ZS Associates | BTSA | Tech | Interview Experience | 2026

On-Campus Drive - Interview Details
*Tier 2 Private Engineering College*

Role: BTSA (Business Technology Solutions Associate)
Nature of Role: Hybrid of SDE + Consulting

Online Assessment (OA)

The OA consisted of 3 separate assessments, and all three were eliminatory.

OA 1 - Analytical & Logical Reasoning

• MCQ-based assessment
• Covered analytical and logical thinking

OA 2 - Verbal Skills

• MCQ-based assessment
• Focused on verbal skills and English communication

OA 3 - Technical Assessment

• 1 SQL - Hard
• 1 Dynamic Programming - Medium/Hard (Python)
• 1 Java Spring-style repository task
  • Conducted in a VS Code-style coding environment
  • The task was AI-assisted, allowing the use of AI tools within the environment, AI would only give hints not code.

Round 1 - Technical (Easy - Medium Difficulty)

The round covered SQL, Python, basic CS fundamentals, DSA, and an AI prompting task.

DSA

Python was preferred for coding.

1. Very Easy - String manipulation (5 mins)
   • Simple question involving Python's split() function.
   • Interviewer specifically required the code.
2. Easy - Merge Two Sorted Lists (5 mins)
   • https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-two-sorted-lists/description/
   • Interviewer required the code.
3. Medium-Hard - Merge K Sorted Lists (5-10 mins since no code was required)
   • https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-k-sorted-lists/description/
   • Follow-up to the previous question.
   • The interviewer was primarily interested in:
     • Approach/logic
     • Data structure used
     • Time complexity
   • No code was required for this question.

SQL

• SQL joins and subqueries were asked in depth. Code + Dry run
• One of the LeetCode question discussed:
  • Employees Who Left the Company
• Window functions were covered only at a surface level, mainly basic definitions/concepts.

AI Prompting

A standard AI prompting task was asked, such as:

• How would you use Gemini/ChatGPT to solve a real-day-to-day technical problem?
• How would you construct a prompt to get AI to complete a particular task?
• How would you effectively prompt an AI tool to get your work done?

CS Fundamentals

At last, a few standard easy CSE questions were asked, for example:

• What is a process?
• What is normalization?

These were not very in-depth.

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Round 2 - Guesstimates + Managerial/HR (Medium - Hard Difficulty level since first time seeing Guesstimates questions)

Guesstimates

1. Academic Block Lift
   • Estimate the number of lift rounds between 8 AM and 9 AM on weekdays.
   • One lift round starts when the lift moves from the ground floor to any floor and ends when it returns to the ground floor.
2. College Electricity Bill
   • Estimate the daily electricity bill of the college.
3. Three Switches / Three Bulbs
   • There are 3 switches inside a dark room with no windows.
   • The switches are connected to 3 light bulbs outside the room.
   • Determine which switch corresponds to which bulb by going outside the room only once.
4. One or two similar guesstimate/puzzle questions were asked, but I don't remember the exact questions.

Managerial / HR

Some situational questions included:

• How would you handle a bug already in production when the deadline is approaching?
• How would you deal with a confused client?
• How would you handle a client who doesn't trust you?
• Other basic HR/managerial questions.
• Alot of Resume Grind was also there.

Compensation

For the compensation details, refer to this discussion:

Link