HP

Role: Software Engineer / Intern

College: Not Specified

Interview Date: Late September 2024

Interview Type: On-Campus (Offline mode)

Result: Not Specified

Difficulty: Medium

Rounds: 4 rounds (Technical Assessment, Technical Round, Managerial Round, HR Round)

Topics Asked: Aptitude, Technical MCQs (OS, CN, output-based), Programming (3 questions, easy-medium, Python not an option), C++, SQL, DBMS, Machine Learning, Data Structures, Algorithms, Behavioral.

Experience:

The process began with a technical assessment a week prior to the interviews. The assessment had three sections: MCQs on numerical, verbal, and logical reasoning; MCQs on technical subjects like OS, CN, and output-based questions; and three programming questions of easy-medium difficulty (Python was not an option).

Ninety-five students were selected for the interview rounds, which were conducted in three sections, each an elimination round.

Technical Round: The interviewer started with an introduction and asked why the candidate wanted to join HP and preferred to work in Bangalore. Questions were based on skills in C++, SQL, DBMS, and Machine Learning projects. Specific questions included: writing an SQL query to get a full name by joining first and last names, explaining types of joins, returning the element with the highest frequency from an array, differences between stack and queue, differences between array and linked list, circular queue, priority queue, Reinforcement Learning, supervised and unsupervised learning, explaining KNN and Kmeans (and whether they are supervised/unsupervised), metrics used in the project and their formulas, confusion matrix (True Positive, False Positive, True Negative, False Negative with example), friend function, inline function, access specifiers, denormalization, and data replication.

Managerial Round: This round was found to be quite easy and straightforward. Questions included: explaining views and their advantages, providing a basic SQL query on views and discussing what would happen without them, explaining data cleaning steps in the project, how to remove duplicates in Excel and Python, knowledge of cloud computing, and willingness to work as an intern in that domain.

HR Round: Not detailed, but it was the final round.