ShareChat SDE Internship Interview Experience — Off Campus

Hi Everyone 👋

Hope you all are doing great. I recently interviewed with ShareChat for SDE Internship (Backend) role. So, here’s a summary of my wonderful experience.

Selection Status : ✔️

Offer Accepted : ✔️

Interview Experience : ✔️

Disclaimer : In case you are reading the article to find the exact coding questions, you may skip reading the blog.

My Profile while applying

• 3rd Year student pursuing BTech. in CSE from Jaypee Institute of Information Technology.
• Women Engineering Fellow at Google
• Founder of Peer Programming Hub
• MLH Top 50 Class 2021.
• Past internship experience with Swiggy, Koo App and HoVAR Labs.
• Problem Solver

How I applied ?

I did not apply through any careers page, or registration link. Instead, I approached few recruiters from ShareChat on LinkedIn(sent a brief intro about me and my works and attached my resume to the message).

After about 5–10 days, I received a reply and a mail with the link to the OA(Online Assessment).

Different Stages of Selection Process

• OA Round
• DSA Interview Round
• Final Round

Online Assessment

It was a 90 minute long coding test on HackerEarth with 3 coding questions. The difficulty of the problems was 2 Leetcode Medium Level problems + 1 Leetcode Hard Level problem. I could solve exactly 2/3 problems.

After 9–10 days I received a call from the recruiter for my interview process.

DSA Interview Round

The DSA Interview Round lasted for around 60 minutes. The round started with a quick introduction with the interviewer. He told me about himself, and I gave my introduction.

The interviewer shared a google doc, which stated the question. I had to solve the question on an online compiler and test it against the test cases mentioned with the problem statement.

I was asked 2 problems. Both were Leetcode Medium level problems. One was from sliding window algorithm and the second was a recursion based problem(choice diagram only, no DP was involved).

Story Time

It was an interesting experience. I had almost failed the round. I actually took around 40–45 minutes in solving problem 1. I had an idea about the DP approach to the question, but the interviewer expected a sliding-window approach. Honestly, even the interviewer had lost all hopes about my selection.

After I finished solving 1st question, the interviewer told me that I had just 10–15 minutes left and I might try solving 2nd problem, though it was difficult to complete it. However, I knew from that point I could just improve my performance, there was nothing left to loose.

I started coding 2nd problem directly, discussing it side by side. Surprisingly, I could solve that problem within 5–10 minutes and had 5 minutes left afterwards. At the end of the interview, interviewer told me that I had successfully cleared Round 1.

I received a call from the recruiter on the same day after 15–20 minutes of the interview to schedule my final interview round.

Final Round

Last interview was again a 60 minute round, but it was more of a theoretical questioning round. Questions were asked from my resume and domains like System Designing, Operating System, Object Oriented Programming and DBMS.

I actually had negligible experience with System Designing problems, and had not prepared for it. However, I discussed the problem like any other project and had a good 15–20 minutes discussion on the pros and cons for each step. Interviewer told me that he was really impressed by the way, I was presenting a counter-opinion to the suggestions he was making. Lastly, I was asked to write a pseudo code for my design using a google doc.

Honestly, this round was more grilling than the previous round as answering 1 theoretical question hardly takes 4–5 minutes and 60 minutes was a long duration. However, I performed pretty well and I was extremely satisfied with my performance. My interviewer was very happy with my answers.

Offer Received

Right after 15–20 minutes, I received the call from the recruiter about my selection. I received an offer for a 3-month internship from Jan-Apr 2022.

How was the Recruitment Process ?

Amazing!!

I had 2 recruiters, one who referred my profile and helped me in onboarding, second recruiter helped me with the interview process. The recruiters were super supportive. The process was very smooth. I didn’t have to wait for the results any day.

Looking forward to an amazing learning ahead…