Target Interview Experience – Software Engineer Role (Location: Bangalore, Year: 2025)
Summary
I interviewed for a Software Engineer role at Target in Bangalore, consisting of four technical and managerial rounds. Despite a strong performance in most areas and a positive overall experience, I was ultimately rejected, learning the importance of thoroughly understanding every detail on my resume.
Full Experience
👨💻 Background
- College: Tier 2
- Graduation Year: 2023
- Experience: 2 years in software development
- Current Company: Société Générale
- Tech Stack: Java, Spring Boot, Microservices, SQL, Unix, etc.
📅 Interview Timeline
- Applied Via: Referral
- Response Time: 2 days
- Recruiter Call: Informed about face-to-face rounds at Manyata Tech Park (No Online Assessment)
- Total Rounds: 4
- Technical Round 1
- Technical Round 2
- Hiring Manager Round
- Technical Round 3 (Virtual)
🔍 Round 1: Technical Interview 1
- Format: Coding + Resume-based (Scenario-based)
- Duration: 1.5 hrs
- Interviewers: 2 (but one drove 95% of the round)
- Topics Covered:
- DSA: Tower of Hanoi, Kth largest from stream
- Microservices, REST API, Java, Spring Boot, React
- SQL: Two simple queries
- Java Stream API
- Difficulty: Moderate
- 📝 Thoughts: Answered most questions confidently. Positive start.
💡 Round 2: Low-Level Design
- Format: Whiteboard System Design + Resume discussion
- Duration: 1 hr
- Interviewer: Senior Engineer
- Topics:
- Design Uber-like Ride Booking Service
- Deep dive into current application at work
- Difficulty: Moderate
- 📝 Thoughts: Interview went well, felt like I impressed them.
💬 Round 3: Hiring Manager Interview
- Format: STAR-based managerial + tech conversation
- Duration: 20 mins
- Interviewers: 2 (One shadowing, one active HM)
- Topics Covered:
- Microservices, DBMS, Java, Spring Boot
- Behavioral:
- How do you stay motivated?
- What are you learning currently?
- Difficulty: Hard (Very in-depth, some unfamiliar concepts)
- 📝 Thoughts: Managed about 70–80% well. Room for improvement in depth.
💬 Round 4: Technical Interview (Virtual)
- Format: Coding + Scenario-based questions
- Duration: 1 hr
- Interviewer: Lead Engineer
- Topics Covered:
- DSA: Three Sum, Union of sorted arrays
- Java Streams, REST APIs, Multithreading
- Design an API: Fetch external data, check DB existence
- Debugging multithreading scenarios
- Difficulty: Moderate
- 📝 Thoughts: Strong performance, but stumbled discussing a feature built by a teammate that I included on my resume.
🎯 Offer & Reflections
- Outcome: Rejected
- Lesson Learned: Never list a resume feature you can't explain in-depth
- Final Thoughts:
- Extremely positive experience overall
- Interviewers and recruiter were genuinely respectful and supportive
- Left the process more confident and self-aware
Interview Questions (22)
Tower of Hanoi
Discussed or solved the Tower of Hanoi problem.
Kth Largest Element in a Stream
Problem related to finding the Kth largest element from a data stream.
Design Uber-like Ride Booking Service
Design a ride booking service similar to Uber, covering aspects like system architecture, database design, API endpoints, etc.
Motivation and Learning (Behavioral)
Behavioral questions: How do you stay motivated? What are you learning currently?
Three Sum
Problem related to finding triplets in an array that sum to a specific target.
Union of Two Sorted Arrays
Problem involving finding the union of elements from two sorted arrays.
API Design: Fetch External Data with DB Check
Design an API that fetches data from an external source and checks for its existence in a database before processing.
Debugging Multithreading Scenarios
Debugging exercises or questions related to common issues in multithreaded applications.
Partitioning vs. Sharding
Explain the difference between database partitioning and sharding.
Drawbacks of NoSQL
Discuss the disadvantages or drawbacks of using NoSQL databases.
Purpose of @Valid in Spring
Explain the purpose and usage of the @Valid annotation in Spring Boot applications.
Java 8 Features
Discuss key features introduced in Java 8 in detail (e.g., Lambdas, Stream API, Functional Interfaces).
Scaling Application (100 to 1M Users)
Strategies and considerations for scaling an application from 100 to 1 million concurrent users.
Drawbacks of Microservices
Discuss the disadvantages or challenges associated with a microservices architecture.
Microservice Transaction Rollback Strategies
Explain different strategies for handling transaction rollbacks in a microservices environment (e.g., Saga pattern, Two-Phase Commit).
Mockito Internals
Questions about the internal workings and implementation details of the Mockito testing framework.
@Service vs @Controller - Impact
Explain the differences and impact of using @Service versus @Controller annotations in Spring.
@Bean vs @Component
Explain the differences and use cases for @Bean versus @Component annotations in Spring.
Service Discovery Concepts
Discuss concepts related to service discovery in distributed systems (e.g., Eureka, Consul, ZooKeeper).
Circuit Breaker Pattern
Explain the Circuit Breaker pattern and its role in resilient distributed systems.
Design Patterns (Decorator, Factory, Proxy)
Discuss or implement common design patterns such as Decorator, Factory, and Proxy.
Database Normalization Forms
Explain different database normalization forms (1NF, 2NF, 3NF, BCNF) and their purposes.