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

SDE - 1

Zscaler
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3 rounds | 5 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
Practicing more and more DSA questions and taking part in contests on various platforms and learning new concepts by solving contest questions that I was unable to solve during the contest.
Application story
Since It was an on-campus hiring with CPI criteria above 6. So, I was eligible for it as my CPI is above 8.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
After clearing the online assessment, There was only 2 Interview about to go. Both Interviews went well but don't know why my name was not on the final selected list.
Preparation
Duration: 6 months
Topics: Data Structures and algorithms, Greedy, Dynamic Programming, Graph, OOPS, Operating System
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Practice more and more DSA questions and take part in contests regularly.
Tip 2 : Do at least 1 good project and you must be confident to elaborate on it. You must know in detail some basic questions about your project, for example: which data structure you have used? what is your contribution to that project if it is done in the group? 
Tip 3 : Learn concepts in computer science Fundamentals - OOPS, OS, DBMS, Computer Networks

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: Above 6 CGPA
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Add your Achievements. for example- any hackathon that you have won. 
Tip 2 : Do not put false things on your resume.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Interview
Duration180 minutes
Interview date6 Oct 2022
Coding problem2

This round was an Online assessment in which there was 4 coding question Easy-medium level. All 4 questions were directly from Leetcode. The coding problems were from the topics like string, array, map, DFS, and sorting.

1. Good Subarrays

Moderate
15m average time
85% success
0/80
Asked in companies
MicrosoftalibabaZscaler

You have been given an array/list ‘ARR’ consists of positive integers. We call a contiguous subarray of ‘ARR’ good if the number of different integers in that subarray is exactly ‘K’. Your task is to find out the number of good subarrays of ‘ARR’.

For example:

‘ARR[]’ = [1, 3, 1, 1, 2] has 3 different integers: 1, 2, and 3. And for ‘K’ = 2, following are the good subarrays.
1. [1, 3]
2. [1, 3, 1]
3. [1, 3, 1, 1]
4. [3, 1]
5. [3, 1, 1]
6. [1, 1, 2]
7. [1, 2]
Problem approach

step 1 : Using Map Data structure and modulo.
step 2 : Iterate over an array and store number modulo k.
step 3 : If number%k already exists in the map then return true.

Try solving now

2. Subset Sum Equal To K

Moderate
30m average time
65% success
0/80
Asked in companies
Paytm (One97 Communications Limited)SalesforceAtlassian

You are given an array/list ‘ARR’ of ‘N’ positive integers and an integer ‘K’. Your task is to check if there exists a subset in ‘ARR’ with a sum equal to ‘K’.

Note: Return true if there exists a subset with sum equal to ‘K’. Otherwise, return false.

For Example :
If ‘ARR’ is {1,2,3,4} and ‘K’ = 4, then there exists 2 subsets with sum = 4. These are {1,3} and {4}. Hence, return true.
Problem approach

step 1 : Sort the array.
step 2 : Initialize answer = 0 and the length of nums as n.

step 3 : Iterate over the left index left from 0 to n - 1, for each index left:
- Use binary search to locate the rightmost index right which nums[right] <= target - nums[left].
- If left <= right, count the total number of valid subsequences as 2^(right - left) 
- Increment answer by the number of valid subsequences.
step 4 : Return answer once the iteration ends.

Try solving now
02
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration45 minutes
Interview date7 Oct 2022
Coding problem1

After clearing the OA round I got selected for the Interview round 1. This round was mainly focused on your resume. They will discuss each and everything that is written on your resume like internships and projects, etc. They also asked about some data structure problems, C-language, and OOPS-related questions.

1. Theory Questions

What is the difference between # include & #include "stdio. h"?

Explain garbage collection in C++?

Difference between Binary tree & Binary search tree.

What is virtual function in C++?

03
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration45 minutes
Interview date7 Oct 2022
Coding problem2

This round was mainly focused on my problem-solving skills, data structure, and C language. They ask me some questions related to data structure and after that, they give me a problem related to string and array topics in which I need to code in C language.

1. Distinct Occurences

Moderate
15m average time
85% success
0/80
Asked in companies
IBMAccoliteZscaler

You are given two strings 'A' and 'B' of length 'N' and 'M' respectively, your task is to find the number of distinct occurrences of string 'B' in the string A as a subsequence.

Note:
1. A subsequence is a sequence generated from a string after deleting some characters of string without changing the order of remaining string characters.

2. 'A' and 'B' will be non-empty strings.
Try solving now

2. Theory Questions

What is HashMap? How it is working internally?

Here's your problem of the day

Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company

Skill covered: Programming

Which array operation has O(n) worst-case time complexity?

Choose another skill to practice
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