Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai

Chennai, Tamil Nadu

Your seniors at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai were your true well-wishers, they shared their placement interview questions for you. 🙏

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Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai Placement Interview Questions

Updated 4 Dec 2024

23 interviews found

7 Interview Rounds

Interview Preparation Tips

Round: Test
Duration: 30 minutes
Total Questions: 15

Round: coding
Experience: Write 2 functions(not entire programs) in C language on cocubes.com platform Q.1 Find an element in a rotated sorted array in O(log n) time. For ex. Find 4 in 7 8 9 1 2 4 5 A binary search technique could also do it in O(log n). They wanted an optimized binary sort and so I felt, the question wasn't clear enough. Didn't attempt it and told the interviewer the reason. Q.2  With a parent pointer in every node of a binary tree, find the in order successor of a given node. Solved only the second, but I ensured it could work on all boundary cases. Results of round 2 were declared on the day Microsoft visited the campus.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: How would you find least common ancestor of two nodes in a binary tree? I said you could use two stacks, push nodes as you traverse and then compare when you are popping. He asked me to explain on the whiteboard. I did, but realised there was a problem, I looked at him and he was there, smiling as wide as he could. I asked for 2 minutes, and then gave him a better approach with a stack and a hash table. He seemed satisfied
Tips: Keep talking while you are solving a problem/writing code. This keeps him informed of your progress and if you are lucky, you might receive some help. He repeatedly had been asking me stand up and sit to explain everything on the board. So eat adequately on any interview day.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Asked me to write a function for reversing characters in a string and left the room. I wrote  4 lines of code to swap characters from ends. A vague question it was, he returned and explained what he wanted later. It was his fault but I politely apologized for not understanding the question. Remember: The boss is always right!

He wanted the string to be reversed alphabetically. So if it was "adecb", it should become "edcba". I wrote code. He had a 2-second glance at it, and then asked for an explanation

Round: Other Interview
Experience: A happy two hour discussion-cum-interview on designing another Facebook, all data structures, algorithms that can be used and features, optimisations that could be added. I asked him a few conceptual questions related to his subjects of interest and he answered delightfully. He gave me his email ID to contact him for more knowledge and for a second I missed my heartbeat, coz that might mean he won’t meet again. But results were announced and there he was, shaking my hands with a gleaming smile.

General Tips: Overall, it was a great experience interacting with them. Seemed to be a nice bunch of interesting people, looking for intellectual conversations with students.
Skills: C, C++, Data structures, Algorithms
College Name: IIT MADRAS
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7 Interview Rounds

Interview Preparation Tips

Round: Test
Experience: Some companies don’t make any strict regulations regarding the language in question, but Microsoft always goes with C/C++. The questions are similar to what you would find in books like “Let us C”. Questions regarding pointer manipulation, predicting the output, pre-order postorder increment decrement, structures, arrays formed the majority. · These are their favourite areas of computer science that they choose to focus on. That being said the questions asked in this section were quite few. Maybe 5 or less than that. Questions regarding like memory allocation in OS, preferred data structure for a particular application, properties of database management systems made it in.
Tips: 1.   While preparing for the aptitude, sharpen your C skills. Give second preference to OS, DBMS and DSA. 2.   Get extensive practice in the most common types of C aptitude questions and give regular online tests. 3.   Cover what you can in OS, DBMS and DSA in the time that remains.
Total Questions: 30 MCQs

Round: programming round
Experience: Once you clear the aptitude you become eligible for the programming round. This round has two questions meant to be solved in C. The focus is on the following aspects and in this particular order:CorrectnessOutput is correct for the given test cases Completeness Output is correct for all the test cases Time Complexity The program has the specified time complexity or less Space Complexity The program does not occupy too much excess space
You don’t have to write the entire programs just the necessary functions to perform the tasks given. The results were declared after a few days when Microsoft visited.
Question1 - Find an element in a rotated sorted array in O(log n) time. For ex. Find 4 in 7 8 9 1 2 4 5 
Question2 - With a parent pointer in every node of a binary tree, find the in order successor of a given node. I solved both of these questions, yet my solution for the first one used some amortized amount of time (amortized time is time that is not significant enough to affect the order, that is log n, but it is not too insignificant to be ignored as constant) more than the required time constraint which had me worried a little
Tips: Work on getting at least the right answer, worry about the run time and space complexity later. Even people who could get just the right answer made it to the wildcard round

Round: case study round
Experience: People who barely managed to get their output right in the last round were eligible for this round. I don’t have details about how this round was conducted since I wasn’t part of it but it is pretty standard procedure, the same kind of GD or case study that happens in most companies

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Keep it real. Say stuff that is good about you AND makes you a good candidate for the job. You never have more than 3-4 minutes for such questions so focus on conveying what is most important. After general introductions, I talked about how passionate I am about programming and technology in general, how I didn’t just see it as a subject or a career option but something that I enjoyed doing and have successfully used in my daily life. Talk about what values and work ethics you believe in. End it with what qualities you have as a person or as a possible employee. Please note that you should not leave the interviewer on just your words to believe on. Give short descriptive examples to support what you are saying but don’t go on telling long boring stories I gave the required answers. I am not elaborating on this part since this is something that you can answer just by knowing your stuff. It was nothing out of the ordinary but it wasn’t all that easy. DSA and DBMS were among my favourite subjects so I did pretty well.  I wrote the code since I had actually made the application. This is an important question where he was testing whether I told the truth or not earlier. So whatever happens do not lie or make up even a single detail while explaining something, you never know what might come back to haunt you Write code for designing the ADT (Abstract Data Type) for all the classes that might be required to represent the game of chess Me: This was the kind of question that I wasn’t expecting. Also the reason I got this question was that I had mentioned chess in my hobbies. So keep in mind every small thing you put in your resume matters a lot. He allowed me to choose my language of choice so I began with Java and then I did the important part.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Why Microsoft?- Give some answer that is well thought and prepared beforehand.
You left Barclays for Microsoft? -Basically what they wanted to know here is that I don’t have the same plans for Microsoft. I told them Barclays was an investment bank and while I was fortunate to get a chance to work in that great environment I want to start my career in a product based company so Microsoft (Microsoft is becoming a service based company now BTW) Note: If you have done internship somewhere else and have rejected an offer from there, say only good things about your previous employer. Anything else will reflect badly on you.   
What makes you better than you colleagues? - Whatever nice things you can say about yourself, everything comes here. Don’t, however mention the negative points of your colleagues, in hopes of making yourself look good. It will only make you look bad. 
Write the artificial intelligence logic in code for your Chess representation- Now the fact that this question was asked in HR rather than Tech should give you an idea about the real purpose of this question. When this question was asked we didn’t even have AI as a subject yet. The interviewer knew beforehand that I could not code this. He wanted to see how I would handle it. So after thinking for a few minutes I decided to draw flow charts and map out scenarios

College Name: IIT MADRAS
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3 Interview Rounds

Interview Preparation Tips

Round: Test
Experience: Shortlisting was done based on an online test.The second part had two coding questions.There was a group coding round before the interviews.
Tips: Prepare basic C concepts.Pay attention to data structures and algorithms.

Round: Other Interview
Experience: There were three interviews of duration 45-60 minutes each.The interview experience is a little different from usual. If you are not a very good coder good at solving problems, they will make you solve different case studies over the 3 interviews.
Tips: A Good CG and giving creative solutions to the case studies is important. So prepare for the case studies.

Skill Tips: ""
College Name: IIT Madras
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