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Tarun Santani's profile picture
Interview Experience
Tarun Santani
Mastercard
SDE
CS 2025
Friday, February 7, 2025
996 reads
2 min read

🎯 Process Overview


📌 Stages:

  • Online Test
  • Interviews: 2 Technical Rounds, 1 HR Round

🛠 Interview Rounds

🔹 Technical Interview — Round 1

This interview was challenging and felt like one of my most difficult experiences.

📝 Questions:

  • Introduction
  • Java Knowledge:
    • When asked if I knew Java, I mentioned that I didn’t.
    • Despite this, the interviewer continued with several Java-focused questions, including:
      • JUnit and testing concepts, as well as automation with Selenium.
      • CI/CD scripting languages.
      • Synchronization techniques in Java, including the use of mutexes and implementing them with Java functions.
  • Database:
    • Given two tables, Book and Author, I was asked about:
      • Their relationship type (many-to-many).
      • Primary and foreign key structure.
      • Optimizing database retrieval speed for both SQL (indexing) and NoSQL (partitioning/sharding).
  • Projects:
    • Discussed *REST API methods, particularly *GET and POST.
    • Covered API security considerations and TLS.
  • DSA:
    • Solved a basic DSA question on identifying the missing element in a sequence (e.g., [1,2,3,5], where 4 is missing).
  • Additional Scenarios:
    • A question scenario involved *assigning 10 random questions to 3 people, aiming for a specific *Java-based solution.

🔹 Technical Interview — Round 2

Focus: Primarily project-based and extracurriculars.

📝 Questions:

  • Projects:
    • Discussed my *projects in detail, covering my *approach, execution, and technologies used.
    • The interviewer was particularly interested in the unique ideas and names of my projects, which stood out as they were in Hindi and Sanskrit.
  • Data Structures and Algorithms:
    • Asked to find the second largest element in a list.
  • Hackathons:
    • Discussed my experience and involvement in hackathons.

🔹 HR Interview

📝 Questions:

  • Family background.
  • Non-technical activities and achievements.
  • Details about my internship experiences.

✅ Verdict:

  • Outcome: 🎉 Selected for the position.
  • Reflection: Although I felt *underprepared, particularly regarding **Java, I was selected, possibly due to my *unique project ideas and broader range of experience.

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