PhonePe Internship Interview Experience (SDE Intern 2021)

PhonePe visited our campus at the starting of October for the campus hiring program (SDE intern 2021). The process was so smooth and continued for two days, with the coding round on the first day and the interview of shortlisted candidates on the second day, eventually declaring the results on the same day.

Through this article, I want to encourage all students to give their best shot. I hope this will help students to prepare their best.

There were three rounds of interviews.

Coding Round :

This round was conducted on the DoSelect platform. There was 3 coding question which needs to be solved in 90 mins. Questions were a bit tricky so you need to think about the problem statement carefully, although those were medium level question so one can do it easily within the given time frame.

The first question was fairly simple and the second one was a bit tricky, I had done that with bit manipulation. The third question was based on the binary tree but to solve this problem one should have in-depth knowledge of data structure. So, the questions were based on the priority queue, binary tree, and bit manipulation.

Technical Interview Round :

This round started with a smile, I greeted her and the interviewer started explaining the question.

I was given a code pair link where I need to code for the same.

1. Two arrays A = [1,4,7,8] and B = [2,3,7,8,9] are given and if they have the same value at the same index then we can switch from one array to another. While we are traversing through the array, we will be adding the elements, and in this way, we need to find the maximum sum.

The maximum sum is 29 from path 1->4->7->8->9 or 2->3->7->8->9. At index 2 we can switch from array A to B or B to A.

In this question, I had asked the interviewer whether the given arrays are sorted or not and she said yes. So it’s good to clarify all your doubts before solving the question. Then I have discussed my approach to solve the problem and finally written my code. After that, I had verified my code with some corner test cases and told her the time complexity for this problem.

Then we move to the next problem.

2. Consider a river is passing through its center. There are n pillars on opposite sides of the river’s bank. You want to connect as many pillars as possible with bridges such that no two bridges cross each other. With the condition that pillars that have the same length can form bridges between them.

Two arrays denoting the length of pillars are given as input. Return the maximum number of bridges that can be formed.

A = [1,2,4,2]

B = [2,1,2,4]

Maximum no. of bridges = 3

The interviewer was very attentive and focusing on the style of writing code. She was convinced of my approach as well as the final submission.

Hiring Manager Round :

This round lasted for 1 hour. One of the senior managers from PhonePe had taken this round. I greeted him, and he introduced himself. He then asked me about the Covid-19 scenario and how my semester is going.

I gave my quick introduction and briefly explained my projects. Then he asked me to pick any interesting project and questioned all related stuff to that. Then he asked me some typical HR questions, and I answered all those honestly. After that, he asked me to come up with a solution to women’s security issues. I explained my model and certain situations, which I would be going to target. Then I had discussed all the possible solutions with technical aspects as well as general. He asked me to think like a user and helped me to think creatively. He explained to me about the market’s needs and asked me if I can add this, how would I do it. Mainly he wanted to know if I can change my approach or not. Throughout the discussion, he was so calm and humble. He responded to all my answers in great detail.

After this, we greeted each other, and it was over.

On the same day, results were announced, and I got selected😇

Suggestions:

1. Try to practice the code without any automatic suggestions.
2. Always try to make some test cases on your own and test it in your code before calling the interviewer to review your code.
3. Make sure to mention only those things in your resume that you know.
4. If you don’t know anything say no and give your approach to solve that with some relatable stuff that you know.
5. For the HR round, take examples from your life because the interviewer wants to know about you. And keep it honest and simple.

I believe that interviews are quite a luck-or-no-luck matter. The best thing that we can do is to prepare well for the right opportunity. No matter what happens, eventually, you will get what you deserve.

Thanks for reading. If you have any doubt, feel free to reach out on Linkedin.

Good luck to everyone!✌️