I applied online. The process took 5 months. I interviewed at IBM (Research Triangle Park, NC) in Dec 2020
Interview
December:
First Round: HackerRank interview. 2 very easy questions (mergsort and a string based question) and 1 medium question (dynamic programming)
February (long wait):
Second round: Behavioral interview. Interviewee came prepared and process was smooth.
Third Round: whiteboard style virtual coding interview, also on hacker rank. Interviewers were again prepared and the process went well.
5 weeks later (March) they told me hiring was frozen. Incredibly upsetting, but they offered me another team at a different location to interview at, which seemed helpful. The process of going through several interview rounds and then being told "hiring was frozen" repeated itself.. With UNREASONABLY long wait times. With incredibly unprepared interviewees (I was writing code in a Google Docs page for my final interview) This process was incredibly emotionally exhausting, and in total was 5 months long. Working at IBM was something I wanted, but the way I was treated made me think I might have regretted it.
There was a single behavioral interview offered by a different department after applying to 2 different positions and doing Hackerranks for them. Basic questions about projects on your resume and experience and the recruiters were nice.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe a creative way that you solved a problem.
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at IBM (Pune) in Nov 2025
Interview
First Round - Aptitude (one coding question and API development )
Second Round - Interview
Asked project related questions, computer fundamentals, DSA questions,
DSA Questions - target sum, kth max in array (priority queue)
I applied through college or university. The process took 5 days. I interviewed at IBM (Hyderabad) in Nov 2025
Interview
they asked about projects and one simple coding question in different ways. Reducing time and space complexity , then asked about dbms and asked can you write queries or not .