IBM interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

SDE - 2

IBM
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3 rounds | 5 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
My journey starts from: First applied through on-campus recruitment Resume screening takes place Revise coding and logical abilities during the interview period Aptitude and coding test, and clear all approaches
Application story
I applied on-campus at IIT. Anyone can check the job description for the roles on the IBM career page. The process was average; we met and practiced all the questions carefully.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
I was selected because I have a strong aptitude and coding practices. I learned from this selection that practicing mock interviews is important. I was selected because of my good optimization approaches.
Preparation
Duration: 6 months
Topics: Maths, Pointers, FIFO approach, System Design, Algorithms, Dynamic Programming
Tip
Tip

Tip 1: Solve RS Aggarwal's Aptitude and Problem-Solving books.
Tip 2: Practice coding questions from online coding platforms.
Tip 3: Work on communication skills.

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: 7 CGPA
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1: Mark skills in bold letters.
Tip 2: Mention projects on your resume.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration40 minutes
Interview date24 Nov 2022
Coding problem2

- Morning time.
- Environment was good.
- Interviewer was good.

1. Jump Game

Moderate
25m average time
75% success
0/80
Asked in companies
ShareChatUberOracle

There is an array 'JUMP' of size 'N' which is 1-indexed and you are currently at index 1. Your goal is to reach index 'N' (end).


When you are at index 'i', you can jump a maximum length of 'JUMP[i]' which means you can make a jump of size 1 to JUMP[i]. Return true if you can reach the end otherwise false.


Example:-
N = 5
JUMP = [1,2,3,4,5]

ANSWER:- The answer should be YES as you can jump from 1st index to 2nd index, from 2nd index to 4th index, and from 4th index to 5th index.
Try solving now

2. The Earliest Moment When Everyone Become Friends

Hard
45m average time
55% success
0/120
Asked in companies
AdobeIBMMAQ Software

In a social group, there are ‘N’ people, with unique integer ids from 0 to (N - 1). We have an array of ‘logs’, where each logs[i] = [timestamp, idA, idB] contains a non-negative integer ‘timestamp’ and the ‘ids’ of two different people.

Each log represents the time in which two different people became friends.

Let’s say that person A is acquainted with person B if A is friends with B, or A is a friend of someone acquainted with B. Your task is to return the earliest time every person became acquainted with every other person.

Note:

1) The ids are 0-indexed.

2) Friendship is symmetric here. That is, if A is friends with B, then B is friends with A.

3) Return -1 if there is no such earliest time.

For example:

Given ‘logs’ =[[2, 0, 1],[3, 1, 2],[4, 2, 3]].

The answer here would be 4 : 
When the people with id 2 and 3 become friends, then the circle gets completed, and the time among them is 4, and because 4 is the largest time among all, the time for the circle to get completed is 4.
Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration50 minutes
Interview date12 Jan 2023
Coding problem2

- Morning time.
- Environment was good.
- Interviewer was good.

1. Animals And Monsters

Hard
45m average time
50% success
0/120
Asked in companies
IBMD.E.Shaw

Ninja lives in the village and has animal husbandry which consists of various animals like cows, sheep, etc. Ninjas’ village also has animal-eating monsters which eat animals that are not present in the fence of the husbandry. You have given the points array ‘POINTS’ having ‘N’ vertices which denote the coordinates in the X-Y plane of the fence and the coordinates of the animal ‘X’ and ‘Y’. The width of the fence is very large so the points present on the fence are considered to be inside. Find if the given animal is safe from monsters or not.

Problem approach

Step 1: Grévy's zebra and the mountain zebra aim to breed zebras that are phenotypically similar to the quagga, horses, and donkeys.

Step 2: The text snippet will have no more than 5000 characters.

Step 3: Five questions will expect answers of an entirely factual nature, such as dates, numbers, or names. The answers will strictly be exact substrings of the text fragment provided.

Try solving now

2. Puzzle

Imagine that you have 26 constants, labeled A through Z. Each constant is assigned a value in the following way: A = 26^1, B = 25^2, C = 24^3, D = 23^2, and so on, until Z = 1^26. Find the exact numerical value of the following equation: (Y - A) * (Y - B) * (Y - C) * ... * (Y - Z).

Problem approach

Tip 1: Read Galvin for OS thoroughly.
Tip 2: Practice SQL queries.

03
Round
Easy
HR Round
Duration20 minutes
Interview date15 Mar 2023
Coding problem1

- Morning time
- Environment was good.
- Interviewer was good

1. Basic HR Questions

-Describe a time when you experienced conflict with a coworker. How did you handle it?

-How does this job compare to others you might be interviewing for?

-What interests you about this role?

-What critical feedback do you most often receive?

Problem approach

Tip 1: Practice well.
Tip 2: Speak in front of mirror.

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?

Choose another skill to practice
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