Optum (United Health Group) visited our campus for a Software Development Engineer (SDE) role offering full-time positions in locations such as Gurgaon and Hyderabad. The recruitment process involved three rounds: an online test and two interview rounds.
CGPA Criteria: 7 and above
Round 1: Online Test
It was an online test conducted on the Mettl.com platform. It included
- 1 coding question on graphs,
- 17 questions of cognitive ability,
- 8 questions of cognitive – analytics,
- 25 questions about technology concepts (CS Fundamentals)
The test lasted 90 minutes, and on the same day, shortlisted candidates were informed of their interviews scheduled for the following morning at 9:30 am. 41 students were shortlisted for the interview process. There were 2 rounds of interviews. The first was the HR round, followed by the technical round.
Round 2: HR Round
The HR round was straightforward and friendly. The interviewer asked typical HR questions to understand more about me and my personality. Some of the questions included:
- What do you know about the company?
- Did you attend the Pre-Placement Talk?
- What challenges did you face while working on team projects, and how did you overcome them?
- What is your location preference?
- How would you explain your work to someone new to technology? Provide an example.
- When did you make the toughest decision of your life?
The HR round lasted for 15-20 mins approximately. All of the students got shortlisted for the technical round which was scheduled in the afternoon.
Round 3: Technical Round
The technical interview began with an introduction and a discussion about my projects. The interviewer then posed basic questions on Database Management System (DBMS), such as:
- What is Normalization, and why do we use it?
- What type of database is MySQL? (Referring to a project using MySQL)
- Type of relationships in database tables?
Then he asked me if I was comfortable writing SQL queries. He asked me to open a notepad and gave me the question. The question is as follows:
Question: There is a table course with columns: student and class. List out all classes which have more than or equal to 5 students.
Table:
+———+————+
| student | class |
+———+————+
| A | Math |
| B | English |
| C | Math |
| D | Biology |
| E | Math |
| F | Computer |
| G | Math |
| H | Math |
| I | Math |
+———+————+
Later he asked me which programming language I was comfortable with and gave me questions to write code.
Question: https://leetcode.com/problems/two-sum/description/
I told both brute force and optimized methods and then he asked me to write the optimized one. Later he said that he was satisfied with the solution. He asked me if I had some questions to ask or not. The interview lasted for approximately 45-50 minutes approximately.
The next day morning, a list of shortlisted students was received. 14 students (11 girls, 3 boys) got an offer from the company, and I was one of them.
I got placed literally on the last day of my college, grateful enough. Just want to say “Whatever you want, wants you too.” Keep working, I know it’s hard, but there’s no other way out. I gave 15-20 interviews before landing this offer and I think every interview I gave earlier was slowly and slowly helping me get closer to what I deserve.
Suddenly everything starts making sense at the right time! (Your time will come, have faith!)