
Round 1 - 2 coding questions were asked. https://leetcode.com/problems/next-permutation/ and https://leetcode.com/problems/lru-cache/. I was able to solve both of them
Round 2 - Again this was also PS/DSA Round with 2 coding questions. 1 was https://leetcode.com/problems/house-robber/ and 2nd was based on the graph. I was able to solve both of them
Round 3 - This round was a system design round. The interviewer asked me to design a Restaurant booking system that handles concurrency. We had a discussion but this round was not good.
I was rejected after this round.
Interview 12-24: BlueStacks | Increff | Fleetx | RoadZen | Leena AI | Supr Daily | Tila | CleverTap | Nurture farm | MoEngage | Increff | Fivetran | Trifacta [ Rejected in all ]
I have given interviews for all these but after 2/3 round to technical discussion, I was rejected in all of them.
Interview 25: Turvo - Associate Software Engineer (March 2021) - Offer :)
Round 1 - Hackarank test was there. 3 questions were there. All were easy-medium level
Round 2 - Interview was regarding the DSA rounds. 2 questions were there 1 was DP-based other was related to Trees.
Round 3 - Interview was a mixture of DSA and past projects
Round 4 - HM round. Normal discussion based on my experience, OOPS, and some behavioral questions
Interview 26: Goldman Sachs - Software Engineer (April 2021) - Rejected
One of my friends works here so applied via employee referral. Got a link for online assessment 2 weeks after that.
Online Assessment - 2 questions were there of easy-medium level, was able to solve both of them. Got a call for onsite 3 weeks after this round.
Round 1 - This was the DSA round. 2 questions were asked. One question was a variation of the Trapping RainWater Problem. 2nd was based on Trees. I was to solve both of them
Round 2 - This was also the DSA round. 2 questions were asked. One question was https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-add-to-make-parentheses-valid/ and 2nd was https://leetcode.com/problems/word-ladder/. I was able to solve 1st one and the 2nd one I was able to come up with an approach but due to time restriction was not able to complete the code.
I was rejected after this round.
Interview 27: Google - Software Engineer (March 2021) - Rejected
Applied via employee referral. Was rejected after a phone interview.
Interview 28: Housing - Software Engineer (April 2021) - Rejected
Got a call from a Consulting Company that found me via my profile in Naukri regarding an opportunity. Was called for onsite after 2 weeks.
Round 1 - DSA round 2 questions were asked both were from DP medium-hard level.
Round 2 - This was a mix of technical, databases, projects, and coding problems
Round 3- This round was the HM round. He asked me about my projects and then asked questions on indexing in DBMS and also asked some queries in MySQL. After that, he asked me 2 questions
https://leetcode.com/problems/excel-sheet-column-number/ and
https://leetcode.com/problems/valid-parentheses/. This round did not go well as I was not able to answer in-depth questions on indexing, but I was able to solve both coding problems.
I was rejected after this round.
Interview 29: Flipkart - SDE1(April-May 2021) - Offer - Accepted :)
Applied via employee referral. Got a call after 3 weeks from HR regarding onsite rounds.
Round 1 - Machine coding - Question was Covid-19 Vaccination Center Booking. After this one review round was there, regarding my approach few cross-questions based on my implementation.
Round 2 - DSA Round 2 Questions were asked in this round. https://leetcode.com/problems/number-of-islands/
and a modification of https://leetcode.com/problems/coin-change/ this problem. I was able to solve both of them
Round 3 - This was Hiring Manager Round. He asked me in-depth questions about my current projects and after that some behavioral questions.
1 week later HR called my saying they will be extending the offer as my feedback for interviews was positive. Finally after 2 years :) :).
Interview 30: Amazon - SDE1 (May 2021) - Offer :)
This was 5th time I was interviewing with Amazon. This time they told me after 4 rounds they will be extending an offer to me.
Take Aways and Advice for the interviews
- Try to always talk out a-loud your approach, interviewers want to know your approach. Always try to indulge in discussions with the interviewer they are very helpful. They give hints from time to time if you are stuck.
- Always try to write time complexity and space complexity. Most Companies, emphasize these things so please have an understanding of these things beforehand. Try to write the production-level code. Don't write pseudo-codes unless stated.
- If you get rejected from these big companies don't get disheartened companies to have many factors for their selection criteria. Just try to improve every day with Data Structures and Algorithms on LeetCode. Never Give UP :)
- There will be a time where you will be feeling burned out. But don't be, remember you only need to succeed in one company, then all of your hard work will pay off one day. Patience and practice is the key:)
I will be joining Flipkart next week :) :)
To all those struggling candidates out there Keep Hustling and Learn from your failures. Failure is stepping stone for success
I am open to suggestions and thoughts for improvement. :)