Overall, it was a pretty positive experience.

I applied online through the company website. I am an Engineering graduate student. There was a fairly quick turnaround after each round of interviewing.

1st Round: Video Interview

1. Why are you interested in this internship?
2. What skills do you have that make you a good fit?
3. Tell me a time when you had multiple deadlines, and how did you handle it.
4. Tell me about a team project and why you think it was successful.
5. Are you authorized to work in the US without restriction?
6. What is your GPA?

The best advice I have is to practice and be confident. I received an invitation for the next round within 24 hours, I think.

2nd Round: Hackerrank Interview

I went into this interview feeling pretty confident. Hackerrank administers online programming tests. I had prepared for this using cplusplus.com (which was my language of choice). You can select Java/Javascript if you are more comfortable with that, however.

I chose MATLAB and C/C++.

There was an analytical thinking section first, and I choked almost immediately. The questions weren’t difficult per se, but definitely required thought. I didn’t answer a lot, but the ones I did, I think I got right.

I am a teaching assistant for a class in MATLAB, and even I thought the MATLAB section was hard. The questions were very technical/nitty-gritty. Here are a few topics:

• stem
• gca/gcf
• matrix indexing/concatenations
• private functions
• tic toc
• nested functions

Definitely know the ins-and-outs for these. They will get you.

If I thought the MATLAB section rocked me, I literally got my pants pulled down on the C/C++ portion. I don’t know programming that well, and I couldn’t complete the two programming questions. In all honesty, I question how I was able to make it to the next round with how badly I performed on this section. Here are some concepts to know:

• constructors/destructors
• classes
• inheritance
• template classes
• null pointers
• call by value vs. call by reference

If you are an undergraduate and have just taken classes on these topics, you will probably do well. I failed my programming class as an undergrad, so I did poorly. Like I said, I was shocked I made it to the next round.

3rd Round: Telephone Interview

I honestly think this was easier than the previous round. The employee I spoke with was extremely nice and understanding of me as an interviewee.

For this round, there were several sections: Math/Calculus, Programming Concepts, C/C++ (language of choice), MATLAB, and one other one that I had to choose between Embedded Systems, DSP, and Control Systems. I chose DSP.

MATLAB

• Is this matrix invertible? (The interviewer gave me a matrix, and I had to tell him if it was invertible or not and explain why.)
• Can you have a file named “filter.m”?

Calculus/Diff EQ

• What is the characteristic equation? Remember your diff eq!
• Solve a simple ODE.
• Partial Fraction Decomposition.

DSP

• What is the Nyquist Sampling Rate?
• What is the Laplace transform of this ODE?
• FIR vs. IIR for discrete-time signals.

C/C++

• What is the output of the following code?

cpp int main() { int *arr = new int[5]; for (int idx = 0; idx < 5; ++idx) { arr[idx] = idx; cout << *(idx + arr) * 2 << " "; } cout << endl; delete arr; return 0; }

There was also another question on classes.

Like I said, this round wasn’t that bad. I think after this round, they interview you on-site, or a manager calls you. At which point, I’m assuming an offer isn’t too far off. Obviously, at any point, they can give it to you, but that is the typical progression, I think.

Hope this helps!

What is the Nyquist Sampling Rate?

Is this matrix invertible?