Freecharge

Role: SDE-1

College: Not Specified

Interview Date: Not Specified

Interview Type: On-Campus Recruitment (Online due to Covid-19)

Result: Not Specified

Difficulty: Medium to Hard

Rounds: 5 rounds (1 Online Test + 2 Technical Interview + CTO Discussion + HR Round)

Topics Asked: Data Structures, Algorithms, DBMS, Projects, Behavioral

Experience:

This was an on-campus recruitment drive conducted online due to Covid-19. There was a resume-based shortlisting where 50 out of 120+ candidates were selected. The overall process included an Online Test, two Technical Interview rounds, a discussion with the CTO, and a final HR round.

ROUND 1 (ONLINE TEST): This round lasted 90 minutes and consisted of 3 coding questions and some technical MCQs. The MCQs were based on time complexity, C/C++ output questions, and recursive functions. The coding questions included: Boundary Traversal of a binary tree.

ROUND 2 (TECHNICAL INTERVIEW - Google Meet): This round lasted approximately 60 minutes. Questions asked were: Find the first node of a loop in a linked list. Find the minimum number of coins that make a given value. Reverse a linked list. The interviewer also asked about the time complexity of all discussed problems and two other recursive functions.

ROUND 3 (TECHNICAL INTERVIEW - Google Meet): This round started with a question about the candidate's first interview experience. Following that, there was a 20-minute discussion about projects, including choices, difficulties faced, and suggested improvements. Technical questions included: Lowest Common Ancestor in a Binary Tree (with a follow-up on what if one of the nodes is NULL and its time/space complexity). The interviewer then asked about the candidate's favorite subject (DBMS was chosen), leading to questions on clustered and non-clustered indexes, normalization and denormalization, and ACID properties of transactions.

Discussion with CTO (Chief Technology Officer): This was a general discussion covering projects, technologies used in projects, how the interviews went, reasons for wanting to join Freecharge, and the company's vision and direction. The CTO also asked if the candidate remembered the names of the interviewers.

ROUND 4 (HR ROUND - Google Meet): Standard HR questions were asked: Tell me about yourself and your family. Tell me an incident when you felt humiliated in a group and how you coped. What keeps you going and what is your motivation? If you are the leader of your team and a member is not putting in the required effort, what would you do?