Circana Interview Questions and Answers

Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Started with basic introduction about myself and then 2 DSA problems to be solved on CodeChef or any IDE of your preference. Interviewer was helpful throughout the interview and helped with syntaxes at one point as well.
Parameters tested - 
1. Ability to think of edge test cases.
2. Coding Practices like naming variables and functions properly and using the most suitable access modifiers.
3. Ability to think of time and space complexity and optimise it.
Reaching the correct output was not mandatory but was preferred. Priority to coding practices was given.

Q1. Next Greater Element
You are given an array arr of length N. You have to return a list of integers containing the NGE(next greater element) of each element of the given array. The NGE for an element X is t...read more
Ans. 
The task is to find the next greater element for each element in the given array.
• Iterate through the array from right to left.

• Use a stack to keep track of the next greater element.

• Pop elements from the stack until a greater element is found or the stack is empty.

• If the stack is empty, there is no greater element, so assign -1.

• If a greater element is found, assign it as the next greater element.

• Push the current element ...read more
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Q2. Zigzag Binary Tree Traversal
Given a binary tree, return the zigzag level order traversal of the nodes' values of the given tree. Zigzag traversal means starting from left to right, then right to left ...read more
Ans. 
The zigzag level order traversal of a binary tree is the traversal of its nodes' values in an alternate left to right and right to left manner.
• Perform a level order traversal of the binary tree

• Use a queue to store the nodes at each level

• For each level, alternate the direction of traversal

• Store the values of the nodes in each level in separate arrays

• Combine the arrays in alternate order to get the zigzag level order tra
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Started with basic introduction about myself and then 2 DSA problems to be solved on google doc. Interviewer was helpful throughout the interview.
Parameters tested - 
1. Ability to think of edge test cases.
2. Coding Practices like naming variables and functions properly and using the most suitable access modifiers.
3. Ability to think of time and space complexity and optimise it.
4. Making it to the correct output.

Reaching the correct output was mandatory in best possible time comlexity.

Q1. Search In Rotated Sorted Array
Aahad and Harshit always have fun by solving problems. Harshit took a sorted array and rotated it clockwise by an unknown amount. For example, he took a sorted array = [1, 2,...read more
Ans. 
This is a problem where a sorted array is rotated and we need to search for given numbers in the array.
• The array is rotated clockwise by an unknown amount.

• We need to search for Q numbers in the rotated array.

• If a number is found, we need to return its index, otherwise -1.

• The search needs to be done in O(logN) time complexity.

• The input consists of the size of the array, the array itself, the number of queries, and the q
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Q2. K-th element of 2 sorted array
You are given two sorted arrays/list ‘arr1’ and ‘arr2’ and an integer k. You create a new sorted array by merging all the elements from ‘arr1’ and ‘arr2’. Your task is to fin...read more
Ans. 
The task is to find the kth smallest element of a merged array created by merging two sorted arrays.
• Merge the two sorted arrays into a single sorted array

• Return the kth element of the merged array
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Round duration - 40 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

I was asked to introduce myself and general family background check and then discussion around salary negotiation.

Q1. Basic HR Questions
What are your expectations?
What are your hobbies?
Why should we hire you?
Ans. 
My expectations are to work in a challenging and collaborative environment, where I can utilize my skills and contribute to the success of the team.
• Expectation to work in a challenging and collaborative environment

• Utilize skills and contribute to team success
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

First there was a preplacement talk of company and interview process. Soon online test was conducted around 10 AM in consisting of MCQs, and coding question. Platform was smooth enough.

Q1. Longest Palindromic Substring
Given a string ’S’ consisting of lower case English letters, you are supposed to return the longest palindromic substring of ‘S’.
Note that in case of more than one longest ...read more
Ans. Brute Force
The brute force solution is to pick all possible starting and ending positions for a substring and verify if it is a palindrome.
 
The steps are as follows:
 
1. If the length of the given string is zero, return an empty string. Else,
2. Start checking each substring of the given string ‘S’ whether the substring is a palindrome or not.
3. To do this first, run the two nested loops.
4. These two loops pick up all the ...read more
Answered by CodingNinjas
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Round duration - 45 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

The day after online test is done , Technical round was conducted at 9AM . Interview went well without distractions though it was online.

Q1. Merge Sort
Given a sequence of numbers ‘ARR’. Your task is to return a sorted sequence of ‘ARR’ in non-descending order with help of the merge sort algorithm.
Example :
Merge Sort Algorithm -

Merge sor...read more
Ans. Recursion
The basic idea is that we divide the given ‘ARR’ into two-part call them ‘leftHalves’ and ‘rightHalves’ and call the same function again with both the parts. In the end, we will get sorted ‘leftHaves’ and sorted ‘righthalves’ which we merge both of them and return a merged sorted ‘ARR’.
We implement this approach with a divide and conquer strategy.
 
Here is the algorithm : 
 
1. Divide ‘ARR’ into two-p...read more
Answered by CodingNinjas
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Q2. SQL Question
Gave three tables and attributes and asked to find names of employees whose balance is less than 200.
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Round duration - 45 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Q1. OS Questions
paging 
segmentation
deadlock
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Round duration - 35 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Q1. Basic HR Questions
Where do you see yourself  in 5 years?
What is your greatest achievement?
Ans. 
Tip 1 : come up with practical answers
Tip 2 : for ex: where would u see yourself in next 5 yrs?
My answer was : " Well, we all had pre planned tasks but were all scattered due to pandemic . So I hope I should be in a situation where I could possess the potential to overcome hard times and work in an organization where I could have handful of work and explore my knowledge as well.
 
Answered by CodingNinjas
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