Role: Product Engineer Intern
College: Not Specified
Interview Date: 2023
Interview Type: On-Campus/Internship
Result: Selected
Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Rounds: 4 rounds
Topics Asked: Data Structures (Heap, BFS, Dijkstra), Algorithms, OOPS, DBMS, Projects, Behavioral
Experience:
The recruitment process for the Product Engineer Intern role at Sprinklr involved four rounds.
Round 1: Online Assessment
This round consisted of 3 coding questions with varying difficulty (easy, medium, hard). There was partial marking, and candidates scoring more than 125 points were shortlisted.
- Question 1 (Easy): Based on a heap, pop k minimums from a given array and return the sum of the remaining array. Solved within 10 minutes.
- Question 2 (Medium): Given a non-empty string, encode it such that its encoded length is the shortest. The encoding rule is: k[encoded_string], where the encoded_string is repeated exactly k times (LeetCode 471). A recursive solution was attempted but resulted in TLE (5/13 test cases passed).
- Question 3 (Hard): Given a tree and its nodes' values ranging from, remove an edge. If the products of nodes of both components of the tree are not divisible by 6, then the edge is a magic edge. Return the count of all possible magic edges. A BFS solution was attempted but resulted in TLE (6/10 test cases passed).
Overall, the candidate scored above the threshold and was selected for the interview process.
Round 2: Technical Interview Round-1 (43 minutes)
The interview started with introductions and questions about the candidate's projects and new features implemented.
- Coding Question: "There are n houses and m roads connecting them, initially a house started burning you need to return the safehouse. Safe house is defined as the house that will not burn at all or the house that burns the last." The candidate solved this using Dijkstra's algorithm to find the farthest node from the initial burning house. The interviewer was satisfied with the approach and code.
- Concepts: Questions related to OOPS (abstraction, polymorphism) and DBMS were asked and answered correctly with real-time examples.
Round 3: Technical Interview Round-2
This round involved a discussion on the code from the previous round, specifically regarding a potential race condition.
- Coding Question: "Consider you are trying to take up courses based on deadline, you can complete a course only within its deadline and you can take only one course at a time. Find the maximum number of courses you can complete." The candidate came up with a greedy algorithm by sorting deadlines and taking courses until the days count exceeded the deadlines.
Approximately 15 students were selected for the HR round.
Round 4: HR Discussion (15 minutes)
This round included introductions, questions about family, and a request to describe oneself in three words.
- Behavioral Questions: "Why Sprinklr?", "What do you know about Sprinklr?", and a situational question on how to handle a given scenario, including any prior experience.
The HR round went smoothly, and all 17 students selected for the HR discussion were ultimately shortlisted.