Phone Pe Interview Experience by Aayush Garg | On Campus - Sep 2020

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Phone Pe interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

Software Development

Phone Pe

3 rounds | 5 Coding problems

Aayush Garg

Fresher | Sep 2020

Selected

Interview preparation journey

Journey

Before cracking any interview, one needs to strengthen their basics. So, I started practising DSA and reading all the vital topics and subjects like DBMS, DSA, Networking, and Operating Systems. After preparing the top 100 or 150 questions on each topic, I prepared all my projects and resume which was the most important step. Within my 4 year journey in college, I focused on DSA, Resume building and core fundamentals.

Application story

This company visited to my campus for the placement. We just had to upload resume and fill all details in the form. After the online test, around15 candidates were selected for interviews.

Why selected/rejected for the role?

I was able to clear all the rounds. I think it was because I answered correctly to almost all the solutions, gave quick answers, had good projects listed on my resume and had a little knowledge about the company. I was able to impress the interviewer.

Preparation

Duration: 1+2 months (rigorous practicing)

Topics: 1. C++ basic Coding + Data structures knowledge (learned during the two years of college Courses + Coding Ninjas course of C++ introduction and C++ data structures) 2. OOPs + Pointers (best and complete material for interviews is available at Geeks for geeks) 3. Dynamic programming and Recursion best explained in (Coding Ninjas course) + (Youtube channel of Aditya Verma if you want free material ) 4. Graphs , Hashmaps and Priority Queues (again I found Coding Ninjas course to be super amazing) 5. Operating system + DBMS(theory part) (I found best material of Gate smashers (youtube channel)) 6. Networking (just required for very few companies) (I liked TutorialsPoint tutorials a lot (very concise and to the point ))

Tip

Tip 1 : Practice atleast(easy and medium questions from leetcode under(Top Interview Questions)) and all the questions from Gfg under(must to do coding questions for interviews))
Tip 2 : Don't learn each and every question you solved but try to solve question in a way that you can solve its variation during interviews
Tip 3 : Do one project(one is enough) which you can explain with full technical details (why you used this technology, and all logics you applied in implementation)
Tip 4: Atleast read the round 1 (Coding round) Archives from (Geeks for geeks or Glassdoor). To get your mind prepared for the types of questions that company usually asks.(Coding round is the toughest Step in the whole Process to clear)

Application process

Where: Campus

Eligibility: CGPA above 6 and no backlogs (there was no branch criteria for eligibility)

Resume tip

Tip 1: Have at least one project which you have made yourself and you should know all the technical questions related to that project (I feel project domain hardly matters like web development or android or ML/AI)
Tip 2: You should Put only those skills in resume :
1. Which the company requires (eg if you know company doesn't require Networking domain knowledge so
don't include it unnecessary if you are not much confident in it)
2. For on campus internships resume shortlisting is very easy so don't add anything unnecessary which might
cause you pain during interview.

Interview rounds

Round

Medium

Online Coding Interview

Duration90 minutes

Interview date17 Sep 2020

Problems3

3 coding Questions:
1st : Easy question based on simple loop iteration
2nd :Medium level Dp question
3rd : Medium level tree question(where we were not just required to complete the tree function but to build whole bst from
scratch)

It was conducted from 1:30 - 3:00 pm.
The coding platform was very good (as auto indentation and auto completion of brackets were there)
having camera on.

1. Storyteller and the Child

The exact statement was something of story type so i just remember the crux of that story:there was a kid who hears story from someone by paying him some money for every story and the storyteller tells him a extra story for every X amount of stories that the child can remember. Now its given that the child remembers the story once he hears that and don't forget it .Given : Initial amount child ...

Problem approach

It was a easy question:
First take a sum variable(to store final answer) and initialize it with 0.
Take a temp and store X/Y in it and add it to sum then apply a loop and check:
if temp < Z return the sum
else add temp/Z to sum and update temp to temp/Z and continue the process.

2. Selling Stock

You have been given stock values/prices for N number of days. Every i-th day signifies the price of a stock on that day. Your task is to find the maximum profit which you can make...

Problem approach

First I found that this can easily be done using the brute force approach of taking a hashmap for storing all the numbers (from min value in the input range to the maximum value in the input range )with their frequency of appearance. then I will again run a loop for each query range and output the values which will be greater than k.
in this solution 50% of the test cases gives TLE.

T...

Try solving now

3. Minimum time to burn a Tree starting from a Leaf node

You have a binary tree of 'N' unique nodes and a Start node from where the tree will start to b...

Problem approach

After thinking for some time I got that he wants me to find the diameter of BST because diameter will be the longest path for fire to travel.
I already solved the diameter problem earlier so it doesn't took me me much time to solve it.

Try solving now

Round

Hard

Online Coding Test

Duration75-80 minutes

Interview date18 Sep 2020

Problems1

This was a completely technical coding round where I was asked to solve the problems of data structures.
The codepad where i was asked to code was fine,
The interviewer was very friendly and was helpful and understanding.
I also asked him about his work and experience in the company and some other questions.

1. Given a matrix mXn with integers filled in it. I was required to find the maximum path sum in the matrix starting from any element of the matrix. The condition as that I was allowed to move only right or down from any index(i,j).

You have been given an N*M matrix filled with integer numbers, find the maximum sum that can be obtained from a path starting from any cell in the first row to any cell in the last row.

Problem approach

First I just told him the most brute force approach of finding every possible path for every element of matrix then choose the maximum among those path and then store that max path in some other 2D matrix. He then discussed the time complexity of the solution
then I told him where the repetitions were occurring in this approach and then then I directly told him the best solution for this pro...

Try solving now

Round

Easy

HR Round

Duration45 minutes

Interview date18 Sep 2020

Problems1

It was held on Gmeet platform
The interviewer was very experienced person and was very nice too.
He made me comfortable by first introducing himself in a very detailed way and then asking me mine introduction
Since I feel that his internet connection was not very good so he turned off his camera but I decided not to turn off mine as in online interviews your face reviles your confidence
the interviewer mostly asked me questions about my interests in technical field and the project that I have done

Problem approach

Tip 1: The HR person is generally a very high experienced person so never tell him anything false just to impress him.
Tip 2: Try to include only that things in your introduction where you want to drive your discussion further
Tip 3: Try to show some interest in your growth and the work that they are offering you and in what sense they can help
you build your skills better.

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