Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Microsoft
SUYOG MAPARA
Interview 1
1) He asked me to explain any of my projects. I explained him about the game ‘Battle City’ I coded. He then asked in detail about the data structures, algorithms used and AI of the game. He also asked about how I can extend those data structures for game of larger-sized games such as ‘Age of Empires’ and how running time of my algorithms will be affected by such an extension.
2) Given a very large string, give an algorithm to find repeated patterns in that string. For example; in string ”aaaabbaabba….” ; “abba” and “aabb” are two patterns.
3) Write a program to reverse a string. Optimize for space and optimize for time (separately).
Interview 2 You are supposed to design the software that downloads a website and makes it available for offline view. How you will go about the design? What are the problems you may face and how will you solve them? Write the pseudo code for the highest level routines in the software. (We were discussing this for over an hour and that was the only question he asked me in the interview.)
Interview 3
1) How was the aptitude test? Are you satisfied with the solutions you gave or now you know better ways to solve any of the problems? Why you are so inconsistent in your academic grades?
2) He asked me to explain one of my projects.
3) What are the considerations while designing a scheduler?
4) What are different methods for synchronizing the access to shared resource? Implement readers and writers problem with semaphores. (After reading the code I wrote) is it possible one of the processes waits forever? How will you prevent that?
5) Rate yourself as a C programmer on the scale of 10. Write a macro to reverse 4-byte string.
6) You have a hash table and each hashed record has a character field called flag. Write a function which takes pointer to the hash table and a key and returns true if corresponding record has flag with third byte set false otherwise. (It seems he wanted to test whether I know simple basics about hashing)
Resources
1) Algorithms books
• Introduction to algorithms by Thomas Cormen.
• Algorithm design manual by Steven Skiena. – Good book. More practical than Coreman but far less formal.
• Data structures and algorithm analysis in C++ by M. A. Weiss. – Good exercise problems.
2) How Would You Move Mount Fuji? by William Poundstone. – Past Microsoft interview questions in one place.
3) Websites
• http://www.topcoder.com/tc
• http://acm.uva.es/problemset/
Suggestion
I had studied mainly algorithm analysis but there was no question requiring clever algorithm design or in depth analysis. Still having strong algorithm base does give you confidence while speaking about your projects and answering their objections and arguments. Besides you require that to clear aptitude test and some people got direct questions in algorithms design. I would recommend you to study data structures, algorithms analysis and operating systems in depth and thoroughly revise design and implementation of your projects.
Microsoft 1
Submitted By -Roma Shah
1st Round: Technical Test in two parts.
1st Part: It had 45 questions and 25 minutes. All were programming based questions like complete the code or find the output etc. I was able to solve only 5-6 questions but was confident of their answers.
2nd Part: It had 3 questions and 45 minutes. 2 questions required to write code of the given problem statement and 3rd question involved writing test cases for a given program.
2nd Round: 2 technical Interviews
1st Interview:
First he asked me to explain my project. But he didn’t ask many questions on it.
Then he started with the coding questions.
I had to design a “dynamic spell check” for Microsoft word i.e. suppose you write ‘y’ after ‘x’, then as there is no word starting with ‘xy’ then it should immediately alert you.
So first I was asked to give an appropriate data structure for the English dictionary for this purpose. The answer to this is a tree structure.
He was happy with my first answer and said it to be a good answer. This encouraged me.
Then I had to write the exact structure and then we had a discussion on the structure of the node as to what all information it should hold.
Then he asked me to first give the logic and write the code for adding a new word to the dictionary i.e. the tree. We had a long discussion on the logic.
Then the same proceeded for deletion of a word from the dictionary.
This all went for 60-75 minutes. He himself gave me feedback about my interview and he said that it was very good though the problem was not very straightforward. He also pointed put 1 or 2 mistakes.
2nd Interview:
He too asked me about my project and asked me explain what is neural network as it is part of my project.
This interview was more of a learning session.
He asked me my favorite subject. I answered “data Structures” and then we had long discussion as to why most computer engineering students have the same answer for this.
Then I was asked to do the requirement capturing for designing a software for “his customized” ATM machine. I had to ask him the relevant questions to do so.
Then he asked me some questions on database concepts.
Then he asked me write a code for finding the number of occurrences of a substring in a given string. We had a long discussion on the code and its correctness in different scenario. Then I had to write the different test cases for the same.
This interview also went for an 60-75 minutes. I asked him about a feedback and so he discussed my interview with me.
The feedbacks given both the interviews had built up my confidence.
Also during both the interviews they were giving us hints and they mainly checked our approach to the problem.
3rd Round: Final Technical Interview
In this interview I was asked concepts on Operating Systems especially threads and process. He grilled me on these questions.
Then he asked me about the OSI layers. But he didn’t grill me on that.
Then he asked me about hashing- what is hashing? Why is it done? Etc. Then he asked me write a code for finding a record in file indexed using hashing. Also write the hash function. He just read my code, gave a weird look and told me wait for the results.
But later I got to know that he gave a weird look to all.
All the interviewers had their laptops with them and were continuously working on that. We suppose they were sharing our answers with each other.
So we were at a time being examined be 6 of them supposedly.
Preparation:
I had in fact done zero prior preparation as I had never expected to get into Microsoft. But truly speaking you cannot prepare for these interviews 1 or 2 days back. Its all your 3 years that matter and the clarity of your basic concepts. Data structures and Algorithms and databases (mainly) and operating systems and computer networks (to some extent) are the main subjects for any interview.
All the Best!!!
Adventity
Company Name : Adventity Location Offered: Thane
Postion Offered: Trainee Analyst- Retail Analytics
Date of Campus : 15th Dec 2007
Package Offered : 4.5 Lacs (Total Cost to Company) No bond.
It was the fourth open house company coming to VJTI
No of Rounds: 2
First we had almost 1 hr ppt. (9:30 – 10:30)which was a nice one but a bit lengthy.This was followed by an aptitude test.
Aptitude Test:
Duration: 30 mins for 30 questions.( 11:00 – 11:30)
Areas: General knowledge questions,riddles and some anagrams.
Basically test was conducted to test basic aptitude.
No negative marking.
No. of students appeared: 200
My take: Questions were very easy.
Cut –offs were high.
Almost 2 hrs after the aptitude test, list was put up of those shortlisted for interviews. 37 people were selected at this stage. All those who were selected for interview were put up in different slots and our interviews began from 2 o’clock..
2. Interviews
Each one had to give 1 interview:
There were 2 panels consisting of 3 people each.
Technical+ HR Interview:
Duration: On an average 20 mins.
Sample Questions:
It started with normal Hr questions like tell me about yourself,family background n all.Their focus was mainly on the communications n analytical skills.Most student were given some real life situations n asked for their responses and how they will react in such situations.
In second half of the interview some mixed bag questions(technical+ prababilty) were asked-
Probabilty questions related to conditional probability.
What are the different normal forms ?
Why are they necessary ?
What are the objects in ASP ?
Tell me something about your project( in my case it was ajax n web services)
My Take:
My interview was conducted for almost 45 mins. (quite long when others were finishing their interviews in 15 mins.) They offered me some snacks also so you can imagine how informal my interview was.
However for many people first round too was complete hr or mixture of technical and hr. It all depended on your interviewers and stuffs you mentioned in your resume.
So I was done for the day at 5pm but interviews of my other friends were to be taken. They finished entire process at 8:30.Our results were announced at 9.30 pm when they asked the selected students to fill a Candidate Information Sheet.
Final intake: 7 out of 37.(4 comps + 3 tronix)
Preparation:
I had hardly prepared anything for the interviews. But I could answer questions asked on my project very well.
Your Job:
One day before the test, just revise probability and go through your project very well. Be prepare to answer any question(it may be a foolish one also)because they just want to see your reaction, nothing else.
Lehman Brothers 4
Email Id: rad1003@gmail.com
Branch: Computer
Name of the Company: Lehman Brothers
Post Offered: TDP Developer
Location: Mumbai
No of people who gave the aptitude test: approx. 200
Date of Aptitude: 14 Dec
Results announced on: 17 Dec
Date of Interview: 18 Dec
Aptitude Test:
It was conducted by Merit Trac. The paper was divided into 3 sections.
Verbal
Quantative
Logical
The questions were easy.
Some of the question types included were
In verbal, 2 passages were given and questions were based on that, synonyms, antonyms, filling in prepositions etc.
In quantative, questions were easy, based on sets, maths equations etc.
In logical, finding the odd man out etc.
All the sections are very simple but the time given is less. Each individual section has its own time slot. So you have to be really fast.
No Negative marking.
No of People who cleared the Aptitude: 91
Interview:
Interviews were well organized. Everyone was given their time slots for the interview. The time given to me was 2.00 pm but I was called for the first interview at 12.00. So be there well before time. Time slot was on the basis of your first name.
1. Technical Interview:
Duration: approx 20-25 mins
Questions in my case were asked on the basis of the projects mentioned in the resume.
Questions asked:
Tell me about yourself
Objects in java are called by reference or called by value in java? Wrote some code and asked to predict the output.
JDBC and ODBC connections in Java. They asked that very much in detail. What do you mean by drivers and many other related things.
Gave 2 tables with their attributes and primary keys. And asked about 2 queries on those. Some theory questions related to SQL were also asked
Differentiate between polymorphism and inheritance.
Question on Virtual functions. You have a base class pointer pointing to a derived class object. Both the base class and derived class have a function with the same prototype. Can u access that base class function with that pointer without making that function virtual?
There were some who were rejected in the technical interview.
2. HR Round:
Duration: Approx 15-20 mins
It was basically a stress interview. There were 2 panelists. One of them was a lady and was very sweet. She started the interview with simple questions like tell me about yourself, family background, your favorite color and your weaknesses. After that, the other person was really interested in only knowing whether I will join this organization or not. I was asked whether I gave CAT and when I said know, they asked me about GRE and when again I replied in negative, he was just after me, asking me you have a good CGPA and good academic records, I am not convinced with your answer.
The other questions that he asked me was why Lehman Brothers and not TCS (as I was placed in TCS).
No matter what I replied to his questions he said “I am not convinced”, “You have not sold me on this”. That was really very frustrating.
Be very careful with whatever you say in the interview specially the words you use. You might mean something but they just take it the other way round.
Results:
Finally the results were announced at around 7.30 pm. 39 people got through (including me of course), of which 21 were from computers.
BEST OF LUCK to you all.
Lehman Brothers -3
Email: pratikkul@yahoo.com
Lehman Brothers:
Position Offered – TDP (Technology Development Programme) DeveloperNo. of rounds – 3 (Aptitude test + Technical interview + HR interview)
About the Aptitude Test:
Conducted by Meritrac. Very similar to Accenture. Quite easy………and no essay!!!
Verdict – 91 out of around 200 shortlisted for interviews
HR Interview:
I was the first person to be interviewed!!! So I did not have any idea about the questions asked. Just went in to face it…..
It started with typical questions like Tell me about yourself, family background, why Lehman….. I was then given a couple of puzzles to solve. I had to think but ultimately got the right answer. One important tip – Speak whatever you are thinking. They want to see the way you go about solving it. They’ll give you hints if you are in the right direction. I was also asked about my projects. Which is your favourite project? On what platform did you implement it? Then started the real HR questions. What difficulties did you face during your project….difficulties in terms of man management, leadership? How did you tackle them? What weakness did you find out in yourself while working on the project? What did you do to overcome it? You need to remain cool and confident while answering such questions. Be consistent in your answers.
They focus on HR a lot. Some students had multiple HR interviews, stress interviews…
Technical Interview:
The main focus is on OOP concepts and databases. We had a kind of debate on why OOP exists and what are its advantages over procedural languages like C. They asked me about algorithms but it was far too simple. Different types of joins in Databases had to be revised. Overall, technical interview was relatively simple. Make sure you have your OOP concepts and database concepts strong.
Final Result – 39 people got through in Lehman Brothers!!!
Lehman Brothers 2
Submitted By: Esha Wali
Lehman Brothers Experience :
It started with impressive pre placement talk by the CIO of the company.. The spirits soared…Post of TDP…n only branch in India is in Mumbai..Hirandani Gardens..
Round 1 -> moderate level aptitude test strictly based on more of logic, little math and simple RCs (English)..Be well prepared..It can b difficult , if u aren’t prepared…Test was on Friday, result were disclosed on Monday,80+ ppl selected for next round to b held on Tuesday!
Round 2: Tech + HR Interviewà We were called alphabetically..the panel consisted of 2 men…They started with database coz I told wen I was asked that I was not comfortable with Java (y shud I take the risk???)…They then asked me 2 puzzles from which I cud solve just one..(I thought my world was crashing down!! My dream company was still a distant dream!!)..Then they shifted focus to HR..since I had number of extracurricular (nirmaan editor, event head tpp, trad show, Treasurer Ace) They asked my about team sizes and some particular incident, where I faced problem but I cud manage and how…They had scanned the whole reume and also kept on underlining a few things..They noted on it everything I said for forwarding to next interviewer..( I guess they were checking consistency in answers!) They ended by saying they were impressed and gave me a Lehman Brother pen!! (Yipeeeee!!)
Round 3 : Stress Interview->I call it stress coz the interviewer acted weird…Although we were sitting in FYBTech classrooms, he sat two benches away and was barely audible. I offered to sit on a closer bench, but he refused, saying he wud speak louder n even I shud do same…He asked about family background and confirmed a few things abt prev interview…Following this was a round of cross-questioning…I wud say interrogation..Y Lehman.. What if the company u join fails? Wat are ur plans for future studies…? He tried his best possible to run me down…Even to a point saying, “Take it from me..Ur opinion is wrong! Do u accept u r wrong? “, I replied, “Maybe”…He said, “Go now!!”…I gave him the biggest possible 100 watt smile..and saying thankyou....(HOW DID I DO IT??)
Round 4: I was called for HR..first person to b called thrice…I was shocked..Interviewer asked me wat happened..I said I gave interview before..He asked me prev Interviewers name…and said..He is the main one..He dusnt need to interview me..I cud leave!! (Okay..someone explain me..WAT WAS IT??? Y DID I DO IT???)
Some ppl even went upto 4 interviews..some stress some normal HR…
Final Verdict: Dream turned into reality….I was selected as a LEHMANITE..!!!
Lehman Brothers 1
Email Add: Jinal_gshah@yahoo.co.in
Company Name: Lehman Brothers
Location Offered: Mumbai
Position Offered: TDP Developer
Date of Campus: 14th Dec,2007
Their planned Batch Size: 80 for 2008
There were 3 rounds:
Aptitude Test on 14th Dec
Technical Interview on 18th Dec
HR interview on 18th Dec
Aptitude Test (75 mins):
Aptitude test consisted of 3 sections: There were 3 separate sections and each section had alloted time after which paper was taken and next section paper was given.
1. Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (20 mins- 25 questions): this had questions on finding incorrect sentences, rearranging sentences to form logical paras and RC's . You have to be very fast!
2. Maths (very very easy) ( 30 mins-25questions): there were different venn diagrams and logical reasoning questions.
3.Attention to details (very very easy) (25 mins- 25 questions) : questions on find the odd man out amongst the figures etc.
MeriTrac agency had set the papers.
Technical Interview:
There were panels of 2 people . Questions were based on projects done mainly from your resume.
I was asked about my java project done in 5th sem. My role in the project. How did we go about it ie.stages of development and few technicalities.
Few things from my resume.
Any situation where i faced bottleneck and then managed well out of it.
Some students were asked questions on data structures, C and C++ And yes in the end some puzzles were asked!
HR Interview: (Some people had stress interviews too!)
HR Interview were general.
Questions like
why lehman?
Why not other offers that you have? Why not Google or Microsoft?(He insisted on this one)
Strengths/ Weakness?
Family Background?
From resume.. Some pleasant acievement?
What kind of projects you would like to do?
Some people had more than 2 rounds of interviews (ie. Upto 4 interviews)
After aptitude test 91 people were shortlisted and after interviews 39 people were selected from VJTI.I was one of them too...
Open House - Deloitte
Email Add: Jinal_gshah@yahoo.co.in
Company Name : Deloitte India Pvt Ltd
Location Offered: Mumbai
Postion Offered: Associate Analyst of Consulting in Technology Integration
Date of Campus : 30th Nov 2007
Package Offered : 4 Lacs (Total Expensation to Company)
It was the second open house company coming to VJTI
No of Rounds: 3
First we had almost 30 mins ppt. very brief and to the point.This was followed by an aptitude test.
Aptitude Test:
Duration: 40 questions n 60 mins.
Areas: Verbal and Quant section similar to CAT. No negative marking.
Questions were distributed through the paper ie. No separate sections.
No. of students who sat: 220
My take: Questions were of moderate difficulty.
Cut –offs were very high.
All my quant questions were correct.
1 hr after the aptitude test, list was put up of those shortlisted for interviews. 43 people were selected at this stage. all those who were selected for interview were put up in different slots and our interviews began bang on time.
2. Interviews
Each one had to give 2 rounds of interview:
1. Technical Interview:
Topics: My project, Software Engineering, Web Technology and Databases
Duration: 25 mins.
Sample Questions:
tell me about yourself?
tell us something about your project (mine was on sap)?
How javascript can b used and where?
What is Database Normalization?
What are different types of joins? etc
Which models u know in SE? Which would you use in your project?
Black box testing, White box testing? Etc
What do you mean by consultant? What does he do?
My Take: I had to go on and on but with confidence. They were checking my confidence, communication skills and grasp in the subject. I could direct my interview.
However for many people first round too was complete hr or mixture of technical and hr. It all depended on your interviewers and stuffs you mentioned in your resume.
2. HR Interview:
Duration : 25 mins
Sample Questions:
Give an elevator speech ( introduction speech- tell me about myself).
Few interesting questions like tell me how would u estimate the weights of table n chairs in this room?
Any challenging situation that you faced after which you felt a sense of accomplishment?
3 things Deloitte wants to convey?
Anything you would like to change in Deloitte?
What do you have to offer to Deloitte?
Which other offers do u have? (I had Accenture) and why deloitte?
and other similar questions were asked.
My Take: The person who took my interview was the vice president. He was checking my communication skills and ability to speak continuously.
So I was done for the day at 4pm but interviews of my other friends were to be taken. Our results were announced at 8.30 pm
Final intake: 16 out of 43.
Preparation: I had gone with zero preparation. Fortunately our ESE was over just 4 days before Deloitte interview so I could answer SE related questions very easily with confidence. We had also worked enough on our final year project to answer questions related to it.
Open House- Cisco 1
Company : CISCO Systems.
Position offered :
Date of campus : 13th July
Package offered : CTC – 7 to 8 lac.
Gross – 5.73
The interview procedure was held in SPCE campus at it was common for both VJTI and SPCE. Every student from Computer, IT, Electrical and Electronics was eligible for the procedure i.e. there was no cutoff as in case of other companies (truly open house!!!)
Round 1: Aptitude Test
Around 50 questions to be solved in 1 hr. The questions were broadly divided into three categories
- Maths related questions
- Computer related questions ( DS, AOA, OS, CN etc.)
- Electronics related questions
42 students were selected from this round.
Round 2: Technical Interview
This interview initially started with HR type questions e.g. ‘tell me about yourself’, questions based on resume e.g. extracurricular activities, events organized etc. Gradually they moved on to technical stuff.
They discussed my each and every project in detail starting from ER diagrams, databases used, implementation details etc.
Then they moved on to regular subjects like OS, CN, DS, AOA, C, CPP, DBMS.
Questions were based on
- Interprocess communication, shared memory, pipes.
- OSI layers
- Protocols at various layers
- AVL trees, rotations
- Sorting algorithms
- Database normalization
I had mentioned about a programming contest in my resume. They asked me about questions in that contest, what logic I used to solve those questions, what was complexity of the solution. They even asked me to improve efficiency of one of the solutions.
The technical interview lasted for about 40-45 mins. Students selected after Technical Interview were called for HR interview.
Round 3: HR interview
Here they asked us to write a 5-6 line essay on given topic. But no questions were asked on that topic.
Gereral question were asked like
How was your day?
Why CISCO?
Do you have any other offers?
What are your future plans? GRE, CAT??? :-p
One questions was tricky and totally unexpected – what will you do if Microsoft comes to your campus? Be prepared for such questions :-)
Finally, results were announced at 00:00!!!! Total 14 students, 9 from SPCE and 6 from VJTI were selected.
Preparation recommended:
- Revise all subjects, more stress on CN, OS, DS, AOA, DBMS
- Know your projects well
- Be prepared for any questions on your resume
- Some basic electronics concepts like p-n junctions, transistors will help you to crack the apti.
Contact:
Feel free to contact me anytime.
Email: shri.mether@gmail.com
Phone: 9869530201