Round 3

Here is where the real thing starts: the technical interview.

First, I was called and taken to a room on the first floor. Two people were sitting there: one tech guy and another, whom I presumed to be an HR representative. I was welcomed, and I shook hands with both of them. This is the first impression – your handshake. If you are not strong and confident, it shows in your handshake. So, practice a bit of hand-shaking to see if you get a firm grip, as a tight squeeze would hurt on the other hand.

Well, the first and standard question in every company is: “Tell me about yourself.” I personally started from my higher secondary education and proceeded to college, concentrating on computers. Then, I told them about my hobbies related to computers and my general hobbies.

Next, the questions were completely from my resume. The tech guy kept asking me questions, and the HR lady took notes. The first was about database design, with the main focus on the bridge pattern, which I did not grasp at first but finally understood. It was followed by explaining my maze-solving robot project. Then, I had to design the databases for a web-crawler project and explain the working and optimization of the database with respect to scaling when huge amounts of data are being crawled. A few follow-up questions were asked regarding how the PHP code worked. Then, I had to explain CRON jobs and their utility.

Next, he asked me the number of squares in an 8x8 chessboard. It might have taken me some time to solve this, but since this question was asked to the candidate who went before me, I had asked what the answer was. So, I quickly answered but also accepted that the question was familiar. The answer is (1² + 2² + … + n²).

Then, it moved to architecture. The question was: “What would you expect when you start a project?”

My answers were based on requirements and the vision of the project. I questioned about versioning, time to market, and the project's impact on the organization. I gave my views on how this would be carried out with respect to a normal project versus a research project. The HR lady was impressed.

Follow-up: But she was expecting something else. She asked me to think a bit harder on that.

I immediately knew that she was expecting answers related to time management. So, I started to talk about this aspect: breaking down the problem statement into sub-problems and finally into indivisible unit modules, their implementation, and how I would ensure precise time calculation.

Follow-up: Now she asked, “What would you suggest to clients with respect to time when they are in a hurry?”

I talked for about five minutes about the organization's reputation and that I would never jeopardize it at any stage with any stupid decisions, making sure they understood that promises are important in corporate society.

Since I moved to clients, they started questioning what the client expects from the project.

I told them that I have worked with real clients before and that they do not care about the technical aspects of the functionality; they only go by the look and feel of the product.

Follow-up: This was followed by questions about how I would react if they only wanted the front-end and did not care about how the back-end worked.

I replied that I would maintain my professional aspects in all forms of work. Despite client pressure, I would maintain quality at all times. Then, I explained how to pull back work to check if we were proceeding in the right direction and if clumsiness had crept in due to time pressure.

“Any real-time problems faced in projects?”

Saying that one of the members did not work and you did all the work does not make you look great. So, avoid such answers.

My answer was with respect to synchronization. How integrations caused problems in completed modules, with a real-time example and how I solved it using Skype to synchronize work with my mates.

Follow-up: Questioned about integration problems.

I spent a couple of minutes explaining regression testing.

Since I spoke about synchronization, the tech guy asked me about thread-safety.

Straightforward answer: I explained the ins and outs of threads and the merits and demerits of every method.

Since I told my interest was web designing, he asked why divs in HTML.

Straightforward answer as to how divs are better than table layouts.

That was the end of Round 3. I had to answer a few just-for-formality questions and then left. I thought I had made a good impression.

Final Year Project?