Zoho Interview Experience 2024 |Software Developer | On-Campus

Zoho is a very popular product-based company in Tamil Nadu. It hires freshers for the Software Developer roles and the total hiring is off-campus i.e., you need to come to Chennai at their Zoho office physically to attend the drive.

Eligibility

Zoho only comes for campus placement in Chennai located companies.

1st Round

The first round was particularly challenging. It was an offline, on-campus test, and almost everyone from my university was eligible to participate. Each candidate received a sheet with 25 questions—15 aptitude questions and 10 C and C++ pseudo code problems. We had to calculate the answers and write them in our answer booklets. The aptitude questions were relatively easy, but the pseudo code problems were logical and tough.

Aptitude Topics that they asked :

• Time and work.
• Partnership problems.
• Problems on age.
• Problems on train/Boats.
• Pipe and canisters.
• Mixture and allegation.
• Ratio and proportion.

Pseudo codes were mostly from pointers, addressing and string slicing concepts.

2nd Round

The results of the first round were announced on the same day. Out of all the candidates, only 160 cleared the round. The second round was a coding round. Each eligible candidate received a sheet with five questions. The first two were easy to medium problems based on strings, arrays, or stacks, while the remaining three were algorithm-based, including greedy algorithms and dynamic programming. Although there were no restrictions on programming languages, I found Java to be more preferable.

For me questions were.

1. Reverse a string having some conditions. (Stack based approach).
2. Good pairs problem. (Easy Array problem)
3. A greedy algorithm problem for a chef to create orders (Input was two arrays, and we had to calculate the maximum number of orders he could place).
4. Dynamic programing question where I have to do some modification on square matrix based on rules, of colors.
5. Largest square formed in a matrix. (I was lucky to get this one, as I had solved it 2 days before in GFG POTD. It was the GFG problem of the day on July 10th).

Candidates were required to write code in an offline IDE like VS Code. After completing the code, we had to explain our output and approach to Zoho's HR team.

You can get practice problems in GFG practice, apart from it focus on dynamic programming and recursion.

3rd Round

The next day, we received emails regarding eligible candidates. Only 30 were selected from my university (15 from my college and 15 from another). All eligible students had to report to Zoho's Chennai office for the advanced coding and interview round, starting at 9 AM.

This round was an advanced coding round, where we were given a scenario-based problem to get input and output. The time limit was tight—only 3 hours. We had to complete our tasks with neat and clean code and explain it to the reviewer.

Preparation for this round can be done via YouTube and GitHub.

My task was :

Design a system with following functionalities,

1. SET a variable

2. GET a variable

3. UNSET a variable

4. COUNT NUMBERS OF VARIABLE with given value

5. BEGIN — Begins a new transaction

6. ROLLBACK — Roll back all the commands in the open transaction

7. COMMIT — Commit the transaction

EXAMPLE 1:

SET a 20

GET a 20

SET b 30

GET b 30

SET a 10

GET a 10

UPDATE c 40 No variable named “c”

SET c 30

COUNT 30 2

COUNT 40 null

UNSET a

GET a null

EXAMPLE 2:

GET a null

SET a 30

GET a 30

EXAMPLE 3:

SET a 30

BEGIN

GET a 30

SET a 40

GET a 40

SET b 40

GET b 40

ROLLBACK

GET b null

GET a 30

EXAMPLE 4:

BEGIN

SET a 40

SET b 40

SET c 50

COUNT 40 2

BEGIN

COUNT 40 null

COMMIT

COUNT 40 2

BEGIN

SET c 10

GET c 10

ROLLBACK

GET c 50

After 1 PM, they announced the names of the rejected candidates. Only 16-17 candidates were selected from that round (8 from my campus and 8 from another). We were asked to submit our resumes and were called for the next round, the Technical Round.

4th Round

This technical round was my first offline technical interview, and I was a bit nervous. However, the interview went smoothly. There were two interviewers—one with 8 years of experience and the other with 2 years. They introduced themselves and asked me to introduce myself. After my introduction, they inquired about my family background, followed by questions from my resume, such as explaining my projects and certifications.

Next, they asked questions about SQL, as I had used it in my project. The questions were scenario-based and tricky, focusing on my ability to think quickly. They asked about triggers and joins, followed by questions about the code I wrote in the previous round. I had used the MVC structure, so they asked about it as well. They then moved on to Java questions, specifically about Spring Boot and Spring, all of which were scenario-based.

The second interviewer asked about AWS and cloud-based questions, particularly IAM (Identity Access Management). Since I had mentioned OAuth in my resume, they asked me to explain how it works.

After the technical questions, they moved on to behavioral questions, asking about Zoho, the role I was interested in, and my thoughts on relocation. Being from North India, they inquired about how I would convince my family to allow me to work in Chennai.

After an hour-long interview, they took my GitHub username and asked me to wait for the final result.

Conclusion

Around 8 PM, the final results were announced. Only 7 students were selected (2 from my campus and 5 from another campus). They offered internships to students from my campus and internship-cum-placement to students from the other campus.