TraceLink | Software Engineer | Pune | Nov 2021 | (On campus)

I'm a final year CSE undergrad from Pune, and I applied for a Software Engineer position at TraceLink through an on-campus drive in November 2021. The eligibility criteria required a CGPA above 7.5 and no active backlogs, which I met.

Round 0: Online Assessment (Hackerrank)
This round lasted 60 minutes and consisted of three questions: two coding problems (one medium, one hard) and one easy/medium SQL query. I managed to solve one coding question and the SQL query. Following this, 27 students, including myself, were shortlisted for the next round.

Round 1: Technical Interview
This round, which lasted about 40 minutes, was conducted by a friendly Senior Software Engineer. After my introduction, we delved into my resume. We had an in-depth discussion about a project I had mentioned, including my specific contributions as it was a team project. Since my projects were based on Node.js and React.js, I was asked some fundamental questions about Node.js, JavaScript, and React.
Following this, I was given two coding problems to solve using any programming language:
1. Print Perfect Squares Less Than N: Given a number N, I had to print all perfect squares less than N, starting from 1. For example, if N = 10, the output should be 1, 4, 9. If N = 20, the output should be 1, 4, 9, 16.
2. Check if Array is Subset of Another Array: Given two arrays: arr1[] of size m and arr2[] of size n, the task was to check whether arr2[] is a subset of arr1[]. Both arrays could be unsorted or sorted, and it was assumed that elements in both arrays were distinct.
I was able to solve both problems and also discussed their time and space complexities. This round felt easy and went well overall.

Round 2: Hiring Manager Round
Just five minutes after the previous round concluded, I received an email for the next interview. This round involved two Engineering Managers from different teams and lasted approximately 30 minutes. They focused on my resume, specifically discussing a MERN stack project. I was asked about my choices, such as why React and MongoDB were used. We also covered some basic questions about React and JavaScript. Additionally, there was a codepair session where a React code snippet was provided, and I was tasked with predicting its output and explaining its working. I also faced some questions related to Exception handling in C++ or Java.

Unfortunately, I did not clear this round. Students who passed this stage proceeded to a final HR round. Despite the rejection, it was a valuable learning experience. I believe interviews involve an element of luck, but consistent practice and perseverance are key.