HP Inc Interview Experience | On-Campus (Internship+FTE)
Interview Experience
HP Inc visited our college in November 2020 for an internship plus performance-based PPO for Bangalore. The internship is of 6 months duration.
Round 1 Around 300 students...
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HP Inc visited our college in November 2020 for an internship plus performance-based PPO for Bangalore. The internship is of 6 months duration.
Round 1 Around 300 students gave round 1. It was a 1 hr test. It was held on hirepro platform. It had 2 sections : Aptitude Technical The technical MCQs were medium-hard since the answers were very close to each other. 50 students made it to round 2. Round 2 (60 minutes-technical): 1-1 Face to face interview. Was asked questions from DBMS. Difference between lock and semaphore. Was asked to write a code: A variation of merge sort (don't remember the exact question). Discussed in-depth deadlocks. Discussion about volatile storage, its need, what would happen if it was not present. What is its need if I have 24hrs of power on? Asked about big O complexity.i++ vs ++i.Which is faster and why. Round 3 (45 minutes-Managerial): Asked about OOPs concepts, their applications in the real world. Explained each of them with suitable examples. Gave two puzzles: Puzzle 7 | (3 Bulbs and 3 Switches) . Puzzle | Elevator Puzzle . I was not able to answer the 1st one, but he gave a lot of hints, and then I was finally able to guess. Then there were other questions like how would you manage a team, about projects, role in them, how did you convince one of your team members as she was more inclined towards preparation for UPSC. Also, I had a good discussion of what a product based company is and how it is different from service-based companies. Round 4 (30 minutes)-
HR It was a general hr interview. Tell me about yourself Your interests What do you know about HP Inc? Why do you want to work here? The next day the results were declared. I was not selected but 5 other students got selected for Bangalore. After an hour later, 7 people from the remaining 45 were again called for an interview for the Pune location. I was among one of them. Got no time for preparation. Round 1 (Technical 1hr-1:30): Face to face. It was difficult compared to the previous rounds. I was asked in-depth from DBMS. I was asked to write an SQL code. A table was given. I had written it using the "WHERE" clause. The interviewer asked me to re-write using IN clause. Then I was asked to write a few codes and at the end asked to give the time complexities. Bubble Sort . Find if there is a subarray with 0 sum. Given an array : 3 2 2 1 5 2 3 5 Delete all 2's from it Counting frequencies of array elements Find the repeating and the missing | Added 3 new methods I was asked about the OOPs concept. Asked about polymorphism and its types. Compile-time polymorphism Write a code to show operator overloading. Difference between method overloading and method overriding. Threading, multilevel scheduling, and its drawbacks and how it can be overcome. Round 2 (Managerial 60mins): Asked in-depth about my project. I was also asked to show it using the screen share. After that, the interviewer also saw the codes. Picked up lines and was asked to explain. Since it was a web development project, on the menu page, she asked me to add another menu and show her. Difference between get and post methods. Why I code HTML, CSS, bootstrap, etc, and why not react. What would I study web development when I could easily build sites using WordPress etc. If there is a huge project and I had to fix an error, how do I find out in which file the error exists? If suppose your manager comes and tells you that you have made a mistake and that your code is not working properly, how would you handle it? What would you do if you were placed in a team, where the work is monotonous and there is nothing new to learn and you have been placed there since you made mistakes in other groups before. Round 3 (20 mins)-
HR This was a very friendly round. Tell me about yourself, your hobbies, and interests. I also told him since I had no time to prepare, I did not think the interviews went very well. Since I said I liked helping the underprivileged and helping nature, he said that HP also made laptops using ocean-bound plastics. It was a very short and friendly discussion. After hour results were announced, 3 people were selected, and I was one of them.
About This Question
This is a candidate experience report from a hp interview for a swe role (intern level) during the recruiter round reported in 2025.
It covers the following topics: Arrays, Sorting, Sql .
Difficulty rating: Hard
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About Hp Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Hp. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Hp are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Hp interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Hp reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Hp Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in Hp reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.