My Interview Experience at eQ Technologic

Round 1: Online Coding Test

The first round was conducted on the AMCAT platform and included:

• 15 Aptitude Questions: Covering quantitative, logical, and verbal reasoning.

• 2 Coding Questions:

  1. An easy pattern-printing problem.
  2. A more challenging problem to determine the maximum calls to a function that returns permutations of an array, aiming to find a sorted permutation.

Approximately 40 candidates cleared this round.

Round 2: Technical Interview

The interview was held online via MS Teams. It began with my introduction, followed by a series of coding, DSA, OOP, DBMS, and puzzle-solving questions:

Coding Problem:

• Problem Statement: Given two variables:
• A = Number of candles
• B = Number of melted candles required to make 1 new candle
• Objective: Calculate how long the candle can burn by reusing melted candles.

Examples:

• Input: A = 2, B = 2 → Output: 3
• Input: A = 10, B = 4 → Output: 13

Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA):

• Reverse a Linked List: Provided the code and explained the approach.
• Binary Search Tree (BST): Explained BST, drew a sample, and demonstrated all three traversal methods (Inorder, Preorder, Postorder) with code.
• AVL Trees: Briefly explained what an AVL tree is and its use cases.

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP):

• Explained OOP concepts as if the interviewer had no prior knowledge.
• Covered Classes, Objects, Constructors, and the 4 Pillars of OOP (Encapsulation, Inheritance, Polymorphism, Abstraction).
• Handled cross-questions confidently.

Database Management System (DBMS):

• Query Problem: Given a student table containing student and department data, I wrote a query to print the number of students in all departments.
• Successfully executed a similar query on a W3Schools link provided by the interviewer.
• Discussed ACID properties and explained 3NF (Third Normal Form).

Puzzles:

• Water Jug Problem: 5L and 3L jugs to measure 4L.
• Candle Problem: Solved logically.

Round 3: Advanced Technical Interview

The interviewer introduced himself and asked me to present my projects, followed by coding and database design challenges:

Coding Problems:

1. Problem 1: Solved completely.
2. Problem 2: Solved using a brute-force approach but couldn’t find the optimal solution.
3. Problem 3: Solved with O(n log n) complexity. The interviewer challenged me to achieve O(n) complexity, but I couldn’t do it within the given time.

Database Design:

• Designed a 3NF-compliant database architecture for student and placement company information.
• Implemented a query to fetch the names of students placed in dream companies.

Round 4: Coding Challenge and HR discussion

We were emailed a problem statement in the morning and asked to submit the solution within 1 hour using only a text editor (no IDE). The focus was on:

• Logic Development
• Code Modularity

Problem Statement:

There are two teams, “A” and “Z”, each with battleships in a section of the sea represented by a grid. The task was to:

• Display a position map of the ships.
• Show ship names in lowercase if a ship is adjacent to an opposing team’s ship.
• Ensure the solution scales to 5000 ships or more.

Example Input:

[{teamName:A,SectorX:3,SectorY:5}, {teamName:Z,SectorX:7,SectorY:1}, {teamName:Z,SectorX:4,SectorY:4}, {teamName:A,SectorX:2,SectorY:6}]

Example Output:

+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|   | A |   |   |   |   |   | 6
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|   |   | a |   |   |   |   | 5
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|   |   |   | z |   |   |   | 4
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 3
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 2
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|   |   |   |   |   |   | Z | 1
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
  1   2   3   4   5   6   7

Discussion:

The interviewer asked about:

• Code Optimization: Discussed possible optimizations and improvements.
• HR Questions: Shared my strengths, weaknesses, hobbies, and interests.

Result:

Out of all candidates, 9 (including myself) were selected for the position! 🎉

Overall, this experience helped me enhance my problem-solving skills, gain insights into technical and HR evaluations, and boost my confidence for future interviews.