TomTom Interview Experience | Set 1 (On Campus)
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There were 16 candidates from our college shortlisted for the internship drive.Round 1:Coding round: 1 hour time was given to solve the problems which was quite enough.1)....
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There were 16 candidates from our college shortlisted for the internship drive.
Round 1 Coding round: 1 hour time was given to solve the problems which was quite enough. 1).Simple array index based question - Given an array(zero indexed)containing only one -1 and all remaining elements are between 1 to n-1.Find the number of elements required to reach -1(including -1) starting from index 0,considering array elements as an index for next iterations (eg. In A:(2,4,3,-1) ,the function will return 3) 2).Find number of perfect squares from A and B (both inclusive)(Max Range -1000000 to 1000000) Suggestion: I would suggest to do practice from sites like hackerrrank, codechef, codility as it will give confidence to solve problems. They decided to take interviews of all the candidates. :)
Round 2 Technical Interview ( 2 members' Panel ) : ( 1 hr 15 minutes ) 1).Greetings (both were very cool and funny). 2).Tell me about yourself and about your technical background. 3).What is the first coding problem asked in round 1 ? I had used while loop to solve the problem. He further asked to solve the same using recursion. I solved it using static variable that stores the count. He asked why static variable. Basically I did it for avoiding revert recursive back calls from stack (tail recursion). Can you do it without using static variable? I did it. 4).Given an array A and number K. Find number of distinct pairs of elements ( A,B ) in which A-B=K. First applied brute force logic O( n2 ). He further asked to optimize the code. Used logic of sorting and binary search (i.e for every A we need to search B=(A-K) from remaining array) O( nlogn ). 5).Project discussion (last for 15-20 minutes). 6).What is Jason? Write an empty jason for any object. Then he asked to write jason for Employee object. 7).What was your role in Project? 8).My project was in Python. He asked the difference between C++ and Python. Why not C++ to do the same project. Why machine learning why not other technologies? And many questions like that. 9).They checked my hackerrank profile. I had commented on SQL question on hackerrank. They asked questions regarding that. 10).Given an Employee table having employee ID,employee name and Gender. Database has wrong data having all males marked as female and all females marked as males. Write an SQL query to correct the database. --Used CASE in SQL to update the database as per their expectation. :) 11).Discussion regarding work in the company. I was told to wait for some time. Further they conveyed that results will be declared within two days. Finally 3 candidates got selected for the internship and I was one of them :) Suggestion : Be precise. Only tell whatever you know.Know yourself before the interview. Be calm & answer politely. All the best!
About This Question
This is a reported interview question from a tomtom interview for a swe role (intern level) during the oa round reported in 2018.
It covers the following topics: Ml, Binary Search, Sql, Stack Queue, Recursion, Sorting, Arrays, Stack .
Difficulty rating: Easy
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About Tomtom Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Tomtom. 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 Tomtom are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Tomtom 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 Tomtom reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Tomtom 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 Tomtom 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.