Brane Enterprises (NSL Hub) || Full Time ( On - Campus ) || September 2023

The recruitment process for Brane Enterprises began with an online assessment. This assessment had four sections: Aptitude, Analytics, English, and Technical, each with 10 multiple-choice questions. Additionally, there was one coding question. While the MCQ part was relatively easy, the coding problem was a hard DP-based challenge, comparable to a 1700-rated problem on Codeforces. Only those who successfully solved the coding question moved to the interview rounds. Out of 110 initial students, 17 were selected to proceed.

1st Technical Interview:
My first technical interview started with my introduction, after which the interviewer quickly shifted to Data Structures and Algorithms problems, asking me to open LeetCode. I was first asked to solve the Trapping Rainwater problem. I initially presented a brute-force solution, and then, as prompted, optimized it. Following this, I was asked to provide a proof for the time complexity of merge sort. The interviewer then delved into CS fundamentals, questioning me on Transactions, Object-Oriented Programming (OOPs) concepts, and the advantages of OOPs. Afterward, I was tasked with solving Largest Rectangle in Histogram, again starting with a brute-force approach and then optimizing it. Finally, I was asked to solve Reverse Integer. This interview lasted approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes. I managed to answer all questions and solve the problems using optimized approaches. After this round, 11 students were selected for the next stage.

2nd Technical Interview:
The second technical interview also began with my introduction. The interviewer asked me to find the length of an array without using any built-in functions. After confirming my knowledge of Linked Lists, I was asked to find the length of a linked list. The problem was then modified, requiring me to find the length of a linked list if it contained a cycle. Following the coding challenges, the interviewer asked me basic theoretical questions about Trees, Binary Trees, Binary Search Trees, and Depth-First Search (DFS). I then proceeded to solve the Number of Islands problem. Towards the end, we discussed my projects in detail. This round also lasted about 1 hour and 15 minutes, and I successfully solved all the problems. The interviewer seemed content with my performance and even suggested that I consider adding one more project, as I already had two on my resume. After this round, 10 students advanced to the final round.

3rd Technical Interview:
The third and final technical interview started with my introduction. We then moved on to a discussion about my projects, focusing on the tech stack I utilized. Subsequently, I was asked to solve the Sliding Window Maximum problem. I first presented a brute-force approach, then optimized it, and finally wrote the code on a local or online compiler. The next question was a custom problem: 'Given a set of movie dataset given the genre of movies also and you are given the input as set of genre you need to tell which movies come under this genre'. I first explained a brute-force solution. The interviewer then asked me to optimize it, which I did using a map and some precomputation, achieving a time complexity of O(K*NlogN). However, the interviewer pressed for further optimization, which I was unable to achieve at that time. I've even tried to approach this problem using Trie data structures since, but still haven't found a fully optimized solution. This interview lasted approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes. After this round, 4 students were finally selected, and my final verdict was rejection.