Every year Walmart conducts their pan-India campus recruitment drives for various roles at their Bangalore and Chennai offices. This year too I got the information about their drive through my college’s placement cell.
Here, I am to describe my overall experience of my interview process at Walmart. I would also share some tips and resources which worked for me. Hope you’ll also find them useful in your job hunt.
Round 1 — Online Assessment Test
The placement cell of my college shared a list of around 300+ eligible students who were supposed to appear in the online assessment which was to be conducted on Hackerearth. The round consisted of 10 MCQs which covered all core C.S. subjects (like DBMS, OS, Networking, OOPs etc.) and 2 algorithmic problems.
For C.S. Fundamentals I used the below mentioned resources throughout my preparation.
- YouTube ( Gate Smashers — OS, Gate Smashers — DBMS)
- For Computer Networking I would like to thank my college faculty and also AfterAcademy tutorials.
Tip : I would suggest you to practice around 10 problems for each of the above topics on every weekend. This way you can assess your learning and knowledge about each and every crucial topic. You can use the Quizzes section of GeeksForGeeks.
Being a competitive programmer the coding section was very easy for me. I was able to solve the first problem within 3 minutes, there was a simple observation in the problem and I used hash-map to solve it efficiently. The second problem was also an interesting combinatorics+D.S.U. Problem and it hardly took me 10 minutes to find the logic and code my solution.
Now, even if you don’t have a good competitive programming experience below resources can help you enhance you problem solving abilities.
- The SDE-Sheet by Raj Vikramaditya (trust me each problem of this sheet would teach you a new concept and widen your knowledge horizon. The best way to utilize this sheet is writing down the thought process and pseudo-code for each problem you solve and then revision of those things on a daily basis.)
- After completing the SDE-Sheet I would suggest you to master few important problem solving techniques like Dynamic Programming and Graphs. For understanding Dynamic Programming you can refer the G.O.A.T. playlist by Kartik Arora (YouTube playlist), and for Graphs there’s nothing better than Striver’s Graph Playlist.
- For practice you can refer this Dynamic Programming article and Graph article respectively. Leetcode is the best place to practice all the above problems in sheet as well as in the articles.
Round 2 — Technical Round 1
This round took place around 10a.m. in the morning on Zoom, and my interviewer was very friendly and cool. He started by giving his introduction and asked me to do the same. Then he asked my to explain one of my project, which I did very well. Then he asked 2 easy algorithmic problems he also had one follow-up question for one of the problem(these follow up questions are asked to see how good your problem solving skills are when you are working on bigger projects).
He asked my favorite development framework to which I replied Node.JS and since he was a senior full-stack developer we had a good conversation about Node.js which lasted for around 15 minutes, he was amazed to see my immense interest in Node.js and also in databases. We discuss about CAP theorem and he gave me one business scenario and asked my tech-stack preference for solving this particular scenario.
Overall, the experience was good. The round was supposed to be of 30 minutes but in my case it lasted for 45 minutes. I believe having good project and deep understanding of one of the development framework puts a cherry on the top of your preparation.
Tip : Always be confident about the tech-stack you used in your project and be ready to give proper explanation on WHY you used that. Also don’t answer common questions in too much depth, interviewers are very much experienced and can easily judge if you really know the concept or have just crammed up everything. Act smart not over-smart.
Round 3 — Technical Round 2
After around 2 hours I got a call from my college placement cell I have cleared the round 1 and my next round is scheduled at 3 p.m on Zoom. This round also started the same way, the interviewer introduced himself and asked me to do the same. This time the interviewer directly told me that he has 2 problems for me and then he started explaining the first one. Here I would suggest you to listen very-very carefully for each and every word the interviewer says. Ask your doubts, ask him the intended solution on few test cases, ask him what are the expected time complexities for the problem.
The problem he asked me was really a good one which tested my knowledge about hash-map, linked-list and stack, it took us around 25 minutes to discuss the problems, my logic for the solution I proposed and coding it on one of the text editor. He was happy with my solution and also the way I told him each and every possible corner case. The variable naming convention also matters for these kind of rounds so keep a note of this.
The second problem he asked me was kind of a binary search puzzle. Which I was able to solve for loose constraints, but it took me around 3–4 minutes to solve on tighter constraints.
Tip : I would suggest discuss each solution idea with the interviewer because this way you make him realize that you have a wider knowledge horizon and can think of several solutions. He might also give you hints seeing your progress and its the best way to make your interview engaging.
Round 4 — The Hiring Manager Round
This was the last round of our recruitment process and it was scheduled at 10 a.m. on 6 August ’21. I was very much confident with my performance in all the previous 3 rounds, but there was still some nervousness before the D-Day. The last round was also on Zoom so I logged in 10 minutes prior to the scheduled time. At 10 the HR assigned me my interviewer and asked me to join the breakout room with him.
The interviewer was extremely friendly. He started the conversation on a very light note he gave a very much detailed introduction of himself which made me very comfortable. He asked about my intro, my family, my entire journey to pursue C.S.E., my favorite sports, my favorite sport person, which characteristic of him do I admire, then he asked me about few of my failures, what I do in my free time, why I started blogging and all.
According to me, I was the best version of myself for this round. I was very elated after the interview finished. The round lasted for exactly 30 minutes and the results were to be announced at 3p.m.
I remember each and every moment of that day between 10.30 a.m. to 3 p.m., there was extreme excitement and nervousness within my mind. I didn’t eat anything between that time 😅😅 because of my complex mental state. At 3.05 p.m. I got a call from the placement coordinator of my department instructing me to give my consent that I will be joining Walmart. I did so and as soon as the call ended I received a congratulations mail from my college. I was at the epitome of happiness for the next 1 hour. I informed about this to my parents and few close friends. I was overwhelmed and literally thanked god and my mentor for all their blessings and teachings.
So, this was my journey from a tier-3 college to Fortune #1 company.
Hope you found this experience and above resources useful. Don’t hesitate to contact me up in-case you need any sort of guidance.
Hope it helps.
AnkitCode99 here….
