Hey everyone,
I was getting a lot of messages to share my experience, so here it is.
I recently gave my Infosys SP L3 interview through HackWithInfy (interview was on 23 April), and I wanted to share my experience
Also get some honest opinions about my chances and possible role.
I started the interview with a brief introduction. The interviewer then moved into a detailed discussion about my projects. He asked indepth questions, especially around technologies I had mentioned, such as Amazon S3, and explored my understanding thoroughly. I was unable to answer cloud related questions.
He also asked how my projects differed from existing solutions. Since my projects were relatively basic, I tried to steer the discussion toward Data Structures and Algorithms.
In short I F ed project section.
He then asked about my performance in the previous round what problems I solved and the approaches I used. I had solved the complex problem, so I explained my approach in detail.
After that, I was given a few coding questions on grids, linked lists, and trees, where I was expected to write optimal solutions on paper. I was also asked some SQL queries.
Next, I was asked to attend a virtual interview with a senior interviewer using their laptop.
He began by asking what I had learned so far. I spoke about backend development using Spring Boot, along with DSA and system design.
I then shifted to a system design problem I was comfortable with. I explained challenges related to scalability and availability and proposed solutions such as:
Using queues like RabbitMQ
Implementing caching with Redis
Applying indexing strategies
At one point, he asked how indexing can be implemented in Redis for the problem I was discussing. I initially got confused and started explaining indexing in databases like Apache Cassandra.
He clarified that he specifically meant Redis. I then realized he was referring to key-value access patterns and explained it accordingly.
Later, he gave me a MongoDB JSON document containing user data and asked me to design an API to update a phone number using an email.
I made a mistake here by treating it like an SQL database instead of NoSQL. To recover, I honestly mentioned that I hadn’t worked much with MongoDB and had more experience with SQL databases.
He then asked me to write a simple SQL query I wrote but messed up by writing modify instead of alter in query other things where correct. He asked is this all I said yes 😭. And then asked to identify its type (DML, DDL, etc.). I admitted that I didn’t remember the full forms but could write the query correctly. He responded positively and said it’s okay not to remember all the names.
Toward the end, I asked what freshers should focus on. He mentioned that in the current AI-driven era, the most important things are:
Strong DSA and fundamentals
The ability to write and understand code, even without AI assistance
Interview lasted for more than an hour