Year: Final Year
Branch: CS/IT
Mode: On-Campus
Selection Process: OA → Technical 1 → Technical 2 → Technical + HR
I appeared for the Privado AI on-campus recruitment drive. Around 120 candidates applied for the drive.
The selection process consisted of:
- Online Assessment
- Technical Interview 1
- Technical Interview 2
- Technical +HR
Around 15 candidates were shortlisted after the OA.
Round 1: Online Assessment
The OA was conducted in pen-and-paper format.
It consisted of 30 MCQs covering:
- Quantitative Aptitude, C++, OS, AI, SQL, Docker
- There were also 2 DSA questions:
- Right View of Binary Tree
- Autocomplete System
After the OA, 15 candidates were shortlisted for Technical Interview 1.
Round 2: Technical Interview 1
The interview started with an introduction.
The interviewer then focused heavily on my projects. I had 3 projects on my resume.
Projects
I was asked to explain my first project and questions were asked about:
- How the features were implemented.
- MongoDB.
- NoSQL vs SQL.
- How CI/CD works in my project end-to-end.
- Project 3 – AI-Based Project
- The interviewer then asked me to explain my third project, which was AI-based.
- Questions related to: ai and n8n
- were asked based on my project.
OOPs
Questions asked:
- What is polymorphism?
- What are the types of polymorphism?
- Difference between late binding and early binding.
- Why is it called late binding?
- Implement a parking system using OOP in C++.
- How would you access private variables?
- C++ vs Java.
- Friend functions in C++.
- Getters and setters.
DBMS
Questions asked:
- What are ACID properties?
- Explain ACID properties with examples.
- Practical applications of SQL and NoSQL.
- Where would you use SQL and where would you use NoSQL?
Operating Systems
Questions asked:
- Process vs Thread.
- What is deadlock?
- Give an example of deadlock.
- What is a semaphore?
- Types of semaphores.
- Difference between the types of semaphores.
- Semaphore vs Mutex.
DSA
The interviewer also discussed the DSA questions from the OA.
For Right View of Binary Tree:
- Multiple approaches were asked.
- For Autocomplete System:
- How does a Trie work?
- Optimize the code written in the OA.
- The interviewer was very friendly throughout the round.
After this round, 6 candidates moved to Technical Interview 2.
Round 3: Technical Interview 2
This interview was around 60 minutes and was divided into approximately 6 sections, with around 10 minutes for each section.
DSA
- The first part focused on DSA.
- Questions/problems were based on:
- Heap, Trees ,Set and Map
- For the heap-based question, I was also asked to:
- Write pseudocode for how a heap works.
- Explain the heapify algorithm.
- The first approximately 20 minutes were focused on DSA.
Cloud / System Design
The interviewer asked whether I was interested in AI/ML.
I said that I was more interested in Cloud and DevOps.
The discussion then moved towards scaling my first project, which was a file-sharing platform where I had used S3.
I was asked to:
- Draw the diagram.
- Explain how I would scale the system.
- Discuss which AWS services I would use.
- Discuss trade-offs related to horizontal scaling.
The discussion included:
- ELB, RabbitMQ, ASG, CloudFront, EBS, ECS, EKS, Route 53,VPC
- There were also two other similar AWS/system-design discussions.
- Additional scenario-based system-design questions were asked related to:
- Instagram posts
- Twitter tweets/followers
Docker
Questions asked:
- How would you debug a Docker container?
- Various Docker commands.
- How would you write a Dockerfile for a Node.js application?
- How would you reduce Docker image size?
Terraform
Questions related to:
- Why Terraform is used.
- Basic Terraform concepts.
Security
Questions asked:
- Authorization vs Authentication — discussed in depth.
- Scenario-based security questions.
- Firewalls.
After this round, 4 candidates moved ahead.
Round 4: Technical + HR
DSA
- A binary-tree-related DSA question was asked.
System Design
System-design questions were asked based on:
- Blinkit
- Travel/Bus Booking Platform
- Both were scenario-based discussions.
AI
There was a scenario-based AI question:
- How would you summarize 1000 lines into 20 lines?
- Other questions were related to:
- How AI works.
- There were also some additional DSA-related questions and HR/managerial questions.
This was the final round.
Final Result
Finally, 2 candidates were selected.
Unfortunately, I was not one of them.
Even though I wasn't selected, it was a very good interview experience. The interviews covered DSA, OOPs, DBMS, OS, Cloud, AWS, Docker, Terraform, Security, System Design and AI.
The interviewers were friendly, and the process helped me understand the areas I need to improve.
Tips
My biggest takeaway from this interview is:
Prepare AI/ML fundamentals as well. AI-related questions are increasingly being asked in interviews, even when your primary interest specifically AI/ML..
