IBM interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview
Software Developer
IBM
3 rounds | 5 Coding
problems
Selected Interview preparation journey
Preparation
Duration: 3 months
Topics: OOPS, DBMS, Operating Systems, Data Structures, Algorithms
Tip 1 : It's very important to learn the basics of a language first, instead of jumping to advanced topics straightaway.
Tip 2 : When practicing DSA, consistency is very important.
Tip 3 : Quality of questions matter more than the quantity of questions. Instead of solving multiple problems of similar type, try to solve different types of problems as that would help you strengthen your concepts.
Application process
Where: Hackerrank
Eligibility: No backlogs, Minimum 60% marks
Tip 1 : Make sure to include at least one or two good projects in your resume. Also you should be able to explain it to the interviewer.
Tip 2 : You should be able to justify everything that's mentioned in your resume. So only include skills if you've actually worked on it.
Interview rounds
01
Round
Medium
Assignment
Duration90 minutes
Interview date12 Feb 2020
Coding problem3
1. Assignment
The cognitive round consists of a set of puzzles and games which you need to solve in a limited time period. The round is basically aimed at testing your aptitude skills. It was an eliminative round.
2. Assignment
The second part was a Psychometric test which measures a candidate's personality. There were around 50 objective-type questions to be answered in 25 minutes. This was also an eliminative round
Problem approach
Tip 1 : Be honest while answering these questions because you might get several similar scenarios presented in a slightly different way to test your personality.
3. Assignment
The third part of the round was Verbal test where candidates were judged for their basic English aptitude. It was an objective round and like the previous rounds, this was also eliminative.
Problem approach
Tip 1 : Practice verbal questions online.
02
Round
Medium
Online Coding Interview
Duration60 minutes
Interview date12 Feb 2020
Coding problem1
It was an Online MCQ and Coding Based problem.
1. Ways To Make Coin Change
Moderate
20m average time
80% success
0/80
Asked in companies
You are given an infinite supply of coins of each of denominations D = {D0, D1, D2, D3, ...... Dn-1}. You need to figure out the total number of ways W, in which you can make a change for value V using coins of denominations from D. Print 0, if a change isn't possible.
Problem approach
I first tried solving the question by sorting the array of coins in descending order in order to get the minimum number of coins, but this was not the correct way in some cases I was not getting the optimized answer. Then I understood that we need to consider all the possible combinations and solved the questions using recursion technique.
03
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration40 minutes
Interview date17 Feb 2020
Coding problem1
The round generally starts with basic introduction of the interviewer and the candidate. Then the interviewer asked me couple of questions on computer fundamentals, like OOPS, Operating Systems, DBMS. Then the interviewer asked me to explain my final year project. I explained the project mentioning what problems it solved and the technologies we used. The interviewer asked me couple of questions based on the project and also on the choice of the technology. So be prepared to answer why you chose to use a particular technology.
1. Middle Of Linked List
Easy
20m average time
80% success
0/40
Asked in companies
Given a singly linked list of 'N' nodes. The objective is to determine the middle node of a singly linked list. However, if the list has an even number of nodes, we return the second middle node.
Note:
1. If the list is empty, the function immediately returns None because there is no middle node to find.
2. If the list has only one node, then the only node in the list is trivially the middle node, and the function returns that node.
Problem approach
At first I told the interviewer that we need to know the total number of nodes in the linked list in order to find the middle element. So for this I used two while loops, first one to count the total number of elements in the linked list and using the other loop, I iterated to the middle of the linked list and returned the value.
Then the interviewer asked if I could optimize the solution a bit more. For this I used the two-pointer approach.
Here's your problem of the day 
Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company
Skill covered: Programming
How do you remove whitespace from the start of a string?
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