Optum visted my campus (an NIT) for hiring interns as well as full time grads in September 2021. I’ll be sharing my interview and test expereince with Optum.
Job Profile: Software development Intern
Eligible Branches: CSE and IT
CGPA requirement: 7+ with no active backlogs
Process Schedule: Online test followed by three interview rounds ( Which didn’t happen, this time the hiring process of Optum was a bit strange and they just conducted one interview round). The online test was supposed to happen on the 7th of September but it happened after a week that is on 14th of September.
Round 1: Online MCQ test
- The duration of the test was 1.5 hours and conducted on the mettl platform.
- This is an online round which consists of 3 to 4 sections based on aptitude, logical reasoning, verbal ability and technical MCQs. All the questions in the test were of MCQ type. In order to score well in this test practice aptitude questions from https://www.indiabix.com/ and https://www.hitbullseye.com/
- Verbal ability and logical reasoning questions are easy to tackle. Technical MCQS is something your main focus should be on. Go through OS concepts, OOPS concepts, and basics of Computer Networks. thoroughly. Questions related to DSA, DBMS, and SQL were also asked in the technical MCQ section. So, it’s good if you are familiar with SQL queries and DBMS concepts. The questions were of basic to moderate difficulty level and could be tackled easily. Also, two basic python code snippets were given and we need to mark the correct output from the given options.
- No coding questions were asked.
- Overall this round was of Basic difficulty level, just keep your speed good with accuracy and you can easily clear this round. You can refer to GFG articles for DSA concepts and CS subjects like OS and OOPS, which would be enough to clear this round.
- About 150 students appeared in the first round and 47 were shortlisted for the interview.
Round 2: Interview Round
- It was conducted on the Microsoft Meetings platform.
- The interviews were scheduled on the same day in noon but only a few candidates received the meet link for interview on the first day. Around 5-6 candidates appeared for interviews on the first day. They said basic questions from probability, C++ STL class, and basic Data Structures like array were asked. My friend appeared on the first day and questions that were asked to him were related to area estimation, probability and chances, and design. No firm DSA questions were asked to him. His project and details about it were asked.
- (Remember Optum always focuses on projects do it is good to have one in your resume). Also do read about the company and its background before you go to the interview. My friend was not able to tell anything about the company and later they did not select him, though he also did not answer the design questions according to the interviewer’s expectations.
- Last year Optum conducted interviews in a proper manner i.e, with one online MCQ test with 2 coding questions and then Interview round 1, followed by round 2 which a Pro-Fit or managerial round, and lastly an HR round. But this year the process was concluded with just one interview round.
- My interview turned out to be a proper managerial round type interview. Firstly as I entered the meet, I greeted my interviewer and introduced my self. I mentioned my projects in my introduction with my tech stack and this attracted his interest as he was a Dev Ops specialist and had around 5 years of experience with optum. I had two projects which I made using Django, one was a basic to do list and reminder alarm and another one was an online flight ticket booking website. I briefed him about my projects and then he asked some questions regarding them. He asked me about the scenario if your website can handle traffic like that of Air India’s webiste or not and how will you tackle this situation. I told him Djnago supports only SQL based databases and hence horizontal sharding is not possible and hence in long run a NoSQL database will be reqired. He was satisfied with the answer and then he moved on and asked about on which layer of OSI model Django works? I said I have computer networks this semester but OSI is not covered yet. He said its okay and then explained the answer. He then asked about the architecture on which Django works, I answered this in detail by giving details of MVC and MVT architectures and he was sarisfied with it.
- He then asked me about “mixins” in Django. I had no idea about it so without beating the bush I clearly said that “Sorry sir I have no Idea about it”. He then himself answered the question.
- Then he asked about the database I used in my project. I answered that is have used SQLite 3 database and its not an client server based database syste but is a end program embedded database management system. He then asked the future scope of my project which I explained to him in good detail.
- He then shifted to DSA part and asked about multidimenisonal arrays and how you identify and declare them. I easily answered this one. Then he asked about linear and non-linear data structures and the differnces between them. I was answering rapidly here with very fast pace which turned out to be my fate. He asked how array and linked lists are different? And i swapped the element access defination for array and linked list stupidly. But it seemed like he didn’t notice and just rapidly moved to the HR part.
- I was asked about my family background, my hobbies. I said I like body building. So asked who is the first person to represent India in body building? I answered “Mr. Dara Singh”. But later after interview when I checked it turned out to be Mantosh Roy. He then asked about my other hobbies.
- Lastly he asked if I had any questions. I asked him about his role in the company, scope of AI and ML in the company, how they dealt with covid 19 and about the work culture. He answered all the questions in detail. (Always ask questions to interveiwer at the end)
- With this my interview concluded and the results came after 5 days and a total of 16 candidates out of 47 were selected and to my surprise my name was not in the list. Surprisingly many other candidates were there who didn’t had thier interview go well. I was very sad because it was like my last hope to grab an internship on campus. But I somehow carried on and got selected in another MNC as an intern.
Tips:
- Start practicing DSA months before companies start visiting your campus.
- Revise oops and os concepts thorughly.
- Practice coding questions from GFG or and leetcode (leetcode will give you good variety).
- Have full knowledge of the code base of your project and tech stack.
- Optum focuses on projects specially.
- Be determined, calm and never loose hope. I almost went blank after I was not selected but your hardwork pays off. For me it paid me the very next month as i was selected as an intern in another renowned MNC.