Oracle Interview Experience for Associate Software Engineer (On-Campus)

Oracle came for recruitment in early August for the positions of Associate Software Engineer and Associate Application Developer. The cutoff was 7.0 CGPA, and all branches can apply, around 600 people from our college were eligible for the online test.

There were total 5 rounds which include 2 online tests and 3 interview rounds conducted in Zoom.

Round 1(MCQ Test): 

This was an MCQ round conducted on Oracle’s Assessment Platform with 92 questions and for 107 minutes. There were a total of 4 sections, each had multiple sub-sections which had questions from various topics.

• Aptitude Test ( Common aptitude questions)
• Coding Skills (Trees, Flowcharts, Predict O/P)
• Computer Science Knowledge (OOPS, DBMS, OS, Networks)
• Contextual Communication ( Grammar, Parts of Speech, etc.)

The flowcharts in the Coding section were quite interesting to solve. Each sub-section had a time limit with a certain number of questions. There was no negative marking but one must be fast and accurate in solving these questions.

Over 116 students were selected for the Coding round.

Round 2(Coding Test): This was a coding round with 2 questions and a time limit of 60 minutes.

1. One question was on graphs, initially the cities and the distances between each of the are given, then there are ‘q’ queries ,each with city 1 and city2, find the shortest distance between the cities.
2. Other question was on recursion, check if the given string can be formed from a m*n grid with characters at each (i,j).

Around 40 students cleared this round.

Round 3(Tech Interview) :

• The interview started with a basic introduction. Then I was asked to explain one of my projects and I was asked some questions on it like scalability if it is useful in the real-world etc.
• In OOPS, I was asked about Constructors, types of constructors, explain with an example.
• Then about the dangling pointer and he asked me to write a snippet to represent a dangling pointer.
• Then what is a diamond problem in inheritance, and a snippet to show that?
• The DSA question was to write a function to Insert a node in a Doubly Linked List (all 3 types): https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/doubly-linked-list/
• Also, he asked me to dry run my code, with a given example.
• I was asked to write a DBMS query(using basic SELECT and aggregate functions).
• Finally, he asked me for a puzzle.

The interviewer was very cool and it lasted for around an hour, after which we were told to wait in the breakout room until we get assigned to the next interviewer.

Round 4(Tech Interview): Once again I was asked for a basic introduction after which he directly jumped into technical stuff.

• He asked me about OOPS, why to use it, what is a procedural language, and the 4 pillars of OOPS, real-life examples for each of them, differences between them.
• Then he asked me about the critical section problems, semaphores, why to use them, types of semaphores, etc.
• Later I was asked a DSA question: Given a family tree where each person can have multiple children, you have to find all the grandchildren’s children.
• We can consider this as an n-ary tree and find all nodes at level 3(levels starting from 0)
• I was also asked to implement the code for my logic.
• And another question was this: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/detect-loop-in-a-linked-list/
• He asked me to explain my logic with an example.
• Lastly, I was asked two puzzles.

This round also lasted almost an hour and the interviewer was very friendly, and he helped me whenever I was stuck somewhere. Then after this round, we were told to wait in the breakout room.

Round 5(HR Round): Some common questions like tell me about yourself, your family background, etc.

• Why did you join this college?
• Strengths, weaknesses
• Some discussion about the projects.
• And some common discussion.

The interviewer was damn friendly, he also cracked some jokes, it was just like a casual discussion.

Final Verdict – SELECTED

My advice : 

• Try to give your best in the 1st round and 2nd round and practice well in advance for that.
• Focus on your basics and be strong in that.
• Try to solve as many as coding problems from sites like Geeksforgeeks etc.
• Whenever you explain something, explain it with an example, which makes the task easy and shows you have knowledge in that.
• Have a smile and don’t get tensed.