Coding questions
SBI Online Assessment
Overview
Here is how public prep guides and student write-ups describe the SBI online assessment. This is not an official company brochure.
Public-sector bank recruitment - official ad is the only reliable pattern source.
Usual selection rounds
Rounds students usually mention: Online exam / CBT as per notification → Interview / GD as notified → Document / medical as applicable
| Item | From student reports |
|---|---|
| Platform | IBPS or bank CBT |
| Online test summary | SBI fresher/officer hiring is based on the official recruitment notice (often IBPS or bank CBT with quant/reasoning/English/GA/professional knowledge). Download the current PDF. |
| Eligibility notes | As per specific recruitment notification (IBPS/bank ad) |
| Branches (reported) | As per post |
Online test sections
Section-level detail not verified in our source set yet - use the placement email / official PDF.
Extra notes from sources
- Never trust undated blog sectional tables over the ad.
Sample practice question styles
These are practice questions for speed - not claimed to be from a real SBI live paper.
Coding Q1: Two Sum
Problem: Given an array of integers and a target, return indices of two numbers that add up to the target. Assume exactly one solution and you may not use the same element twice.
Approach: Walk the array once. For each value x, check whether target − x was seen earlier in a hash map of value → index. If yes, return both indices; else store x.
Complexity: O(n) time, O(n) space
SBI tip: Restate the problem, sketch a brute-force idea, then tighten it. Call out edge cases (empty input, single element, overflow) before you write code.
Coding Q2: Longest substring without repeating characters
Problem: Given a string s, find the length of the longest substring without repeating characters. Example: ‘abcabcbb’ → 3 (‘abc’).
Approach: Sliding window with a map (or last-seen index) of characters. Expand the right pointer; when a duplicate appears inside the window, move the left pointer past the previous occurrence.
Complexity: O(n) time
SBI tip: Restate the problem, sketch a brute-force idea, then tighten it. Call out edge cases (empty input, single element, overflow) before you write code.
Coding Q3: Merge overlapping intervals
Problem: Given a list of intervals [start, end], merge all overlapping intervals and return the non-overlapping set that covers the same ranges.
Approach: Sort by start time. Walk once, merging into the last interval in the result when the next start is ≤ current end; otherwise append a new interval.
Complexity: O(n log n) time from the sort
SBI tip: Restate the problem, sketch a brute-force idea, then tighten it. Call out edge cases (empty input, single element, overflow) before you write code.
Coding Q4: Top K frequent elements
Problem: Given an integer array and an integer k, return the k most frequent elements. Order among equals can be arbitrary unless the problem says otherwise.
Approach: Count frequencies with a hash map, then use a heap of size k (or bucket sort by frequency) to extract the top k keys.
Complexity: O(n log k) with a heap
SBI tip: Restate the problem, sketch a brute-force idea, then tighten it. Call out edge cases (empty input, single element, overflow) before you write code.
Prep tips from those student reports
- Official notification PDF first
- IBPS-style aptitude if that’s the exam
- Banking awareness
Sources
These notes come from public reports and can differ by campus, year, and role. If your college placement email or the official careers/notification PDF says something different, follow that.
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