IT Interview Guide for Freshers

Crack your IT interview with confidence

Sameer S Paradkar

• Publisher: BPB Publications
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9789388511599
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming in JavaScript
• Index: Computer Science

Gold mine of critical IT interview Q&A for freshers Key Features

• Understand various best practices, principles, concepts, and guidelines
• Common pitfalls to avoid during interviews
• Trending programming languages including Python and R.
• Tools, best practices, techniques, and processes
• Methodologies and processes for DevOps, microarchitecture, SDLC, APIs, SOA integration
• Best practices and programming standards
• Holistic view of key concepts, principles, and best practices

Description
Are you a fresher looking to pass your first IT interview and get your hands on that dream job of yours? This is the best choice for you to make. By emphasizing on the importance of sufficient preparation, this book will help aspirants prepare for the IT interview process. With this practical hands-on guide, readers will not only learn industry-standard IT interview practices and tips, but will also get curated, situation-specific, and timeline-specific interview preparation techniques that will help them take a leap ahead of others in the queue. This book includes sample questions asked by top IT companies while hiring and the readers can expect a similar set of questions in their interview. The book also offers hints on solving them as you move ahead, and each hint is customized similar to how your actual interview is likely to progress. Whether you are planning to prepare for an interview through a semester for six months or preparing for just a weekend coding competition, this book will have all the necessary information that will lead you to your first successful job. What You Will Learn

• This is a comprehensive book on IT interviews for aspirants with profiles ranging from freshers to experienced (up to four years' experience) and with different backgrounds such as BE, BCA, BSc, BCom, and MCA.
• This reference guide for freshers has a double advantage:
• It will guide them for their interview and discussions.
• It will help interview panels in selecting candidates for their practice/units while bringing in standardization in the selection process.
• This book has more than five hundred questions in eight domains, including a chapter on trending programming languages (Python and R).
• It presents an exhaustive question bank with special emphasis on practical scenarios and business cases.
• It covers all the key domains including data structures, OOPs, DBMS, OS, methodologies and processes, programming languages, and digital technologies.
• The book includes a section on frameworks and methodologies for quality assurance and testing, DevOps, Agile, Scrum, APIs, microservices, and SOA.
• Based on our experience, the assurance is that at least 80% of the content will be discussed during a typical interview.
• The book also has a section on pre- and post-interview preparations.
• The coverage is extensive in terms of depth and breadth of domains addressed in the book. But it can be referred to for selective reading as per the choice of domain.
• The book has more than a hundred diagrams depicting various scenarios, models, and methodologies.
• 
  Who This Book is For
  
• Students: IT and other computer science streams
• Freshers from IT and computer science institutes
• Programmers/Software engineers/Developers: 0–4 years' experience
• Interview panels
• 
  Table of Contents
  1. Introduction
  2. Written Test & Group Discussion
  3. Interview Preparations
  4. Data Structure & Algorithms
  5. Operating System
  6. Object-oriented Programming (OOP)
  7. C/C++ Programming
  8. Java Programming
  9. Database Management System (DBMS)
  10. Trending Programming Languages: Python & R
  11. Methodologies & Processes
  12. HR Round
  

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

With the IT industry changing at a daunting speed in recent years, organizations often look for individuals who are multiskilled, who can adapt quickly, learn quickly, think out-of-the-box and perform duties beyond what is described to them. Therefore, as a fresh graduate, you need to be well prepared to crack a campus interview and make a great start to your corporate career. This chapter will provide you with a high-level view of the campus recruitment process and your career growth path in the IT industry.

The campus interview is the most crucial event in the life of a student. Hence, you must start preparing for it well in advance along with final year studies to stay ahead of the competition.

The main objective of campus interviews is to recognize qualified and competent professionals before they complete their graduation. Campus placements offer employment to the college students who are pursuing graduation or in the final year of graduation. This approach enables the organization to choose the candidates according to their business demands. It is a time-consuming activity, and many companies think it is hard to identify potential talent. Due to projects, assignments given by college and exam schedule, many students do not give the much needed importance to placement training. But it is a fact that students ought to be outfitted in all areas of career advancement along with creating a good impact through the interviews and only that can help them in getting placed in their dream company.

As we all know, preparation is a key to the success and hence, the amount of dedicated efforts one puts in planning and preparations for the campus interview would be critical in successfully cracking the campus interview. It is important to be thoroughly prepared for campus interviews because of the criticality of the interviews in the selection process. It is essential to arrange mock interviews to greatly help cope with tough situations. Mock interviews could be set up together with your network peers. Mock interviews provide time to get ready for the queries that you might receive through the actual interview. This book will help you with interview questions which can be leveraged in your mock interviews so that you are well prepared.

During campus interviews, interview panels focus on interpersonal skills, communication skills, and logical/analytical abilities along with technical competencies. Therefore, it is crucial to not only prepare for technical questions but also be aware of the nuances of group discussions/case study rounds. The HR/Managerial round too is an important step to grab the final offer in hand.

This chapter is divided into numerous sections, including strategies and tips for the interviews, freshers’career path and freshers’ IT interview process. This chapter deals with the various aspects and stages of the entire freshers’ interview process. This chapter describes the qualities that an employer looks for in a potential employee and helps improve the aspirant's understanding of the interview process. It helps aspirants prepare for the IT interview process and emphasizes on the importance of sufficient preparation.

Fresher’s interview process (stages)

Now, let us look at the overall process of selection. While different companies have a different format but there are common stages, which are written tests and technical rounds, and hence, it is even more important to prepare for both the written tests and technical rounds.

Before the actual selection process begins, companies conduct pre-placement talks, which are essentially a presentation made by the respective companies covering various topics such as company’s vision, structure, services being offered, selection process, package/perks/benefits, and so on. Students should always attend these pre-placement talks to note key details about the company for which they are appearing for an interview. Students can ask questions and get their queries resolved as part of Q & A session, which is usually conducted at the end of pre-placement talks. This will help you prepare well to handle questions during the final interview.

The academic record of the applicant should be good. A minimum of 60% marks in Class 10 and 12, and 65% and above in B. Tech. / B.E / B Sc IT / B.C.A / MCA / M.E / M. Tech, with no backlog is a pre-condition for applying.

Here is how a typical campus recruitment process looks like:

Please refer to the following table, which guides As-On-Date campus process followed in some of the well-known IT companies:

Written tests

An aptitude test is one of the initial stages that the applicant must pass to move ahead to the campus interview stage. The aptitude evaluation typically involves assessing logical and analytical reasoning, numerical problems, programming language efficiency, and verbal skills. Speed and accuracy both are crucial to cracking these examinations and this can come only with practice. So, practice and practice more before you appear for this test.

Each applicant may get a different set of questions, but of a similar design and type. The time duration will be typically around 1-2 hours. Different companies have different test patterns and the company representative will share them before the test.

Group discussion, case study round, or Just a Minute (JAM) round

Once you pass the first stage of the written test, the next level of filtering happens in the group discussion round. Again, different companies have a different approach towards the second round. Some organizations give a common topic for group discussion (GD) and some believe in giving IT-related case study for the group of students to come up with solutions/recommendations. The recent trend is also to conduct JAM (Just a Minute) round in which you would have to speak for one minute on any given topic to you. The key objective of this round is to assess communication skills, leadership abilities, listening skills, and teaming aspect of the candidate. Therefore, it is very critical for you to keep yourself abreast on the latest news and current affairs to be able to crack this round.

Technical interview

Post GD, the next important step is to face the technical interview round where a candidate will be assessed for his/her technical ability. Most of the students are rejected at this interview stage. The interview panel will probe you on your area of expertise or competencies. They may cover different programming languages like C++, Java, and Dot Net. For every question, the panel will expect an elaborate response but if you prepare well and go through all the topics/questions covered in this book, there is no reason to worry. You will find most of the technical questions along with answers readily made available for you right here.

HR round/Managerial interview

This is the final round of the process and it focuses on the candidate’s confidence and overall personality/soft skills needed for the job. The interviewer may ask questions on education, family background, project experience, strengths, why you should be hired, weaknesses, and so on. The key is to remain poised and handle all questions confidently. Just a small tip here, don’t forget to wear your smile.

Career path for freshers/software engineers

The truth is many programming careers have a peak and a decline. Ultimately, it'll get difficult to retain employment as programmers. Many discover this truth flat-footed and unprepared. This section covers important profession information you need to consider making sure that you are prepared beforehand. Research has found out that the shelf-life of a programmer is very brief. The queries these raise are crucial and existential.

• What could be the career path of a software engineer/programmer?
• What is the future for a programmer/software engineer?
• What are career expectations and options?

The universal truth is that eventually, programmers become managers or leaders. Many barely understand the goals and requirements of managerial functions. What does it take to be a manager? And what's the difference between a senior leader and a mid-level manager? What exactly will be the role expectations?

This section shows a potential career path from the start of a career as a software engineer to the apex as a Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Chief Information Officer (CIO).

Many careers stop at different points of the organization ladder and stay there until retirement. Few professions skip rungs of the organization ladder. But leadership and management roles aren't a fit for everybody, and besides one's interest in general management changes over the period. One may hate the very thought of being truly a manager in their 20s, but one might hate the very thought of writing code in their 40s. However, it is good to understand your alternatives and their impacts.

The following diagram shows the growth path for software engineers showing both technical and managerial roles:

Software engineer/developer

The following competencies are required for this role

• 0-4 years of experience
• Preliminary understanding of the whole SDLC
• Experience in C/C++, Java, or Dot Net frameworks
• Preliminary knowledge of application services and databases

You should make most of your time to learn and deep dive into technology as a software developer. It is also important to gain industry understanding while you learn technology. This is the crucial time, one needs to build a strong foundation by learning the right coding practices, software style patterns, design patterns, and so on.

Senior software engineer/senior developer

The following competencies are required for this role

• 4-10+ years of IT experience
• Deep understanding of a whole SDLC
• Advanced knowledge in C/C++, Java, or Dot Net frameworks
• Deep knowledge of application services and database
• Comfortable working in any application domain

Senior software engineers/senior programmers are proficient at the entire software stack development. A lot of a programmer's profession is normally spent as a senior programmer. If you dislike management functions and like to code, you may be considered a senior programmer for the whole career. This is the function that gets harder to compete as we get older.

This role may also be a jump-off point for another rung on the ladder. Once you gain technical and domain expertise, futuristically you may plan your career towards becoming an architect, a chief technology officer or a founder of a startup. So, a deep understanding of the technology stack will go a long way in achieving this career goal.

Lead developer or architect

The following competencies are required for this role:

• 7-10+ years of IT experience
• Similar expertise as a senior developer
• Lead developer: Transitionary role into an architect or mid-level manager
• Architect: Non-transitionary technical role

After 10+ years of programming expertise, if the management isn't your thing, an architect may be the highest rank on the organizations' technical ladder. Architects do write programs, but more frequently, they design complicated with complex applications that will be implemented by groups of senior and junior programmers/developers. Architects normally leverage the wisdom they have gained after years of experience to create successful software applications and systems. As new business requirements come in, the architect should be conversant with the methodologies and frameworks to build and scale applications and systems in a variety of domains.

A lead developer is predominately a senior programmer that additional junior and senior programmers look up to for direction and guidance. Though the lead developers do not generally hire or fire programmers, they engage in a lot of very similar work as managers. They orchestrate all the tasks and are the decision-makers for implementation while also composing code.

Project Managers/Sr. Architects – mid-management

The following competencies are required for this role

• Titles include Project or Product Manager or Sr Architects
• 7-10+ years of IT experience
• Commun...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Acknowledgement
• Preface
• Errata
• Table of Contents
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Written Tests and Group Discussions
• 3. Interview Preparations
• 4. Data Structures and Algorithms
• 5. Operating System
• 6. Object-oriented Programming (OOPs)
• 7. C and C++ Programming
• 8. Java Programming
• 9. Database Management System
• 10. Trending Languages– Python and R Programming
• 11. Methodologies and Processes
• 12. HR Round
• Index