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I interviewed for an SDE-1 position at PayPal in October . I applied through their career portal and received a referral.
The interview process consisted of five rounds:
Online Assessment (HackerEarth): This round included three coding questions, two of which were easy-medium difficulty and one was hard (DP + Graph). I was able to solve 2.5 questions and moved to the next round.
Online Assessment (HackerEarth): This round included two coding questions in Java. One was medium difficulty and the other was hard (based on heaps). I was able to solve both questions.
Technical Round 1 (Virtual): This round focused on DSA, OOPs, and Java. I was asked to delete all names from a map whose age was greater than 20 without using an extra map. I attempted this in both C++ and Java, but I failed to implement it correctly. I learned a new concept after this round.
Technical Round 2 (Virtual): This round focused on DSA, OOPs, and project questions. I was asked to solve the LeetCode problem "Find the Winner of the Circular Game." I was also asked about OOPs concepts, design patterns, and my project at Infosys.
Hiring Manager (Virtual): This round focused on DSA, project, and leadership principles. I was asked about my project and my experience in the field. I was also asked about my knowledge of data structures, including DSU (Disjoint Set-Union). The hiring manager asked me about the practical use of DSU and how it could be used in MST (Minimum Spanning Tree). The discussion then shifted to Dijkstra's algorithm, and I was confused by the questions. My motivation decreased after this question, and I was asked some general questions on leadership principles.
I was ghosted by the PayPal recruiter after the interview. I contacted them for a month via email and phone, but there was no response. After a month, I received a call from another recruiter, but they were hiring for the batch. I shared my experience and requested them to check my results. They confirmed that I was rejected in the hiring manager round.