Just like most software engineers, I also hunt for better jobs. 'Better' here mean better work, better compensation, better culture etc., and NOT just 'salary' !! Recently switch to a better job. Most people have asked me about my experience in getting new job, what questions/technologies do the companies ask, qualities/skill set they are looking for ? blah blah... In this post, I try to provide my views to such queries.
I've briefly mentioned my career snapshot below. This blog could help the reader analyze/co-relate the questions/experience for a similar/related profile. I've also documented the questions (as I remember !!) at the end of this blog that various companies/interviewers have asked me during my stint.
Brief about my profile
Around 10 years of work experience as a software engineer at various product development companies. Vast experience in design and development of application software with various tools/technologies using C/C++ and Java (present). Mostly worked for management applications in storage and virtualization domain.
FAQs
How is the overall market ?
Its certainly better when compared to 2009-10 times but not very good. Considering the growing number of tech startups, one can certainly expect good number of calls.
What kind of questions to expect ?
Well, it mostly depends on the kind of job role and requirements. Most high paying companies focus on problem solving, algorithms, computer science fundamentals. Of course, your current project and relevant skill set also matters but relatively the weight age is higher for the former.
What kind of algorithms do they ask ?
Usually they begin with standard questions like detecting the loop in linked list and then dig deeper that involves questions around heap, graphs etc., And then on dynamic programing (DP). Yes, DP has become a norm these days and they use it as the decider.
How many rounds will there be ?
Most companies have 4-5 technical rounds excluding the telephonic or screening (online, programing etc.,) followed by the managerial/HR rounds.
How will the HR round be ? What kind of HR questions do they ask ?
As the experience increases, I've found their role in hiring decreases. They just facilitate the process and aid the manager/recruitment team in logistics.
What qualities in my resume boost/attract my potential employers ?
Most people mention about the present/past projects but thats not enough. Employers are looking beyond it. For example, you could mention about open source contributions/community projects you are involved with. Something apart from your regular work you did. This talks about your passion to explore technologies. Some examples below.
- Open source doesn't necessarily be some top level apache project. It could be your petty/hobby projects (as simple as shopping cart applications) or your contributions to other's ideas.
- Some simple scripts to help automate your daily activities that could help other folks facing similar problems (a script to automatically detect untracked files in your git workspace and add it to the staged environment)
- Contributions to open forums like stackexchange, yahoo answers, quora etc.,
- Your experiences/opinions shared to wider audience through blogging sites (e.g : new features in JDK 8, some upcoming technology like docker)
Are the above mandatory ?
Not exactly. But they'll certainly put you in front of the queue while screening/shortlisting profiles in the initial recruitment phases. Its never late. You could start doing from now.
What qualities shall distract/under weigh my resume ?
One thing I noticed is the frequent switches as they indicate your instability and unreliability. I would say at least 3 yrs in single company shall be a good number. Something like 5+ yrs in a single company shall strike out your temporary stints (like 6months, < 1 yr etc.,) because the fault could be on the employer side as it failed to retain you while some other company (>5 yrs) could do that.
Interview Questions
Documented below some of the questions I have been asked by various companies
Company Name
|
Date
|
Questions (that I remember)
|
Digital Insight
(Telephonic)
|
Dec 2014
|
Write a
program to chose every k elements from the end of the single link list and
reverse them
e.g: If k==3, a b c d e f g h i j k
=> j k g h i d e f a b c
How to
identify non repeated integer from a array of integers
Explain Decorator pattern
|
Snapdeal F2F
|
Dec 2014
|
Write
code for put/get in Map
Design
question related to orders and customers. Prevent rows in child table to be
deleted using constraints table/cache
Puzzle
- 3 couples on one side of river need to cross using a boat of capacity 2
where both male/female can drive it...Safety (women cannot be alone with any
male other than her husband)
|
Digital Insight F2F
|
Dec 2014
|
Program to print nodes
for a given element in tree at a distance of K (could be children or parent
or siblings)
Design
question on Badminton game
longest
palindrome in a given string (DP problem)
|
Flipkart (Telephonic
Managerial position)
|
Dec 2014
|
what are the 3 qualities
you would reject/hire in a candidate
Did you have any prior
experience in appraisals. How would you keep employees happy ?
Write the code to
recursively/iteratively compute fibonacci number
Decorator/Proxy pattern
overview and examples
How would you scale web
applications. Approach and techniques.
|
Dell Telephonic
|
Jan 2014
|
Primarily
on Java
Iterators
(failsafe vs failfast)
synchronization
cloning
java
threads
|
Dell F2F
|
Jan 2015
|
Design and code
workqueue/workpool
questions
about current projects and challenges
SOAP vs
RESTful
SSL
overview
write
code to construct tree if both inorder and pre-order traversal of a tree is
given
|
Media IQ - F2F
|
Jan 2014
|
program
to find out largest palindrome in a given string (DP questions)
Program
to print the last node in each level of level order traversal
design and code for
LRU cache
design
n elevators and m floors
program
to find the max number of platforms required for a railway station given the
arrival and departure of the trains in an array
|
VMWare - F2F
(Internal)
|
Write code to reverse
singly linked list using recursion
Write code for
BlockingQueue using java synchronization techniques. Multiple readers and
single writer
Write code for LRU cache
Code to find last node at
each level in BFS
|
|
TaxiForSure (Telephonic
Managerial Position)
|
Jan 2015
|
DR
Highly Adhesive and Low
coupling
find sum of array using
recursion
Decorator pattern
|
TaxiForSure F2F
|
Jan 2015
|
What is the Challenging
project
How to scale website
How to optimize database
|
Wallmart Labs
(Telephonic) Jan 2015
|
Jan 2015
|
Implement decorator
pattern
difference between
synchronized map vs concurrent map
garbage collection
fundamentals like parellel vs concurrent
weak vs soft refernce in
java
Code for factorial and
geometric progression
|
Wallmart Labs (F2F)
|
Feb 2015
|
Explain the fundamentals
of SSH and its working
Fundamentals of program
memory and its working… cache, page table, TLB, various segment
logic and code to find
the median of continous stream of integers
code to construct
balanced binary tree from an array of integers
given an integer array of
size N and input K, construct an array of size N-K with minimum
elements from each rolling window of size K. (Can be solved using combination
of heap and map)
Java specific questions
like synchronization, volatile, memory gc concepts, producer consumer problem
design problems on high
availability and scalability
|
Microsoft F2F
|
Feb 2015
|
How will you simulate
inheritance without actually using the in-built inheriteance in OOPs
Features and basics of
OOPs
Write code to demonstrate
polymorphism using C++ templates
Write code for circular
array based queue
High
availabilty/distributed systems
How to implement
de-duplication at file/block level in a file system. How to take care of
cloning/moving to a different data disk
|
