Oracle - Associate Software Developer (RGIU)

My experience interviewing at Oracle.

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Table Of Contents

1. Preparation Before OA

   • General Prep Tips

   • Company Specific Prep Tips

2. Interview Experience

   • Online Assessment

   • Round 1: Technical Interview

   • Round 2: Technical Interview

   • Round 3: HR Interview

3. Resources I Used

4. Coding Profiles

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Preparation before OA

The college will notify everyone when the placement drive is about to begin, so it’s up to you to plan your preparation around that timeline. A few months of focused, consistent effort can make all the difference.

General Prep Tips

Resume

1. When adding projects to your resume, focus on two types:

   • Projects that helped you learn a new, relevant technology.

     • For example, a chat application that taught you how to work with WebSockets.

   • Projects that show potential for real-world impact.

     • For example, A placement management system that could be used by the college.

   The best resumes usually strike a balance between the two.

2. Be 100% thorough with the projects on your resume.

   • Project features

   • Tech stack used

   • Diagrams (ER, architecture/data flow)

   • Stakeholders involved (who the project benefits and how).

3. Go in-depth into the technologies mentioned in the resume.

   • Why does it exist? What problem does it solve?

   • What are its alternatives? Why did you choose this option over the alternatives?

   • Advantages, disadvantages, usecases.

   • How it works.

DSA

1. Use topic-wise lists to strengthen understanding and build pattern recognition.

   • Strivers A2Z DSA Sheet

   • NeetCode 150

2. Try random questions.

   • I used the “Smart List” feature in LeetCode to generate a randomized list of questions from key topics. This forced me to recognize patterns and apply what I’d learned, instead of just memorizing solutions.

     Remember, nobody will tell you to apply binary search in the interview. You have to identify that yourself. This helps build that intuition.

   • Do POTDs on LeetCode.

3. Revise questions regularly.

   • I made it a habit to go over questions from Strivers A2Z DSA Sheet every day, until I could solve most of them under time pressure and get them right on the first attempt.

Core Concepts

1. Explain concepts out loud to simulate explaining it to the interviewer.

2. Have preset answers ready for commonly asked questions and practice them. This way, you’ll sound more confident and avoid stuttering, beating around the bush, or having awkward pauses.

3. Make quick notes, this is helpful for revision just before an interview.

4. Take mock interviews with friends.

Company Specific Prep Tips

Prep for a company shouldn’t begin just a day before the OA or interview. It’s a long-term process.

Go through previous years’ placement data to identify which companies typically visit, what roles they offer, the CTC, PBC status, how many candidates they select, and when they usually arrive.

Here’s what I did for each company I was interested in:

General Tips

1. Do your due diligence on the company’s main products and services.

2. Tailor your introduction and interests to align with what the company does.

   • In other words, while stating your fields of interest, connect them to the company’s work. This shows the interviewer that you’re genuinely interested in the role and are a good fit for the company.

   • Here’s what I said during the interview,

     “My main field of interest is backend development. Since I’m interviewing for the retail division at Oracle, I’m really curious about how the company handles huge volumes of orders, transactions, and stock management for huge retail companies while still keeping everything running smoothly.”

DSA

1. I went through interview experience blogs that I found on GFG and GlassDoor. This helped me to:

   • Understand the difficulty and format of the OA.

   • Practise probable OA/interview questions.

   • Determine whether the company focuses more on DSA or projects during the selection process.

2. I prepared a list of company specific questions on LeetCode.

   • You can find them in the “lists” section of my leetcode profile. I found these questions from:

     • Interview experience blogs.

     • Snehashish Roy's Repository of Company Specific Questions.

3. I spoke to seniors who got offers from that company.

   • Don’t hesitate to connect with seniors for help. The easiest way to get our phone numbers is through the branch placement coordinator.

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Interview Experience

Online Assessment

The OA was scheduled online. It had:

1. Two DSA questions on the following topics:

   1. Strings

   2. Dynamic Programming

2. Around 30 MCQs on topics like:

   1. Core concepts (DBMS, OS, CN)

   2. Logical reasoning

   3. English literature (reading comprehension)

Key Points

1. Give importance to solving both MCQs and DSA

   Most people were able to solve both DSA questions, so I believe speed of submissions + number of MCQs solved played an important role in the shortlisting decisions.

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Round 1: Technical Interview

I was shortlisted for the retail division of Oracle, RGIU. We were informed about the number of rounds before hand.

The first round began with an introduction from my side. Then the interviewer started asking me questions.

What I Was Asked

1. All of my projects are built in the Go programming language. The interviewer asked me about Go, its use cases, and why I chose it.

1. I was given a table with 2 columns, ID and Value. The ID column stores data of type NUMERIC, but the Value column should accomodate data of types BOOLEAN, VARCHAR, NUMERIC and DOUBLE.
The questions I was asked were:

   1. What should be the data type of the Value column?

      I answered that all the data could be stored as VARCHAR. But my very next observation was,

      how would I differentiate between a VARCHAR “True”, and a BOOLEAN “True”?

      This led to the next question.

   2. What exactly would I store in that column?

      My answer was to allocate a unique identifier for each of the 4 data types that must be accomodated in the Value column. For example:

      1 => BOOLEAN, 2 => VARCHAR, 3 => NUMERIC and 4 => DOUBLE.

      Then data stored in the column = unique identifier + original data.

2. I was asked SQL queries that focused on JOINs, aggregate functions like SUM combined with GROUP BY, nested SELECT statements etc.

3. I mentioned CTE (Common Table Expressions) in one of my solutions to the previous questions as an alternative to using nested SELECT statements. He asked me to explain what CTEs were and what are they’re advantages/disadvantages.

4. I was asked to write the pseudocode for any sorting algorithm I knew.

   I chose merge sort. I told the interviewer I would explain the algorithm and then explain why I chose it specifically.

   This is how I explained the algorithm:

   1. I started by explaining the core idea behind merge sort, which is Divide & Conquer.

   2. I then explained the steps of the algorithm in brief after which I started writing the pseudocode.

   3. Once I was done writing the pseudocode, I proceeded to explain every single line.

   4. I ended the explanation by mentioning the space and time complexity of the algorithm.

      • Which function contributed to which part of the TC.

      • Why divide function takes O(logN) time, why merge function takes O(N) time.

      • Why merge function takes O(N) space.

   Once I was done explaining the algorithm, I told him I chose merge sort because a (sorting + two pointer) algorithm similar to the merge function is used to implement JOINs in RDBMS (look up merge joins).

5. He asked me to give some real world applications of linked lists.

   • I stated that circular linked lists are used to implement the CLOCK/Second Chance page replacement algorithm in operating systems.

   • I also said that doubly linked lists are used to implement LRU caches.

What I Asked the Interviewer

• What’s your role in the company?

• What’s the most interesting problem you’ve solved while working at Oracle?

• Feedback on the resume, interview.

What Others Were Asked

• Design a Library Management System.

• Delete duplicate rows in a table.

• Difference between DELETE and TRUNCATE in SQL.

• Longest path from a source node to any other node in the graph.

• maximum sum of subarray of size K.

Key Points

1. When the interviewer asks “Do you have any questions for me?”, Always have some questions ready. This shows you have an interest in the company, role etc.

2. Know your projects in-depth, dont lie about what you know and don’t know. Interviewers can figure it out very quickly.

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Round 2: Technical Interview

This round also began with an introduction from my side.

What I Was Asked

1. He began by asking me about my favourite subject in college.

   • I mentioned Operating Systems.

   • I then explained how I had applied the concepts I learned in that course to my projects, and why it’s important to have a good understanding of OS concepts.

2. He asked me why I preferred building projects from scratch instead of using external libraries.

   • I explained that for personal projects, I like building things on my own because it helps me gain a deeper understanding of how those libraries work.

   • In contrast, for production code, I would always choose external libraries since they are reliable, time-saving, and well-tested.

   • However, the knowledge I gain from building things from scratch proves valuable when it comes to troubleshooting or fixing issues if those libraries ever fail.

3. He asked me about my opinion on using AI tools for development.

   • I responded by stating that AI could be used to write simple unit tests and write small scripts, but it tends to hallucinate when used in big codebases, where the amount of context is huge. It also poses security risks. I supported this statement using this case study.

4. I was asked if I had any plans for higher studies.

   • I said no.

What I Asked the Interviewer

• What’s your role in the company?

• What’s the most interesting problem you’ve solved while working at Oracle?

• What’s the process for suggesting a better alternative to an existing solution already in production? Is this encouraged at Oracle?

• Feedback on the interview, resume.

What Others Were Asked

1. One of the first questions CP enthusiasts were asked was,

   “Competitive Programming doesn’t seem to have any real-world use in development. Why did you pursue it for three years?”

   Candidates who agreed with this statement were eventually rejected. They’re expecting you to respond with applications of data structures and algorithms used in CP. Please prepare accordingly.

2. Candidates that had AIML related concepts in their resume were grilled on the same.

3. Design a mobile SIM subscription system.

4. Puzzles.

Key Points

1. Always be ready to answer “What’s your favourite subject in college?”. Whichever subject you choose, ensure it’s backed by your projects, otherwise the interviewer may challenge your response.

2. When asked opinion based questions, always have case studies/justification to back up your statements.

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Round 3: HR Interview

This round didn’t seem eliminatory. I had a dicussion with the HR about:

1. The specifics of the offer (the base pay, stocks and vesting period).

2. Whether I was willing to relocate to Hyderabad, with relocation assistance provided by the company (Always say yes btw).

3. Number of days WFH vs WFO.

4. Whether the cafeteria food was free :-)

5. Cab services provided by the company.

6. When the internship would begin.

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Resources I Used

SQL

• Simple questions to learn concepts: SQL Practice

• Interview questions: Data Lemur, Stratascratch, LeetCode

High-Level System Design

• I can’t recommend Hello Interview enough, the absolute best website for HLD. They also have a youtube channel.

DSA

• Striver's A2Z DSA Sheet

• NeetCode 150

Operating Systems

• The “Operating Systems Concepts” textbook.

• Luv Babbar’s Notes

DBMS

• Luv Babbar’s Notes

OOPs

• Aryan Mittal’s articles (Don’t watch his videos, he yaps too much).

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Coding Profiles

If you’d like to check out some of my work, here are my profiles:

• GitHub

• LeetCode

• CodeForces

For any further questions, you can contact me on LinkedIn or get my phone number from the ISE placement coordinators.