InMobi 2024 SDE-1 Funnel: 120 to 5 in 4 Rounds

The 2024 on-campus funnel, stage by stage

The GeeksforGeeks account gives headcount at every reported gate in one InMobi on-campus SDE-1 drive from 2024. The starting pool was 120 students, and the drive ran four evaluation stages: an Online Assessment, a Technical Interview, a combined Technical/Managerial round, and an HR round.

The Online Assessment was the first reported filter. It carried three DSA problems described as easy to medium: a ratio problem, a sliding-window problem, and a DP/binary-search problem. In this cohort, the assessment narrowed 120 candidates to 18. The source does not establish whether partial credit was available or whether this conversion pattern recurs in other InMobi drives.

The first Technical Interview lasted about an hour and opened with a resume deep-dive on internships and projects. After the resume walk-through, two DSA questions followed: a string-rotation variant that used word spacing instead of characters as the rotation unit, and Roman to Integer. The candidate says the interviewer asked about multiple approaches before optimisation. This round took eighteen candidates down to about ten, but the source does not connect any specific answer to that cohort outcome.

The combined Tech/Managerial round, also reported as about an hour, asked candidates to delete the Nth node from the end of a linked list. It then moved into load balancing, shared procedures, concurrency, architecture trade-offs, basic Python, and resume questions. The pool went from about ten to eight. The source records that change but does not say why individual candidates were filtered.

The final HR round lasted about forty-five minutes and covered background, location preferences, and situational questions. Of the eight finalists who reached this stage, five were selected. That ratio belongs only to the reported 2024 campus cohort and should not be used to predict another applicant's odds.

Round-by-round breakdown and DSA map

Within this account, DSA appeared in the assessment and both technical stages rather than in one isolated coding screen. The assessment questions were described as easy-to-medium. The first technical interview paired Roman to Integer with a string-rotation variant, so candidates should practise both pattern recognition and careful interpretation of changed constraints.

Second, the reported system discussion named load balancing, concurrency, shared procedures, and architecture trade-offs, without describing a full high-level design prompt. Prepare to explain why each concept exists, identify common failure modes, and state trade-offs. Do not extrapolate the depth or format of a current interview from this short description.

Third, the candidate reports substantive resume discussion in the Technical round. For each project, prepare the requirement, your personal contribution, a design decision, testing evidence, a failure mode, and one limitation. Do not add scale, users, or impact that the project cannot support.

The 2026 playbook: how to prep for an InMobi on-campus SDE-1 drive

If you are targeting InMobi in the 2026 placement cycle, the 2024 on-campus account gives you a concrete prep scaffold.

DSA preparation

• Practise arrays, strings, sliding window, two pointers, hash maps, DP, and binary search on answer. Those buckets map directly to the reported assessment.
• Add Roman to Integer and rotate-string variants to your review list because they map to the reported technical interview, not because they are guaranteed repeats.
• Practise verbalising a direct approach, its limitations, and an improvement because the 2024 account says the interviewer asked about multiple approaches. The source does not disclose an internal reward or score.

Resume and projects

• For every project line on your resume, prepare a concise explanation, a concrete technical decision, a failure mode you handled, and what you would improve. The reported interview included a substantive resume discussion.
• If you list a language, prepare the features and decisions you actually used. The source says basic Python questions appeared but does not publish their exact topics.

System design fundamentals

• For load balancing, concurrency, shared procedures, and architecture trade-offs, define the requirement and failure being addressed before proposing a mechanism.
• The source does not reveal the depth or exact prompt, so do not manufacture a high-level-design syllabus from the topic names.

Linked-list reasoning from the reported task

For deletion of the Nth node from the end, first clarify whether N is valid, whether the head may be removed, and how an empty list should be handled. A two-pointer approach can maintain a fixed gap and identify the predecessor in one pass, but the answer still needs a dummy head or an explicit head-removal case. Trace a single-node list and the case where N equals the list length. State whether the removed node must be detached or freed in the chosen language. These details add substance without claiming that the same prompt will recur.

Mock interviews

• Use timed mock assessments to calibrate speed without treating the reported question count as a current format.
• Run a mock technical interview in which you explain your resume and solve problems aloud, including the brute-force pass and trade-offs.

Day-of checklist

• Confirm the OA platform and time on InMobi's careers page or through your TPO.
• Keep your resume and permitted interview tools ready. For the HR round, prepare your location preference and a short "why InMobi" answer tied only to current information from the role description or InMobi's own pages.

Common mistakes and red flags

• Jumping to the optimal solution silently. The 2024 account says the interviewer asked about multiple approaches. State the direct approach, its limitation, and the improvement without inventing an internal scoring consequence.
• Inflated resume lines. Keep only claims whose architecture, personal contribution, trade-offs, and limitations you can explain. The reported technical interview included substantive resume discussion.
• Skipping reported system topics. The 2024 Tech/Managerial round included load balancing and concurrency, but the source does not say which answer affected any outcome.
• Inventing a reason for HR outcomes. The cohort went from 8 finalists to 5 selections, but the source does not explain any decision.
• Not reading problem variants carefully. The string-rotation question used word spacing, not character spacing. Pattern-matching to the standard LeetCode rotate-string problem without reading the twist will produce wrong code.

Real-world data points

• Initial pool: 120 students (candidate-reported, 2024 on-campus, as posted on GeeksforGeeks).
• After OA: 18 candidates shortlisted.
• After Technical Interview: approximately 10 candidates.
• After Tech/Managerial: 8 candidates.
• Final selected: 5 candidates.
• OA composition: 3 DSA questions, easy-to-medium.
• Technical Interview duration: about 60 minutes, 2 DSA questions.
• Tech/Managerial duration: about 60 minutes.
• HR round duration: about 45 minutes.
• Cohort outcome: 5 selected from the 120 students reported at the start; this is not a company-wide rate.

Sources & credits

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/interview-experiences/inmobi-interview-experience-2024-on-campus/