Informatica Interview Experience 2022 (On-Campus)

Informatica visited my campus for the placement drive during the end of May for one year internship. There were five rounds. 

Round 1: Online Assessment: The test window was open for one hour. 

• There were 30 MCQs to be done in 45 minutes, based on Computer Fundamentals. 
• The questions were from DBMS, time complexities, output based, operating system, sorting, data structures, DBMS.
• There were no coding questions in this round.

After one day, I was informed that I have cleared the online assessment.  80 students cleared the online assessment out of 350 students. The interview started one day after that. We were told to brush up our concepts of Coding, Programing skills, DS, DB, OOPs concept, Unix Commands. 

Round 2: Technical Interview 1 (45 minutes): The interview started at 11 am. The interviewer was very polite and introduced himself and asked for my introduction. I mentioned my recent projects and he told me to elaborate the very recent project that I made. It was an image colorization project using GANs (Neural Networks) and gave a brief of the research paper that I wrote. Then he asked the technical questions:

• A coding question based on Binary Search. It was a question that I never came across and was made up by the interviewer himself. But I was able to code it correctly.
• My favorite data structure. I told Trees. He asked regarding the Implementation of Binary Search Trees. Though I was not required to code it.
• How to detect loop in a linked list. Not required to code.
• Types of DBMS used. 
• Difference between SQL and NoSQL database. My experience while using any of them.
• Process vs thread
• Importance of Threads
• RAM vs ROM
• Triggers and Cursors in DBMS
• Two purely mathematical reasoning questions, they were quite easy for me and I solved them within a few minutes.
• https://www.w3wiki.net/puzzle-1-how-to-measure-45-minutes-using-two-identical-wires/ 

He asked if I have any questions to ask. I asked him my interview feedback. He was quite impressed by my performance. After two hours I got the mail for second Technical Interview which started at 2:30 pm.

Round 3: Technical Interview 2 (60 minutes): The interviewer asked for my introduction. From my experience as Samsung R&D Intern, he asked about the project that I worked on there.

•  He asked a few technical questions on that project and then dived into the coding questions.
• First coding question: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.w3wiki.net/backtracking-to-find-all-subsets/amp/ I was expected to code the solution in the programming language of my choice. I chose C++
• Second coding question: https://www.w3wiki.net/check-for-balanced-parentheses-in-an-expression/ I was able to code it easily though the interviewer had some doubts in my approach. We dry ran the code together and it was working well covering all the test cases.
• After the coding questions, I was asked  questions on DBMS. I had to write the query for the question of type:
  https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.w3wiki.net/find-nth-highest-salary-table/amp/
• And the last question was the puzzle that was asked to me in round 1 but with slight modification. Though it took some time, I came up with a proper solution.

 After half an hour I was notified that I cleared the second technical interview and the managerial round will be starting at 4 pm

Round 4:  Managerial Interview (45 minutes): Around 10 students reached this round. My interview was conducted by a manager of one of the teams in the organization. He started with introduction and asked about my previous rounds. 

• Questions on project
• Very basic questions on system design
• Real life applications of Operating Systems and Computer Networks
• Questions on Machine Learning (my specialization)
• Very basic questions on system design

This round (for me) was more focused on discussion on real time applications of various subjects. There are no correct answers for such questions. It completely depends upon the thinking of the person.

Round 5: HR Interview (15 minutes): 5 students made to this round.

• About my experience in previous rounds
• Why Informatica
• What do you know about Informatica
• Strengths and Weaknesses
• Why did you apply for this role
• Short Term and Long Term Goals
• A little bit about my hometown :p
• Rankings on various coding platforms and participation in hackathons
• Relocation

Verdict: 5 students were selected and I was one of them.

Note: 

• Each round is an elimination round.
• A lot of focus is given on the core subjects like DBMS, OS, CN, DSA. 
• You should know what you have written in your resume. Questions are asked on the projects that you have made and the technical competencies written in the resume.
• You should know how to write the correct DBMS query.