Target Interview Experience (On-Campus)
Round 1(Coding Test): Two DSA questions were asked as mentioned below:
- Asked to print the common substring in the given set of strings.
- It was based on trees, to find the maximum distance from one leaf to another leaf.
Round 2(Technical Interview): There were two interviewers and the interview was scheduled on aspiring minds. Both were working in Target for more than 8 years. I was first asked to introduce myself, focusing on my project.
- Then I was given a simple string manipulation question, and various cross-questions on my approach.
- I was asked about the courses that I had done. I told them that I had a good practice of DSA, along with DBMS and OOP. So to verify it, they asked my some basic question on the topics like indexing, encapsulation, etc.
- I was then asked to solve a puzzle.
- Then they straightaway went on to my project. I made an eCommerce website, and they literally asked each and every detail of it, and what changes would I make to it now. You really need to have a complete understanding of your projects. I suggested that I would probably design my databases more efficiently to which they asked – how can I store data in C++ if I tend to store it in a sorted fashion. I first approached with map, to which they asked to use some database that does not give you this facility of sorting automatically. So I used a linked list for the same. He was very impressed with my approach to using LinkedList. I basically thought of inserting data in a sorted fashion, which means whenever a new entry arrives, I place them where they should be in the list. They further asked me to optimize the solution and I suggested we could maintain a mid variable that will help me to traverse the list in half time.
He was very impressed with my approach. Then he asked me about my electronics project which I did not mention in my resume. The interview went on for around 1hr 15 mins.
Round 3(Technical Round): The interview started with a brief introduction of the interviewer, followed by my interview. This interview was based on my resume. I had done machine learning projects too well, so he asked how would I be able to apply machine learning to my eCommerce website. This interview was more of a discussion than just questions answers. He was trying to analyze my approach to a particular problem. He was trying to integrate all the things written in my resume to test my experience with each project. The interviewer had also asked how would I go about implementing a search feature on my website.
Prepare your resume very well. You should be able to apply the concepts used in your projects to an entirely new problem. I would suggest for non-cs people, you need to prepare for OS, DBMS, OOP, and DSA. You can not discount any topics if you want a decent placement. Companies do expect you to know the basics of OS.