Software Engineer Position Interview Preparation Notes

Interview Rounds

1. Phone Screening Round
2. Online Assessment Round
3. Behavioral Round
4. Coding Round
5. Design Round
6. Managerial Round
7. HR Round

Phone Screening Round

1. What inspired you to become a Software Engineer?
2. What are your top three technical skills?
3. What excites you about the Software Engineer position at Publicis Sapient?
4. What is your experience with agile methodologies?
5. What coding languages are you proficient in?
6. What was your biggest accomplishment in your previous role?
7. What are some challenges you have faced as a Software Engineer and how did you overcome them?
8. What are the steps you take when debugging a problem?
9. What are some of the recent technical advancements in your field that you are excited about?
10. How do you stay up to date with the latest technologies and trends in your field?

Online Assessment Round

1. Write a program to find the greatest common denominator of two numbers using recursion.
2. What is the time complexity of a bubble sort algorithm?
3. What is an API and how is it used?
4. What is the difference between an abstract class and an interface?
5. What is the output of the following code:
   int x = 5;
   x = x++ + ++x;
   System.out.println(x);
6. What is a RESTful web service?
7. What are some common HTTP response codes and their meanings?
8. What is a DNS server and how does it work?
9. Write a code to reverse a linked list.
10. What is the difference between a stack and a queue?

Behavioral Round

For each question, use the STAR format to answer:

• Situation: Describe the situation or context in which you demonstrated the skill or behavior.
• Task: Describe the task or goal you were working towards.
• Action: Describe the action or steps you took to achieve the task or goal.
• Result: Describe the outcome or result of your actions.

1. Can you describe a situation where you had to work on a project with a tight deadline?
2. Tell me about a time when you had to take on a leadership role on a project.
3. Describe a situation where you had to work with a team member who was not meeting expectations.
4. Tell me about a time when you had to communicate a complex technical concept to a non-technical stakeholder.
5. Describe a situation where you had to troubleshoot a technical problem that you were not familiar with.
6. Tell me about a time when you had to make a difficult decision regarding a project or technical issue.
7. Describe a situation where you had to work on a project with a diverse team with different backgrounds and technical skills.
8. Tell me about a time when you had to adapt to a new technology or tool for a project.
9. Describe a situation where you had to prioritize tasks in order to meet a deadline.
10. Tell me about a time when you had to work with a stakeholder who had a different vision for a project.

Coding Round

For coding questions, discuss the Time and Space complexity of your answer and provide the code in indented format.

1. Write a program to find the first non-repeated character in a string.
2. Write a program to reverse a string.
3. Write a program to determine if a string is a palindrome.
4. Write a program to find all the permutations of a string.
5. Write a program to implement a stack that supports push, pop, and find the minimum element in O(1) time.
6. Write a program to find the k-th smallest element in an unsorted array.
7. Write a program to find the maximum subarray sum in an array.
8. Write a program to implement a binary search tree.
9. Write a program to merge two sorted linked lists.
10. Write a program to sort an array using the quicksort algorithm.

Design Round

Discuss both high level and low level details of your design answers. Use examples from your experience and the projects listed in your resume.

1. How would you design a scalable and efficient system for a social networking platform?
2. How would you design a system to handle a large volume of product reviews for an e-commerce website?
3. Describe the architecture of a web application that you have designed.
4. How would you design a system for storing and retrieving large amounts of data in a distributed system?
5. What are some of the challenges in designing a microservices architecture and how do you address them?
6. Describe a situation where you had to optimize the performance of a web application. What steps did you take?
7. What are some best practices for designing RESTful web APIs?
8. How would you design a system for processing large amounts of streaming data?
9. How would you design a system for handling transactions in a banking application?
10. Describe the design of a web application that you have worked on.

Managerial Round

1. Describe a situation where you had to manage a team of developers.
2. What do you think makes a great Software Engineer?
3. How do you keep your team motivated and engaged?
4. Tell me about a difficult decision you had to make as a manager.
5. What is your approach to managing conflicts within a team?
6. How do you measure the success of a project?
7. What are some of the best practices you have implemented in project management?
8. How do you prioritize tasks and delegate responsibilities to your team members?
9. Describe the support you provide to team members to ensure they are successful in their roles.
10. What are some steps you take to ensure timely delivery of projects?

HR Round

1. What are some of your long term career goals?
2. What makes you interested in working for Publicis Sapient?
3. What are some of your strengths?
4. What are some areas you would like to improve upon?
5. What type of work environment do you thrive in?
6. How do you handle stress and tight deadlines?
7. Why are you leaving your current job?
8. What are your salary expectations?
9. Do you have any questions for us?