Summary
I interviewed for an SDE role at Hexaview Technologies across three technical rounds. While I performed well in the initial rounds covering DSA, DBMS, and OOPs, I struggled in the final round due to nervousness, lack of full code implementation practice for data structures, and a gap between rounds, ultimately not receiving an offer.
Full Experience
Online Assessment Round (Virtual)
We were given two DSA questions:
- Roman to Integer
- A string subsequence-based question (LeetCode Hard – exact one I don’t recall)
I was already familiar with both, so I completed them in under 30 minutes.
Round 1 – Technical (Virtual)
The interviewer was an SDE and very friendly.
- DSA:
- Two Sum – I explained the approach and coded it live in an online compiler. Passed all test cases and explained time and space complexity.
- Length of Last Word – Again, live coded and explained.
- DBMS:
- Theoretical questions on ACID properties, Normalization, DDL/DML/TCL, and some SQL queries.
- I stumbled a bit on
LIMITandOFFSET, but the interviewer explained it to me mid-discussion.
- OOPs:
- Explained the 4 pillars (Encapsulation, Abstraction, Inheritance, Polymorphism) with examples.
- He concluded by asking a GFG-style puzzle, but due to internet issues, the call dropped. I followed up via email and he said he was satisfied, so no need to rejoin.
Duration: ~1 to 1.5 hours.
Round 2 – Technical (Virtual)
- Interviewer focused heavily on OOPs concepts, and I had to implement the logic in code after explaining each concept.
- Mixed up Java & C++ syntax a bit (he was a Salesforce dev), but still managed to impress him.
- Final task was to find frequencies of characters in a given string – explained and coded it successfully.
Round 3 – Technical (Onsite)
This round was tough.
- I almost missed the interview due to travel confusion but reached just in time.
- The interviewer (Tech Lead) wasn’t onsite, so we connected via Google Meet.
Questions:
- Linked List Problem: I struggled as I hadn’t practiced writing the entire structure from scratch (used to solving function-based in LeetCode). I still explained the logic.
- Array Problem: Check if two sorted arrays are equal – passed the test cases, but couldn’t optimize my 3-loop solution.
- DBMS: Deep dive into normalization,
LIMIT/OFFSET, and a design question.
Unfortunately, I was quite nervous, and the lack of preparation for full implementation and DBMS theory showed.
Personal Reflection:
- The first two rounds went great – I felt confident in both DSA and OOPs.
- Round 3 hurt due to:
- A large gap (1 month) between rounds
- Nervousness
- Unfamiliarity with full code implementation in Linked List
- I was told later that I didn’t make it. But honestly, this was one of the most enriching interview series I've been through.
Interview Questions (5)
Given a Roman numeral, convert it to an integer.
Given an array of integers nums and an integer target, return indices of the two numbers such that they add up to target.
Given a string s consisting of words and spaces, return the length of the last word in the string.
Given a string, find the frequencies of each character in the string.
Given two sorted arrays, check if they are equal.