HARMAN Senior Manager Interview Questions and Answers

Round: Test
Experience: First round was a written test which had 20 MCQ's in the field of Databases, Theory of computation, Operating systems, Data Structures and Algorithms and one programming question. 7 students (4 B.Tech, 3 M.Tech) got through to the interviews. Most of the interviews were held in the Google Bangalore campus. There were a total of 5 rounds of interviews. All based on Data Structures and Algorithms. Each round had 2 questions for which we were usually supposed to explain the algorithm first and then write the code on a Google doc.  It was a really great experience. I got a chance to visit both Google Bangalore and Hyderabad campuses and taste their awesome food.
Total Questions: 20

General Tips: Practice your coding skills. Writing a neat code is very important. Interviewers not just look for a good algorithm but also your coding style (indentation, variable names, simplicity etc.)
College Name: NIT SURATHKAL

Round: Test
Experience: Google's APAC test is an online coding round. The test is for 3 hours and it has 4 coding questions.
Duration: 180 minutes

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: I had 3 technical interviews. The questions asked in them consisted of algorithmic coding and design questions. The approach was more stressed upon. The interviewers were very helpful and they were generous in throw hints whenever I was blocked.

Skills: Algorithmic coding , C++
College Name: IIT BOMBAY

Round: Test
Experience: I was asked to take the test at 8.30 pm. They fixed this test, a week back. Nobody will call you to remind you to take test. Nor the interviewer will call you. It is your responsibility to check ur mail without fail. On that day I was expecting a call from google from evening till 8.25 pm. None called me. I thought that they would have forgot that. I planned to do go out and have food. But suddenly my ipad gave a alert message and it was from gmail app [thanks for ipad, or else i would not have checked my mail in lap top]. It was from google recruiter. The mail stated that he has shared a doc with me and i must answer the questions in it. a google drive link was given. he mentioned that the test was for 2 hours. I was asked to type answers just below each of these questions.
Duration: 120 minutes

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Since I had prepared for tech interviews like amazon, I was able to do it good.After a week I got a call from HR and informed that I cleared the first round. Then after two days I was told that i will have a telephonic interview with one of the google developers from adwords team . They scheduled a telephonic interview the next week

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: 1) How will improve the revenue of the cafeteria of the office. Lots of discussions went and i think, i really did that well.
2)[Actual question which i screwed up. Bad Time for me]
Number of users in 2001 for adwords, chrome, gmail, android and picassa are in the ratio of 6:9:14:13:8, and in 2004 we add 3 lakh more users. New ratio is 8:12:13:11:6. Number of picassa users in 2004= 1,44,000. Calculate number of adwords users in 2005.A basic math question that, even a school student can solve. But in that tension i was not able to do it. I took some time and finally gave him a answer. I myself knew that it would be wrong. But interviewer said great lets move on to next question[just to boost up me - good person].My actual job role revolves around developing tools for the the ad review team which will review the ad and reject illlegal ones. So third question was related to that .He told me that as I am from a tech background, I need to explain him technically wat will I do. He also said that he did not need the actual solution. They will just see the way I approach the problem. That an existing problem and they are open to suggestions.3)In google adwords there are about 30 million ads from 42 lanuages . What will I do review the ads and reject ads that do not comply with specific rules .Regarding the criteria under which google bans a ad as illegal – I discussed about different criteria .Out of the criteria’s i told , he asked me to consider only three criteria .
a) Link not working
b) Drug related ads
c) trademarks[trademark used by the companies]I gave lot of approaches like for link not workinga) designing a autobot which will automatically click ads link and check whether it is redirecting to correct page or not . Autobots are used by hackers to get money for the ads they posted . I suggested that by designing similar autobot we can validate the link.b) to check drug related ads -
To detect the language we can first check the geographic location from which the ad is getting posted and can narrow down to some less choices from which we can detect the language
i suggested him that we can create a trie which some specific keywords (like coccaine ) and do pattern matching with that and reject the add it contains any of the works in trie .The interviewer gave me another constraint wat if there comes a ad “coccaine rehabilitation center” we should reject those kind of ads na . thats for a good cause . So i suggested him that i can maintain another set of trie which can contain those set of keywords.Fist check trie1 if drug related keywords exist .
Next check trie 2 if other types of keyword exist.
– if keyword only present in trie1 [reject ad]
– if both tire return true [can reject . but its better that those ad's alone can be subjected to manual evaluation for rejection].I used trie as it can do the pattern matches faster .For trademarks also I discussed using similar datastructures and the interviewer was ok with my answer.

General Tips: I applied for a job in Google jobs page. I know that its very difficult that a resume gets noticed by google.Suddenly one fine day i got a call from Google HR saying that they are interested in my profile and asked me if, i was ready to go with the interview process[Come on! who will say no for Google]. I was surprised.I was asked to take a initial screen test [Online test].
Skills: data structure, Algorithm
College Name: na

Round: Test
Experience: It was constituted of two parts: Logic and DI. Both parts were simple. Questions were CAT type.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Simple C, C++ questions were asked. Technical questions based on internship project were asked. General questions asked to check reaction to sudden stress (for example: Why do earthquakes occur?).
Tips: Courses like DSP (application based) and information systems should be thorough. Knowing 1 programming language is very essential.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Resume based questions were asked.
Tips: Know complete details of your interns, BTP and resume thoroughly.

College Name: IIT KANPUR

Round: Interview
Experience: A systematic approach is all what he expects from us. Our approach and our way of thinking is what he observes. An algorithm to solve a single face worked in my case. So called HR interview was more technical and a discussion about the projects mentioned in my resume.
Tips: An overview on problems like sudoku, rubik's cube, chess etc. A proper approach and a structure for solving the problem should be mentioned.

Round: Interview
Experience: Some questions on basic data structures, dynamic programming and recursion.
Tips: Recognize the problem(dp, recursion, etc.). Throw some algorithm.

General Tips: Be clear with basics.
Skill Tips: ""
Skills: Data structures, Data Processing, Recursion
College Name: IIT Madras
Motivation: SAMSUNG!
Funny Moments: A saviour for the leftover cse students especially b.tech and dual. It does not depend on whether your interview went well or not. Just basic cse stuff is enough.

Round: Test
Experience: Objective test in C(30 min),followed by a paper-based coding test.(1 hour, Written ).
Tips: There are old Samsung tests available online. The questions are based on the same fundamentals.Coding test focuses more on getting the pseudo code and logic right
Duration: 90 minutes

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Interview questions were mostly based on projects and skills mentioned in the resume.Be sure to read up on your projects.They asked to explain the code.On the lines of how would I approach the problem of getting faster downloads in cellphones.

General Tips: I got selected because of my projects fit the profile they were looking for. They seemed to like the Olympiad ranks too.Data structures and algorithms basic fundaes, C coding and theory (asked in every profile), Revision of your electives (depending the core specialization)For any communication profile, do not ignore revision of courses and also it was necessary to read up
further as MTechs and MS students have an edge.
Skill Tips: Went through all the literature for all my projects.My courses and projects were all related to Communication Networks and Communication Systems. This background made the questions easier to answer. Majority of questions were about network protocols and network architecture.Started preparing DS&A at the beginning of seventh sem because I had never taken the course. The rest of it can be revised a couple of weeks before the tests start.
Skills: Algorithm, C Programming, Communication Networks, Communication Systems, Network protocols, Network architecture.
College Name: IIT Madras