Oracle Interview Experience | Application Developer | On-Campus 2024

Online Assessment:

The online assessment consisted of 36 questions, covering a wide range of topics including aptitude, Oracle Database, DBMS, Computer Networks, OOPs, and Operating Systems. There was also one coding question. For the CS fundamentals, I found GeeksforGeeks (GFG) to be a valuable resource as it offers a variety of materials on these subjects. The coding problems were at an easy-to-medium level, and GFG was again helpful for practice.

The CS questions were a bit tricky and fact-based, but the aptitude and coding parts were relatively straightforward. Oracle shortlisted quite a few candidates after the online assessment—around 79 students were selected to move on to the next round.

Technical Interview Round 1:

This was an offline interview, so I greeted the interviewer with a handshake. After scanning my resume, he asked me to give a brief introduction. Surprisingly, the interview took a turn towards my electronics background, and I was asked questions like "What is a half adder?" "What is a full adder?" and "What is a multiplexer?" With some hints from him, I managed to answer these questions.

Next, he gave me a simple coding problem: to reverse a linked list. I had to write the code on a piece of paper, and he seemed satisfied with my solution. Following that, he asked me to find the number of unique binary search trees (BSTs) that can be formed with N nodes. I had already solved this problem before, so I quickly explained my approach and wrote down the code.

Then, the interviewer noticed my experience with Codeforces and decided to challenge me with a more difficult problem: "How many maximum pieces can you cut a pie with N cuts?" Unfortunately, I couldn't solve it during the interview. Despite this, I was shortlisted for the second technical round.

Technical Interview Round 2:

The second interview began with a direct coding challenge: "Find the longest palindromic substring." I first presented a brute-force solution with a time complexity of O(N^3). After clarifying the solution, I moved on to the optimized dynamic programming approach. However, the interviewer seemed frustrated that I started with the brute-force method when I already knew the optimal solution. This gave a negative impression.

He then gave me another challenging problem related to implementing a tree hierarchy data structure, which was difficult for anyone in our college to solve. I wrapped up the interview by asking him some questions.

Verdict: Rejected after Round 2

I hope this blog gives you a clear insight into the Oracle interview process. It's a journey of surprises, challenges, and learning experiences. Good luck to those preparing for their interviews!