Congratulating to being Congratulated!🤝

Hola Amigos! I hope you guys are doing extremely well.

I’m delighted to share that I have been selected as a Summer SDE Intern for the year 2023 by HTSI-Hilti Technology Solutions India ,Pune (Oops! Not a LinkedIn post😅 😂)

I am Chaitya Vora, a Third Year Computer Engineering student at VJTI,Mumbai. HTSI is one of the few product based companies that visits VJTI. After 2 interview rejections and not being shortlisted for interviews with 5 companies, I thought the worst that could have happened, had happened. I trusted my preparation and gave my best.

Preparation

When it comes to cracking interviews, you can’t miss out Data Structures and Algorithms. I practised them from Love Babbar’s 450 DSA sheet and Striver’s SDE sheet. Also, youtube series of TakeUForward on Recursion,Dynamic Programming,BackTracking,Tries,Graphs,Trees helped me a lot. You can find GitHub repository link of my handwritten notes on above topics here. I used GeeksforGeeks and Leetcode for practising DSA.

Next important part comes to core CS fundamentals. I referred below mentioned resources for the same.

Database Management System- GateSmasher’s playlist and practised sql queries on Leetcode.

Operating System- Simply watched GateSmasher’s playlist.

Computer Networks- Again, GatesSmasher’s playlist was great.

Object Oriented Programming- OOPs sheet by Love Babbar.

Interview Experience

The hiring process started off by an online test on proctored Mettl platform. Duration was 90 minutes and it comprised of total 7 sections.One timed section of 30 minutes for Cognitive Ability and the rest 6 sections in the remaining 1 hour. Switching between questions was allowed.

Coding Question

Given a list of numbers indicating the window number and a number indicating the window number to be accessed, modify and return the list after applying the MRU strategy.

In order to implement the Windows screen switch shortcut (WIN + TAB), we need to use a Most Recently Used (MRU) strategy which brings the recently accessed window to the front. However, the question was quite long and many got confused while perceiving the question.
Example:
input list — [5, 2, 3, 4, 1], window number to be accessed — 2
output list — [2, 5, 3, 4, 1]

Here, as Google Chrome is being accessed at the moment, the next time we use WIN + TAB, it will appear at the front of the list. There were 10 test cases — 7 sample test cases, 2 necessary cases and 1 Edge case as
listed on Mettl. I spent 25 minutes here and then jumped onto next section.

30 questions on Cognitive Ability (timed section — 30 minutes limit).

These were basic logical reasoning questions with 7–8 mathematical
reasoning questions towards the end. You can practice these on indiabix.com

Remaining Sections

6 questions on Data Structures.

5 questions on Database Management Systems.

6 questions on Networking.

7 questions on Object-Oriented Programming.

6 questions on Operating Systems.

Out of 250+ enrolled students, only 26 were shortlisted and I was one of them.

Technical Round

I was being interviewed by a male and female interviewer. After greeting each other, female interviewer asked, who should introduce first, they themselves or me to which I answered I would go first (It really
helps to create a good impression on interviewers as it depicts that you are confident). I went with my already prepared answer for “Tell me about yourself” question (also practised by saying it in front of mirror😅😆).

Since I mentioned that I had worked with Java and Web Development in my introduction, she said that she would like to ask me questions on Java.I had made a project using Data Structures and OOPs in JAVA.I began with the aim to make this project and then went on explaining every minute details of how I made the project, what made me use inheritance and
polymorphism in project, was it really necessary to use them, what all problems did I face and so on.
Here, I talked about diamond problem in Java and thus not supporting multiple inheritance.She asked me whether it was a solo project or a group project and how much time did I take to prepare it.

Then she asked me about garbage collector in Java and said it is totally fine if I couldn’t answer it. I was familiar with the question and answered it correctly ,mentioned how it is different from destructors in C++.

The male interviewer asked me if I was familiar with Databases to which I answered YES and also mentioned how I could implement it in my project.

Then they finally asked me if I had any questions for them. Do ask questions at the end of interview ,it showcases that you are really interested in working with the company.
• How has been your experience at HILTI?
Then we did have a conversation on whether it is necessary to work 18 hours 😨 at office(it was a trending topic on LinkedIn at that time).
• How difficult was it for HILTI to set up business virtually during Covid times?

15/26 students were selected for HR round.

HR Round

Here, I was interviewed by female interviewer and it started off by “Tell me about yourself” question(again simple yet important question🎯).

Listening about all technical stuff in my introduction, she asked me what do i do in extra-curricular? I began explaining my interschool achievements to which she interrupted me in between and asked me to talk about college.So,I told her that I played volleyball for Computer Science Branch team at sports event. Though we couldn’t win the game, we
gave a tough fight to opponent and lost by a minimal margin. (Note: Always
saying that you won the game doesn’t work, saying that you lost the game but you competed hard also works sometimes and it worked for me).

Then I had mentioned that in my free-time, I read books and had already ready “The Atomic Habits” to which she asked me to explain her any two key takeaways from the book. I explained her pretty well.

Now,she asked me a situation based question. These questions are pretty common in HR round.

Assume that we are selling a product to customer who has his own ideas and he wants those ideas in the product. The catch is his ideas are impractical and could harm the product. But the customer being arrogant, isn’t able to understand this thing and is continuously demanding for it. You have tried all possible ways to make him understand but in vain. What would you do in this situation if you were employee of that product based company?

I started off with naive solution by letting off that customer go.Then,we will loose our customer which will result in loss of company as less revenue would be generated and it will also have negative effect on the image of the company.So this solution should be avoided.

This was the final solution I gave her. What we could do is tell him for
time being that you are right. We will implement your idea on a dummy
product and see its results. Sometimes practical experience is more
important than theoretical experience. When his idea on dummy product
would lead to negative outcome, he would easily understand that he was
wrong. In this way, he wouldn’t feel that his ego is hurt and we would be
able to retain our customers.

Then she asked me another famous yet important question: “Why do you want to join HILTI”?

I tried to explain her using example from my recent project. I told her that my project helped me to take feedback from my clients for whom I had developed it, then I thought on feedback whether it was a positive or negative feedback and if it was possible to come up with a solution for that problem. As I worked on that feedback and implemented new feature on my project, I could convince her that HILTI being product-based company, its necessary for employees to take timely feedbacks from clients and thus, I could be an asset for the company.

Finally,she asked me if I had any questions for her. I asked her one question and interview ended well.

Results were announced in evening and 7 out of 15 students had been selected. I was fortunate enough to be one of them🥳.

Tips

Don’t get overwhelmed and/or inferiority complex by seeing your friends getting selected before you.Even you will experience from congratulating your friends to being congratulated by them🤝.You will be selected in a company that would match your skills with their requirements. Just hold on tight, keep studying and practicing. All the best👍!

I’ll be there for you🙋🏻‍♂️! Contact me on chaityavora02@gmail.com or LinkedIn