My APNA Interview Experience

I recently interviewed at Apna, and I’d love to share my experience to help others preparing for similar roles. The process consisted of five rounds, covering DSA, system design, frontend knowledge, hiring manager discussion, and a CTO round.

Round 1: Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA)

The first round focused on problem-solving skills. The problem given was:

Index with Given Sum — Given a sorted array (which may contain both negative and positive elements), find two indices where the sum equals a given number, ensuring the indices are minimal. For example:

• Input: [0, 1, -2, -2, 4], Target: 2
• Output: 2, 4 (Index 2 has -2 and index 4 has 4)
• Input: [0, 1, -2, 4, 4], Target: 2
• Output: 2, 3

I solved this problem using the two-pointer approach, ensuring that when moving the right pointer, it skips duplicate values. The interviewer was impressed, and I received a strong hire recommendation.

Round 2: System Design (LLD & HLD)

This round started with a short introduction, followed by a system design question:

Design a database schema for a supermarket e-commerce platform.

I discussed:

• Tables and relationships (Products, Users, Orders, Payments, etc.)
• Database choice (SQL vs. NoSQL, considering scalability)
• Indexing strategies for faster queries
• Handling large traffic and ensuring consistency

This round also ended with a strong hire recommendation

Round 3: Frontend Round

I primarily work on the backend, but this round tested my JavaScript and React knowledge. Since my React experience was limited to college projects, I answered based on fundamental JS concepts and React principles.

The recruiter later informed me that I received a 2/5 rating in this round.

Round 4: Hiring Manager Discussion

This was a general discussion about my past projects, problem-solving approach, and handling production issues. The conversation went smoothly.

Round 5: CTO Round

The final round was with the CTO, it was a formality round only

Final Outcome

I received the offer in 15 days, but I feel they lowballed me due to my frontend round performance.

How I Prepared

1. DSA: Solved the Striver 79 questions sheet, which helped with coding rounds.
2. System Design: Read multiple Medium blogs and leveraged my e-commerce experience to tackle real-world problems.