Fresher interview prep
Software Engineer interview questions for freshers.
Fresher software engineer interviews usually mix programming basics, a coding problem, your college projects and a few HR questions.
1. Explain the difference between a process and a thread.
How to answer: A process has its own memory space; threads share the memory of their process. Mention that threads are cheaper to create but need synchronisation.
2. What is the time complexity of searching in a sorted array, and why?
How to answer: Binary search runs in O(log n) because each step halves the remaining range. Contrast it with O(n) linear search.
3. What are the four pillars of object-oriented programming?
How to answer: Encapsulation, abstraction, inheritance and polymorphism. Give one short example of each from a language you know.
4. How would you reverse a linked list?
How to answer: Walk the list with three pointers (previous, current, next), flipping each link. State O(n) time and O(1) extra space.
5. What happens when you type a URL into a browser?
How to answer: DNS lookup, TCP/TLS connection, HTTP request, server response, then the browser parses and renders HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
6. Walk me through your final-year project.
How to answer: Cover the problem, your exact contribution, the tech stack, one difficulty you solved and the result. Be ready for follow-up questions.
7. What is the difference between SQL JOIN types?
How to answer: INNER returns matching rows only; LEFT keeps all rows from the left table; RIGHT the reverse; FULL keeps both sides.
8. Why do you want to work as a software engineer here?
How to answer: Link something specific about the company's product or tech to what you have built or want to learn.
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