I recently interviewed with ZS Associates for a Software Engineer position in Pune. The entire process consisted of four distinct rounds, which included an online assessment, a communication assessment, and two in-depth interview rounds. I'm pleased to share that I received an offer.

My journey began with an Online Assessment (Round 1), a 60-minute test comprising coding and MCQs. The coding section had two medium-difficulty problems: one involved implementing AP/GP/Fibonacci-style sequence logic, and the other was a Grid DP variant similar to 'Minimum Path Sum', but I had to find the maximum sum. The MCQ sections covered JavaScript, OOPs, and SQL.

Following this, I had a Communication Assessment (Round 2), which was a short evaluation of my reading, writing, and spoken English skills, focusing on basic comprehension and expression.

The Technical Interview (Round 3) lasted an hour and primarily focused on OOP, DSA, and SQL. We started with a discussion on the four pillars of OOP, then delved into my project experience. I was given three DSA questions: 'Middle of the linked list', 'Longest palindromic substring', and 'First non-repeating character in a string', all of which I solved optimally. For SQL, I tackled two questions involving joins and aggregate functions, solving both, though I struggled a bit with one optimal variant.

The final round, Technical + Behavioral (Round 4), was a mix of technical design, SQL, and behavioral questions. We revisited the challenging SQL query from the previous round. I also discussed my hobbies and motivations. A significant part was designing a database schema for the Asia Cup end-to-end, which led to writing multiple queries and an excellent discussion on DBMS concepts and trade-offs. I was also given the 'Two cubes make a calendar' puzzle, which I solved with one hint. The interviewer provided positive feedback, and ultimately, I was selected.