Directi Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round: Test
Experience: There were 2 questions. Question 1 had 2 points whereas question 2 had 1 point.
Question 1. There is a compressed string eg. ”ab2c3”, the string has lowercase characters and numbers. We can uncompress the given string as follows: whenever we get a number “n” in the string, the portion of the string before the number will repeat “n” times. So in the above example, we get a 2, so string will become “ababc3”, now we get a 3, so final string will be “ababcababcababc”.
Given a compressed string and a number k, you have to output the k’th character in the uncompressed string.1 <= length of string <= 1500
1 <= n <= 1000
1 <= k < 2^31
example:
input: ab2c3 10
output: c
Question 2. There is a string whose characters can only be either ‘a’, ‘b’ or ‘_’ (there can be only one ‘_’ in the string). At each step, we can modify the string as follows:
1. ‘_’ can be swapped with its adjacent character, example “a_ba” can be changed to either “_aba” or “ab_a”.
2. Two characters adjacent to ‘_’ (both on the same side of ‘_’) can be reversed along with the ‘_’ if both characters are different, example, “aa_ba” can be changed to “aaab_” but not to “_aaba” because both characters are ‘a’.
You are given two strings, the initial state and the final state (lengths will be same), you have to output the minimum number of steps required to change the string in initial state to the string in the final state.
example:
input: a_b ab_
output: 1
input: abaa_a b_aaaa
output: 4
reason for example 2:- abaa_a -> aba_aa -> ab_aaa -> _baaaa -> b_aaaa
Hint: Use Breadth first searchThey shortlisted 12 students after this contest for the next round.
Total Questions: 02

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Question 1. Suppose you are given a string of length n and a set of pairs(i, j such that 0 <= i < j < n). Pair “i, j” (0 based indexing) means that you can swap the i’th and j’th character in the string any number of times. You have to output the lexicographically smallest string that can be produced by doing any number of swaps on the input string.
example:input: zcxfbe
0, 1 0, 2 3, 5
output: cxzebfHint: Try to model the problem to a graph problem.
Question 2. Suppose there are two piles of plates in the table. One has ‘m’ RED plates and other has ‘n’ BLACK plates. In his/her chance, a player can either pick any number of red plates or any number black plates or equal number of red and black plates. A player loses if he cannot make a move in his/her chance. You are playing this game with your friend. Given that you begin the game and both the players play optimally, output ‘L’ if you will lose or ‘W’ if you will win.
example:
input: m = 1, n = 2
output: L
input: m = 2, n = 2
output: W
After this round, they selected 4 people for the next round of interview.

General Tips: Tips:1. There main focus was on string and graph&#44; prepare well for them.2. Practice your codes on paper or google doc, you will not get any editor for coding.3. Keep your concepts clear on all the topics, they can ask you about any minute detail of any data structure or algorithm.
College Name: NA

Round: HR Interview
Experience: This was just a basic call to check my command over the language and figure how interested i was for the job opening. Basic questions and verification.

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: So this seemed like the most basic GD i had ever gone through. Sitting in a circle talking in turns, I couldn't understand why the need so such a basic topic would be required after some people started listed things about facebook and orkut (its an old interview) which made me realize a lot of these candidates though from decent colleges still thought the internet is basically facebooking and orkuting which I found extremely funny, the interviewers looks already could tell who went to the next round and who were let go off. I spoke about how the internets much bigger than just social media of a certain companies and its vast knowledge is a boon. Also from a companies point of view to have a platform to tell people of what it manufactures or provides as a product or service to the entire world makes a platform like the internet an awesome place.
Duration: 35 minutes

Round: Technical + HR Interview
Experience: So time for personal interview and final interview, I walk in meet this guy whose wearing a T-shirt, don't be surprised. (Internet Firm) Also this guys a IIT , IIM A and very professional. sits me down asks me some basic questions and some that should corner me. I reply to all of them I've listed them above. We have a quick chat about how some candidates were really off point on the group discussion he was just trying to see my mindset thus he started that conversation. Conversations is fun and he sees I'm enjoying it , which I was.
He then tells me You'd already know what all to answer as you are referred by a friends who works here. I said,"Yes, So please don't ask me to sell you a pen or something like that". I laugh.
(Mind you while all of this is going on there is a female sitting extremely behind in the room just assessing my interview. )
Then the Interviewer smiles and says you see that female sitting behind assessing the interview , ask her out . If she says yes, I'll hire you . Wish I could record the look on my face, partially embarrassed partially surprised for a moment. Then I smile , tell him. Guess I'm done talking to you. I just need her approval and that's it. I go up to her ask her name, tell her how I'm happy that it was her job to eavesdrop on our conversation so that's made it easier for me to do this. I tell her about restaurant that serves different type of food and has an open mic every friday and if shes interested I could pick her up from her place. Also explain her the ambience and tell her shed really enjoy it . I'd done it once and it was fun . She says no, saying shes never been to an open mic before. I try to explain more , but shes like Ive never been to an open mic so im not interested. I immediately ask her if shes been to Iran ? she says no, I ask her so how is Tehran (The capital) as a city to be at. Shes like I do not understand . Then I explain if you've never been to an open mic how would you ever know how awesome it is . Let me pick you up at 8 Friday, you'll have a great time.
I purposely don't talk about non veg or alcohol because i do not know her food preferences so I stick away from that. The guy calls me back laughs and says lets talk salary. I get the job.
Basically the key is to be confident and not give up.
P.S: Its another story that the Interviewer and now my boss kept joking about how i asked a girl out jut for a job. :D



Tips: Stick to what you are confident at, don't give up, maintain eye contact.

Skills: Sales, Marketing, Confidence

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: It was a skype round of 90 mins.
Tips: Prior to this we had an online round, you will get it online. Frankly, I don't rem the questions.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: It was a skype round of 1hr. I was rejected after this round. Next would have been the final round.
Tips: Time was limited, so we had to come up with efficient solution faster.

General Tips: Code Daily and give it your best. Practise will make it easier for you.
Skill Tips: Learn to code fast, you won't get lot of time to think about the problem statement as you get in Long challenges.
Skills: efficiency, Speed, Coding, Algorithm
College Name: IIT DHANBAD

Round: Test
Experience: It  was  online   coding   round....we  were   given   two   problems   and   asked   to   sole  any  one  of them. If  you keep  your cool you can solve both in the given code problems were not difficult.
Tips: Keep yourself cool.
Duration: 120 minutes

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: This round was in college itself just after the written exam & he asked me the following questions:
In an  array there  is  a number  which  is  guaranteed to  be  repeated   more than n/2  times.   find  the number  in o(n) time and o(1) space complexity. We r given 3 arrays  of equal size, a number k, we have to  find 3 number one from each array which add up to k. Give the best solution. I first gave n3 and n2 solution.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: This round was just after the first round. We are given a number of balloons  with different sizes  and only one parameter to  indicate size.we can fit smaller balloon   in   larger...we   have   to   make   minimum   number   of   sets   such   that   in   a   such   after   fitting   into   each   other   they reduce to one balloon . Asked me to explain 0­1 knapsack problem in detail.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Half   an   hour   after   HR   round   I   got   the   call....this   was   a   difficult   one   to   face as  we have to hold phone and concentrate and explaining is also very difficult. I am given day high and day low of past 10 years of a share script. If I could buy and sell only once  when would I like to buy and sell to maximize my profit tell in o(n). We are given two circles with center and radius  of them and we have to tell whether they are completely apart/touch externally/cut/touch internally/one is inside other, if they cut then find the points of intersection. One   question   of   travelling   person   based   on   dijkstra`s   algorithm then   asked   me   to   explain dijkstra`s   algorithm. Then asked what if negative cycles are there and then said find the complexity in terms to number of edges.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: this   was   a   small   interaction just   to   make   us   familiar   in   mumbai  office. She   asked   about   me,what do you think about directi,what r ur favorite subjects,what language do u prefer.

Round: Presentation
Experience: First they shown a presentation about the bad ways of writing code...then they gave code snippets to  identify wrong code writing practices  and to  modify the code .  After this  we were asked  to  choose on technical topic  of our  own  choice which  they  expected to  be out of our academics...and  speak  on  it for  10 minute....after  we finish   speaking   they   will   ask   questions....about   what   we   said...   I   did   very   bad   in   this   round.....as  I   could   not   get   a good topic.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: This was taken by CEO of company itself....he asked a few things...but all in depth.
Given   an   array   having   +ve   as   well   as   –ve   numbers   ....find   the   maximum   subsequence   sum......if   there   are   two subsequence such  that both sum up to  maximum....print the smaller one....only  one  scan allowed.....asked  to  write the code after listening to algorithm....then said to optimize code.... Asked   about   multithreading.....how   is   it   helpful....then   said...if   we   have   only   one   processor   and   there   is   no   read write....we   have   just   computations. Wwhy   would   we   use   threading. Then   said   we   have   100   computations and   2 processors which one will do faster one thread/two thread/three thread ...and why. Compare   bst   and   hashing...asked   me   to   give   7   differences and how   to   improve   hashing   if   we   have   many collisions. I   said   linear   chaining/linear   probing/quadratic   probing....he   was   not   happy then   I   said   to   use   bst   in place of linear chain...and then I said multiple hashing...and he was happy.

Skill Tips: Be present in online coding communities. Solve problems on careercup.com. Let interviewer know whatever you are thinking. Whether it is the way you are approaching problem or u r tensed or you did bad   in   last  round and   want  to   make   most   of   it whatever that makes you feel free and   if   you   don’t no one wins. Play   smart. If  you  know  the  good   solution  to   a problem. Don't  tell the  solution in  first shot, first  give   some  bad solution and   then   give   good   one. Make   him   feel   that you faced the problem first time and you thought over here only.
College Name: NIT WARANGAL

Round: Test
Experience: General Aptitude + technical questions (C, OOP, DBMS)Aptitude questions (with a few exceptions)were easy, technical questions were of moderate difficulty. C questions like recursive functions, finding output of some code etc.,15 x 1 mark, 10 x 3 marks and 3 x 10 marks questions and 1mark=1min1 mark questions were very simple…For 3 marks questions little bit thinking is necessary but easy ones… like matching kind of questionso 10 marks questions contains puzzles for e.g.: bulbs on/off, probability based questions Eg 1) Given a binary tree, such that each node contains a number. Find the maximum possible sum in going from one leaf node to another. 2) Suppose you have some guests arriving at a party. For each guest, you are given the arrival and departure time. When a guest arrives he is given a wine glass and when he leaves he returns that wine glass (it becomes available to be given to another guest). Find the minimum number of wine glasses needed to serve all the guests. The arrival and departure team can only be between 1800 to 2359 hours.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Round 1 Technical ::• The first round was algos round• Panel consisted of one interviewer• He asked me to tell him about myself• Then, he asked if I had passion for something. I talked about web development and we had a very long discussion on many web

technologies, protocols, interoperability, vendor locking, cloud storage, cloud computing, web OSes, domains, DNS, server technologies, web databases. This is where I scored huge points in my interview.• Then he asked very simple questions on merging two sorted arrays, finding the kth element in two sorted arrays, permutations of merging two series such that their relative order is maintainedEg ::1) Suppose you have strings like A, B…, Z, AA, AB, ….AZ and so on. This is similar to the way the columns of excel are named. Given a number you have to find the corresponding string. (e.g. 27 would map to AA). I had to give the algorithm and write the pseudo code for this.2) Given n biased coins, with each coin giving heads with probability Pi, find the probability that on tossing the n coins I will obtain exactly k heads. I had to write the formula for this (i.e. the expression that would give us P (n, k)).3) Given n positive real numbers, find whether there exists a triplet among this set such that, the sum of the triplet is in the range (1, 2). Do it in linear time and O (1) space..

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Roound 3 Technical Interview • This was my longest (105 minutes) and toughest interview yet.• Q1: Given an array AA = { 4 0 0 3 6 5 4 7 1 0 1 2 }

You start at the first element. From here, you can jump as many places ahead as the value of the cell you are at. E.g. from the initial 4, you can jump to 0, 0, 3 and 6. You are stuck if you end up at a 0. Give an efficient algorithm to find the path with minimum jumps from start of the array to the end. (Note: the most obvious solutions are not the best ones)

• + is string concatenation operator

a1 = “()”

a2 = “(“ + a1 + “)”

a3 = “(“ + a1 + a2 + “)”

a4 = “(“ + a1 + a2 + a3 + “)”

.

.

an = “(“ + a1 + a2 + a3 + …….. + an-1 + “)”

Given n and p, find which bracket would come at pth position in an.• He asked how much programming experience I had, what all programming languages I knew, if I had studied DBMS. Then he asked me questions on javascript, PHP, mySQL.• Then there were questions on OS (like multithreading) and networks (OSI model, TCP/IP model, DNS functioning, IMAP, POP

protocols, encryption etc)• Questions on data structures (difference between trees and hash tables), their applications.Eg :::The length and breadth of my knowledge regarding Databases, networks and data structures was tested. Some of the questions asked were:What are relationships? How are they represented in a database?

What is indexing? Explain it with an example.

What is a hash table?

What is an IP address?

What is a MAC address?

If a MAC address exists why do we need an IP address?

Give the use cases of binary tree?

What is the advantage of an M-ary tree over binary tree?

Given the different prices of a stock over a time period, find the maximum profit that a person can make by buying and selling the stock within the given time period. The number of such entries can run into millions, so time complexity is important. E.g. the prices are 70, 60,100,150,110. The maximum possible profit in this case is (150-60=90).Special Part ::This was the end of the telephonic interview. Probably he was in two minds after this because I was called again after 10 minutes, and two quick questions were asked:How can I contribute to Directi?

What exactly did I do in my internship and how did I benefit my team?

Why I chose ECE if I was so much interested in computer science.

In the end, he gave feedback of how did in the interview and told that I’ll be informed of result later by the HR.But i think The response to these two questions sealed the deal and I was ‘hired’ by Directi .
Tips: Students spend majority of their time doing problems related to data structures and algorithms. However most of students ignore the other core CS subjects. You MUST devote equal time to these subjects, because almost all companies require you to possess a solid understanding of the basic fundamentals of Operating Systems, Databases, Networks, Classes (depending on the profile they are hiring you for).. The way you express yourself is really important. If you are unable to express yourself clearly or lack enthusiasm organizations would see that as a potential red flag. If you are weak in English, practice speaking in front of a mirror (believe me, it helps) or still better give mock interviews to your friends Think out aloud. Whatever idea comes to your mind, share it with the interviewer. Always start by giving a brute force solution to the problem (it helps the interviewer know that you have understood the problem).. Don’t give up on a problem until the last moment. Keep on discussing things with the interviewer; he will give you hints if you are on the right path. CSE guyz might be asked networks, DBMS also.Good problem solving/analytical skills are required.Most of all, passion/zeal for something (like web development in my case) is looked for in applicants.Candidates are expected to know a little bit of everything, but superficial knowledge won’t work.Some experience of working with websites/web apps will be a huge plus.

College Name: BITS PILANI

Round: Test
Experience: There is a drought situation in Agrabah.King got worried and called Aladdin for helping him out. As he is a modern Aladdin he tookprintouts of places around Agrabah from google maps.For analyzing the map properly, he converted the map into a M x N grid. Each point is represented by either ?0? or ?1?.?1? represents the unit area of water and ?0? represents the unit areaof land. King told him to find the largest continuous patch of water.so that he can send his people over there.As our Aladdin is modern, but not a good programmer, he wants your help. Help him out by printing out the largest area water patch available on map.

College Name: NA