Summary
My interview at Experian for an Associate Software Developer role was incredibly challenging. I struggled significantly with a DSA permutation problem and couldn't properly answer a conceptual SQL question, which left me feeling deeply disappointed.
Full Experience
It was truly one of my worst interview days. The interviewer presented an 'all permutations' DSA question that I had literally solved just four days prior, but during the interview, my mind went completely blank, and I couldn't even formulate the logic. To make matters worse, my tendency to overtalk and miscommunicate led me to stumble even on basic OOPS topics. Another particularly tough moment was when the interviewer asked a question that was identical to one I had faced in a previous interview at LTI Mindtree: 'Stored procedure vs. Function in SQL'. Although I had learned it thoroughly at that time, I had completely forgotten the details and couldn't provide a proper answer. I am writing this feeling a profound sense of depression, especially considering I was a bright student in college, but my mind just didn't cooperate that day.
Interview Questions (1)
Explain the key differences between a stored procedure and a function in SQL. Discuss their characteristics, such as return values, ability to perform DML operations, and how they are called or executed.
Summary
I successfully navigated an interview process for a Product Engineer role at Experian, which included both a technical coding round and a managerial discussion. I received an offer following a smooth and positive experience.
Full Experience
I had an interview for a Product Engineer role at Experian, bringing with me 2 years of experience. The interview process consisted of two main rounds: a Technical Interview and a Managerial Interview.
The Technical Interview was a 1-hour coding session. It began with an introduction where I discussed myself and my work at my previous workplace. Following this, I was given a coding question. I first explained my approach to solving the problem to the interviewer, and then proceeded to code the solution. The specific question I was asked was 'Find the Town Judge' from LeetCode. After I coded, the interviewer clarified some doubts about my solution and helped me correct a few mistakes. I then dry-ran the code with examples, and fortunately, my solution worked for all edge cases. Two days later, I received a call from HR informing me that I had cleared the technical round, which then led to a Tech-HR interview.
The Managerial Interview involved an approximately 1-hour discussion with the IT director and HR of the firm. This round primarily focused on scenario-based questions, along with some common HR inquiries.
About 4-5 days after the interviews, I received an offer. Overall, I found the experience to be good and the interview process very smooth.
Interview Questions (1)
In a town, there are N people labelled from 1 to N. There is a rumor that one of these people is secretly the town judge. If the town judge exists, then:
- The town judge trusts nobody.
- Everybody (except for the town judge) trusts the town judge.
- There is exactly one person that satisfies properties 1 and 2.
You are given an array trust, where trust[i] = [a, b] representing that the person labelled a trusts the person labelled b.
Return the label of the town judge if the town judge exists and can be identified. Otherwise, return -1.