Interview Experience: Bounteous x Accolite

Accolite visited our campus for Software Engineer role. CTC offered was under 10LPA and also there was a bond clause of almost 2 years with the offer.

Round 1: Online Assessment

The assessment consisted of two sections:

• Section 1: This section had 30 multiple-choice questions (MCQs) covering various topics, including:

  • Code debugging and output analysis
  • Data structures and algorithms
  • SQL queries
  • Concepts in Java and C++

  There were no questions related to core computer science fundamentals.

• Section 2: This section featured a single DSA problem to be solved within 45 minutes. The problem statement was:

  An ant is traveling in a forest represented as the x-axis. Starting from the origin (position = 0), the ant must reach a target position x. With each step, the ant can move either ‘a’ units forward or ‘b’ units backward. The ant cannot move behind position 0, but it can go beyond position x if necessary to eventually reach x in a finite number of steps. The task is to find the minimum number of steps required for the ant to reach position x from the origin.

  Hint: Consider using a Breadth-First Search (BFS) approach.

Round 2: Online Interview

The round started with the interviewer asking to introduce myself. Then she directly jumped to asking following questions.

• DSA Problem: The interviewer asked me to solve the LeetCode problem #6: ZigZag Conversion.

• CS Fundamentals:

  • Explained the concepts of Deadlock and Starvation.
  • Deadlock avoidance methods.
  • Differentiate between Processes and Threads.
  • Multiprogramming and Page Faults.
  • Normalization in databases, including 1NF, 2NF, and 3NF.
  • Explain Network topologies and their types.
  • What is Deep copy and Shallow copy?
  • Describe the use of a Copy constructor.

The rest of the process (2 more technical rounds and 1 HR round) is yet to be completed, but I don’t think I will be participating in further rounds due to the company bond associated with the offer.