GeeksforGeeks Question · Aug 2016 · Bangalore

HP R&D Interview Experience | Set 5 (On-Campus)

Question Details

HP recently visited our campus on for campus recruitments.Profile offered: R&D engineer.Location: Bangalore.

Round 1 Online Round 75min.20 Aptitude Questions,20 Technical ...

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HP recently visited our campus on for campus recruitments. Profile offered: R&D engineer. Location: Bangalore.

Round 1 Online Round 75min. 20 Aptitude Questions, 20 Technical Questions and 8 OOPS Questions(CPP or Java). Level of Aptitude was a bit tough, and technical questions were also From among 1100+ students, they shortlisted 38.

Round 2 Technical Interview (45 mins) # Firstly, he asked me why we need different data structures for different applications. Explain with examples. # then he asked me to explain how do we calculate shortest path in a graph ( dijkstra's algo) and kruskal's algo. # then he asked me do I know OS and asked about virtual memory, paging, logical to physical address mapping, TLB use. # then he asked questions about how transactions works in DBMS, redo log in oracle, ACID properties. Locking mechanisms in transaction. # sliding window protocol in computer networks. # asked about my projects.

Round 3 Managerial and Technical Round(30 min) # why do u want to work for HP # then he gave me some conditions one of which is, if I m assigned a task by my boss to complete it within a week and I have no idea what is the task about! He asked me what will I do! # he asked me about my areas of interest, then he asked me to write a php program to reverse my name and how to define constant in php. # when a source program is compiled, what happens in background.

Round 4 HR round: He asked me about my family background, What are my failures? What are my weaknesses? Any plan for higher studies? The very next day, the results were out and I was selected. Hope this helps. All the best!

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About This Question

This is a reported interview question from a hp interview for a swe role during the recruiter round reported in 2016.

It covers the following topics: Graphs, Sliding Window, Two Pointers, Graph .

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.