Zeta (Directi) Interview Experience for SDE Intern

Zeta recently visited my campus for recruitment, and my resume was shortlisted, which allowed me to advance to the next stages of the hiring process. The selection rounds proceeded as follows:

Round 1: Online Coding Assessment

This round consisted of three coding questions with a time limit of 2 hours.

• Question 1: A basic array problem involving GCD concepts and operations. Difficulty: Moderate
• Question 2: A problem related to Disjoint Set Union (DSU). Difficulty: Moderate-Hard
• Question 3: A problem involving manipulation and operations on prefixes of given strings. Difficulty: Moderate

I managed to solve all three problems efficiently.

Round 2: DS/ALGO Interview Round

During this technical interview round assessing my DSA (Data Structures and Algorithms) skills, I received a Microsoft Teams meeting link. The session began with introductions, followed by some basic questions about my projects and the challenges I encountered during their development. Next, I was given a standard binary search problem to solve within approximately 10 minutes. After implementing an optimal solution, the interviewer asked me to open a Google Doc and design the low-level architecture (LLD) of a library management system. We discussed the system's flow, and I then wrote its pseudocode. Following this, the interviewer asked fundamental DBMS questions, mainly focusing on normalization and SQL. The discussion then shifted to Computer Networks, where I explained how browsers work and what happens when a URL is entered and the enter key is pressed. I was also asked about processes and threads, along with the synchronous/asynchronous behavior of multithreading, including an example. Additionally, I was asked about TCP, UDP, and sockets. Finally, the interviewer invited me to ask any questions, and the interview concluded.

Round 3: Technical/Fitment Round

In this round, after the introductions, the interviewer asked if I had played any board games. I listed several, and from those, he asked me to open a Google Doc and design the low-level architecture (LLD) of Ludo. We discussed the game's rules, the basic flow of the design, and its constraints before I began writing the code. During the coding process, I was asked several fundamental OOP questions, including encapsulation and inheritance, and was also prompted to identify and fix bugs in my code. As time was running out, the interviewer asked about the limitations of my design and potential areas for improvement. After listing them, I was asked about HTTP requests and the difference between HTTP and HTTPS. Towards the end, the interviewer asked if I had any questions before wrapping up the session.

Final Selection:

Both interviews took place on the same day, and the final shortlist was released 2-3 hours after Round 3. A total of three students, including myself, were selected for the final offer.