Background:

Education: BTech CSE-AI
Batch : 2024
YOE: 5 months (July 2024 - Jan 2025) [SAP Labs India]
Prior Experience: 6 Months Internship at SAP Labs India (Jan 2024 - July 2024)

Received this Amazon Offcampus offer from a Tier 3 college.

Process:

Filled the Hiring Interest Form (Nov 1, 2024)

Notified to apply for the role in their Jobs portal (Nov 2, 2024)

Resume Shortlisting

Online Assessment (Nov 4, 2024):
Should be completed within 5 days of receiving this invitation. This assessement involved 2 Coding questions and 50+ Behavioral questions.

Platform: HackerRank

Coding:

1. Password Similarity Check: Given two arrays of passwords, determine if each old password can be transformed into a subsequence of the corresponding new password by incrementing specific characters cyclically. Return "YES" or "NO" for each pair.

   Solved within first 10min with 15/15 test cases passed successfully.

2. Maximize Warehouse Efficiency: Given an array of parcel weights, calculate the maximum efficiency by repeatedly selecting and removing either the first or last parcel in the array. The sum of selected parcels determines the efficiency. Return the maximum possible efficiency.

   This was a bit tricky question, consumed all my time but still I was not able to pass all the test cases. The solution which I provided partially passed 6/15 test cases.

Behavioral:
Just follow your heart and scale yourself in the range which they provide to answer these questions.

Verdict: Notified via mail on Nov 11, 2024 stating my interviews are being scheduled from the next day.

Virtual interview rounds (All rounds are eliminatory in nature):

• Interview rounds: There will be a maximum of three rounds (two technical rounds and one Bar Raiser round) that you can expect as part of your interview process. All the rounds are of 1hr.

• What will be assessed: Data-structures & Algorithms, Problem Solving, Coding, Amazon Leadership Principles and Behavioral questions

1. Technical Round 1 (Nov 12, 2024)
Started with breif introduction from the Interviewer (4yrs+ in Amazon as a SDE) and then followed with my introduction.

Later directly moved to the coding questions. Any language can be preferred by us to proceed with coding in their own platform called Livecode.

1. Complete Binary Tree Node Count: Find the total number of nodes in a given complete binary tree efficiently.

   Started discussin with Brute-force approach first and later provided the optimized approach and started coding the optimized solution itself.
   Few follow-up questions were asked based on my approach and was able to answer them.

2. Sort String by Frequency: Sort characters in a string in decreasing order of their frequency. If multiple answers exist, return any valid one.

   Directly provided the optimized solution and coded it.

   Still 30min were left for the interviewer to question me and then she said the questions which she will be asking are bonus questions. From this statement I understood that I have performed well so far.

3. Aggressive Cows (Max Distance): Place k cows in stalls to maximize the minimum distance between any two cows.

   I told the interviewer the question name itself directly as I had just solved the same question a day ago. She laughed and told me to just provide the solution and need not code it. Provided the optimized solution for this too.

4. Directed Graph Edge Score: Find the node with the highest edge score in a directed graph. If there's a tie, return the smallest indexed node.

   A bit tricky graph question, started with brute-force approach and later provided the optimized approach. Followed-up with few questions on time and space complexities.

Still had few minutes on the clock so she asked me if I had any questions for her. Just asked two questions related to the her team and about work culture.

Note: All the questions were not direct, instead it was in a form of word problems and I have just provided the crux of the questions.

Verdict: Cleared Round 1 (Notified via mail on Nov 15, 2024)

2. Technical Round 2 (Nov 18, 2024)
Two interviewers were in the panel, no introduction or whatsoever. Directly one of the interviewer started with the structure of the interview stating Two Behavioral questions followed by Two Coding questions with one question to provide the optimized code and the other one to just provide the apporach.

Started with behavioral questions and I was able to tackle them a bit, but I never expected I will be asked follow-up questions on these too. Was a little nervous but a touch of confidence in what I said so this whole behavioral part alone went for first 30min.

Coding:

1. Most Played Songs: Create a playlist of the most frequently played songs for a user based on the play count.

   Directly provided the optimized solution but still he wanted me to provide few more apporaches to solve it in linear space. I couldn't find any approach to solve this particular problem in linear space but still I provided him with various other approaches, he was satisfied and insisted me to code the first solution which I provided him. Few follow-up on my code but he was satisfied with my answers.

2. Longest Repeating Substring: Find the longest duplicated substring in a given string. If no such substring exists, return an empty string.

   Provided the optimized approach and didn't expect I will be coding the solution as he said at start of the interview only the apporach will be suffice for one of the coding question. Clock was ticking but I just managed to code the solution in time and he instructed me to dry run the code with a tricky input.

   I managed to dry run the input but the output was confusing to me and I paused for a bit. Later he confused me to agree to a wrong output but I evaded by saying what actual output I got after the dry run. He smiled and told that I'm correct which made me happy.

   After this discussion, he was open for questions from my side and I asked him one question on the tech stack which works now and later when I noticed the chat, the other interviewer exactly after the 1hr mark stated saying that the we were overtime.

When I recalled the whole interview I provided the solution before the 1hr mark and the further discussion resulted in extra 5min overtime. I thought I would be rejected as the preivous year I was rejected for the Applied Scienctist Intern role where I went overtime in the interview.

Fingers crossed, the next day (Nov 19, 2024) I got the mail stating that I was moving to the Final Round of the Loop Interview.

3. Bar Raiser Round (Nov 21, 2024)
The interviewer was a SDM (Manager) with over 7yrs+ experience in Amazon alone (Overall 19yrs+ experience). He stated he don't want to a self-introduction about me as he has my resume so he directly went with the interview structure stating that three behavioral situations will be assessed. I don't remember the exact questions but these were a bit off-meta questions which you can expect in the Behavioral round.

1. How did you take up or lead something which is out of your daily scope of work?
   Provided a real-life example and started to build on top of it, but make sure you follow the STAR technique which plays a vital role in answering these types of questions.

   At the end he was satisfied with the answer which I provided and I received a good feedback from him for my answer.

2. How did you overcome a situation where you have been given a negative feedback?
   This question was difficult to me because I was not able to sync with me as I didn't face any situation in real-life. Started with one of my scenario, but when I concluded it, he just said this is not what he's expecting.

   I was feared to death as I don't want to get rejected in the last round of this loop interview. Later I came up with another scenario where he was hardly justified with the answer I gave. For this question I would rate myself Below Average 😂.

3. Where/How do you start learning which is something new to you?
   I was able to relate to one of my real-life scenario and started explaining. Later he had few questions to follow-up and I barely evaded by saying few examples. For this question I would rate myself Above Average 😅.

I was in complete confusion as the whole round just got over within 40min even after I asked few questions to him and left me wonder whether I would be rejected for this reason alone as I was fast with my conversation. I started to google around to see the success rate of the Loop Interview and it turned out to be just 20% which made me more worried about my end result.

Later after few days, I got the call (Nov 26, 2024) from the recruiter stating that I have cleared all the rounds and provided with the offer. Disucussed about locations, notice period which I will serve in my current organization. Was given to choose Bangalore or Chennai and I chose Bangalore and starting date is Jan 6, 2025. At EOD I got the offer details enclosed to my mail and was more than happy to accept the offer in few days and received the final offer letter on Dec 2, 2024.