Wissen Interview Experience
Question Details
Round 1 Online AssessmentIn this round, there were over 1900 eligible students. It consisted of:8 multiple-choice questions (MCQs) covering OS, DBMS, Shell Scripting, an...
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Round 1 Online Assessment In this round, there were over 1900 eligible students. It consisted of: 8 multiple-choice questions (MCQs) covering OS, DBMS, Shell Scripting, and Reasoning. 1 medium-level SQL query involving JOIN operations. 3 challenging coding questions. Unfortunately, no one was able to solve all three coding questions, but I managed to solve 2 of them.
Round 2 Technical Interview 1 (virtual) Out of the 1900 applicants, only 100 were selected for this stage. Interestingly, I wasn't on the initial list of qualified students, but I received a late-night call from the company's HR about my interview the next day. The interview covered the following topics: Introduction. Discussion of my projects. Object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts such as inheritance, association, aggregation, composition, and polymorphism, with examples. Operating system concepts, including processes, threads, caching, and page faults. Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) questions, such as Valid Parentheses, LinkedList loop detection, Tree height, and a Binary Search-related question. SQL topics like Joins, UNION, and UNION ALL queries. DBMS, where I was asked to determine the normal form of a given table. Most interviews lasted between 1 to 1.5 hours, but mine was relatively short, lasting only 20 minutes.
Round 3 Technical Interview 2 (virtual) Out of the 100 candidates who made it to this round, two interviewers focused on DSA questions: Buy and Sell Stock problem. A medium-level string-related question. I shared my screen and began writing code in C++, but the interviewers requested that I write the code in Java. After a brief struggle, I managed to write the code in Java. To my surprise, they asked me to write the code in Notepad and compile and run it using commands. This took me 56 minutes to complete, but the interviewers were impressed with my ability to code in Notepad.
Round 4 Coding SQL Assessment on Paper (On Campus - offline) Out of the 100 candidates, 52 were selected for this round, which took place on campus and offline. The assessment lasted for 2 hours and included: One easy coding question. One math-related coding question. A development and DSA-related question that required applying DSA knowledge in real-time. This question gave me an advantage in the
next round. An eCommerce problem statement where we had to design a database schema and write specific queries.
Round 5 Director Round (offline) Only 19 students made it to this round, which included the Executive Director on the panel. The complexity of the interviews varied from easy to hard. When I introduced myself, they expressed excitement about meeting me and asked about my approach to the 3rd question in Round 4. After my explanation, they were pleased. The conversation then shifted to more casual topics, such as my travel experiences. The Director even asked me to bring some sweets from my city. Finally, they inquired about my attendance and other non-technical matters. Note:- This was in my case only . Rest of have to face Coding question, Resume, SQL, Project, OS in depth, and some HR question.
Result Only 8 students were selected, and I was fortunate to be one of them. Advice: My experience suggests that candidates should prepare thoroughly for SQL, OS, and DBMS, including in-depth knowledge. Additionally, having strong project experience is crucial. Even if you excel in coding but lack strong project and core knowledge, it can be challenging to secure the role.
About This Question
This is a reported interview question from a wissen interview for a swe role (director level) during the oa round reported in 2023.
It covers the following topics: Linked List, Strings, Trees, Oop, Binary Search, Sql, Networking, Os, System Design .
Difficulty rating: Easy
More Wissen Interview Questions
About Wissen Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Wissen. 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 Wissen are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Wissen 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 Wissen reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Wissen 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 Wissen 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.