Groupon Business Development Interview Questions and Answers

Round: Round 1:
Experience: It was 5 question screening round which was meant to know about my expectations from the organization.

Round: Round 2:
Experience: Online Coding round on Hackerrank3 coding coding questions:
– Run length Encoding of string with slight modification
– Finding buying day and selling day for a given set of days such that the profit of the buyer is maximum .
– Given a set of keywords and a long string, break the long string such that the split words are from the keywords onlyQuestions were fairly simple but test cases were very nice.

Round: Round 3:
Experience: 1st InterviewThe interview went for about 1 hr and was completely technical. The questions asked were:
– Given a binary tree how would you identify whether it is a Binary Search tree or not?
I gave the answer using inorder traversal.– given a bst, convert it to a binary tree such that each element is replaced by the sum of all the elements greater than it?– Given an employee table with employee name and salary find the 2nd highest salary.
I gave the vague answer of using inner query then he asked if instead of 2nd its nth highest then what would I do. After sometime I asked for the keyword (which was LIMIT) and then I wrote the query which was almost syntactically correct.– The answer to the question of binary tree, he asked me if I could solve it without using any space (my previous solution took O(n) space)?
I was writing the solution and in between he said to stop and asked me if I have any question.

Round: Round 4: Java application development
Experience: Imagine we have an Email Queue table in our database with each row representing an email that needs sending. Table Name: EmailQueue Columns: id, from_email_address, to_email_address, subject, body (you can also add columns as you wish, but at minimum it should have these columns). Write a java program that will read from this table and send the emails over an SMTP server (not local unix mail). For the SMTP sending you can use a pre-existing library of your choice, if you wish. Please take into consideration the following:Speed is of the utmost concern. Imagine we have 1 million emails to send. Your code should not sequentially send one email after another.Your solution should scale. In other words, if we determine the fastest we can send emails from a single server is 300 emails/second I should be able to run the same Java program on another server and be able to send another 300 emails/second.Your code should be careful to ensure that it is not possible for the same email to be sent twice (especially when running multiple processes of the program).Don’t worry about whether the SMTP server can handle the load. It can.Order emails are sent is not necessarily important. In other words, even though I’m calling this a “queue” it’s not important to guarantee that emails are sent in the order they arequeued.Comment your code extensively.Once again, speed is the primary concern. So do remember to think about what the slow points in the email sending process could be and take efforts to minimize those pain points.Send me instructions on how to compile/run/test your code along with the code itself. Also the sql statements for me to create the table that you are working with and the sql statements to insert a few test emails.

Round: Round 5: Final interview
Experience: It was of about 1 hr on soft and technical skills. Questions asked include:– Tell be about yourself?
– given an array. find the pattern it follows? there can be 4 patterns only: increasing, decreasing, increase then decrease and decrease then increase.
– Given an array of distinct positive numbers find the maximum sum of elements such that no 2 elements occurring in the maximum sum set is adjacent to each other.
I gave an incorrect answer and then I realised it, so I asked to rectify and she allowed me to do so.
– How can you improve suggestions of coupons to the users?
This discussion went for about 20 mins.

College Name: NA

Round: Resume Shortlist
Tips: - Keep your resume as compact as possible- Try to keep requirements of the profile in your resume- Survey on how much the company is paying in the market and then state your expected CTC in the range of +/- 2 LPA.

Round: Test
Experience: 2 questions were a bit easy and the 3rd one was a little tricky for the people who are afraid of recursive programming. All the questions are provided in the link here: -----/
Tips: - Programming experience or programmer's help ( :p ) was the only way out of it.- Try to solve problems which you can solve first rather than hanging on any tough problem, because people solving 2/3 questions were also selected for the next round.
Duration: 90 minutes
Total Questions: 3

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: The interviewer was very helpful in guiding, motivating and giving me time to solve the problems. It went quite smoothly and within days I was selected for the next interview.
Tips: - Never speak without thinking unless said to speak what you are thinking.- Try to clarify your doubts before you jump into solving questions asked.- If you are taking any assumption, forget not to notify it to the interviewer.

Round: App development
Experience: I was made to develop a Java application within a week and submit it with proper documentation. It was very interesting app and I learned tons of things while developing.
Tips: - Try to do your task by yourself.- Keep your code as clean and OOP-like as possible- Make your friend read your documentation you prepared to know if it is understandable.- Use git or any other VCS while developing to ensure fallback in case the application breaks down (which usually happens during development).

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: This was exactly like a last gateway to cross for entering into the company. The interviewer was modest and calm, watching all my steps that I take while solving the problem. Twisting problems and guiding me to unwind the twists. At the end...a great experience!
Tips: Same as the above interview tips, nothing much is required for any technical interview (if you ask me).

Skills: Programming, Java application development, Learning/Grabbing new skills, SQL knowledge
College Name: NIT DURGAPUR
Motivation: Few points that motivated me: - Web development related work which is my area of interest.
- Company was a startup so a lot of work => lot of learning (crucial for starting career).- Pay was decent, so I can sustain my living and save something.
Funny Moments: It was my last interview and while I was solving a problem I wrote something wrong, and by mistake " f**k " came out of my mouth. The interviewer was on the phone and for some time I was just wondering if she heard that word, whether it would affect my interview result and all sort of things, rather than about the problem.
A suggestion: Please mind what comes out of your mouth ;)

Round: Test
Experience: First round was a simple round which involved 10 multiple choice questions and 3 coding questions on hackerrank platform.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Mainly on topics like networks, data structures and algorithms, operating systems. The interviewers looked for people who have had prior experience in web development and asked questions regarding web development in depth too.
Tips: I recommend everyone to read the book titled, 'Cracking the Coding Interview' as it was helpful in my approach to an interview.

General Tips: The one major thing that would give you the edge in joining Myntra would definitely be exposure to web development. Since it is not a part of the curriculum , it's all the more important for you to familiarize yourself with web development. In fact, a few projects in the same field would put you in a very advantageous position to get the job.
Skill Tips: 1. Start your placement preparations well ahead, no point regretting later.
2. Keep a concise resume. Do not take your resume to several pages.
3. Do not neglect aptitude preparation. Many people do this mistake and end up not clearing the first round for several companies.
4. Be thorough with your basics across all subjects. (Do not neglect any subject, even they you may like a few and dislike the others.)
5. Keep in mind, the interviewers are really friendly and try to make sure that you're not nervous during the interview. All they want to do is to test you. Be confident and give it your best shot.
Skills:
College Name: NIT Surathkal

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - I'm knowlege of knowledge management and computer networks

Topics to prepare for Myntra Software Engineer interview:

• Data Structures
• Algorithms
• CS Fundamentals
• Computer Networking
• Databases
• Linux
• OOPS

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Just practice problem solving, refer to GeeksForGeeks for company specific problems.

Read up about the company history and the innovations they've done. Be on top of their activities and motives and catchphrases etc

The interviewers will be helpful during the PS phase so always speak out your approach. Always start with the basic approach and then go further to optimize it (don't jump directly at the optimized approach, unless it's a really straightforward or well-known problem).

Only put projects and experience on the resume you are actually knowledgeable about, don't waffle or bluff your achievements as you will get questions asked based on that.

And lastly be prepared for your typical HR questions (this is particularly where your knowledge of the company and it's history will help).

That's pretty much it, best of luck.

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Nothing