Student Details (For PrepInsta Internal Purpose)

Name: Krishnan Iyyer

College: NIT Trichy

Branch: Computer Science

Type of interview: On-Campus Interview

Student Interview

During the last semester of my engineering, we were notified that Oracle would be conducting a placement drive at our college. The first round for Oracle placement was conducted through eLitmus; therefore, I registered on eLimus using the referral code. Post registration, I received an email in which the date and time for the test were mentioned. I knew that the difficulty level of eLitmus paper would be high so I instantly started my preparation, and PrepInsta was of great help in the same.

Round 1- eLitmus written test

It was the first round of the Oracle Interview process. In this round, a pen and paper-based written examination was conducted by eLitmus which was of 2 hours. The test paper had three sections:

1. Analytical: It contained 20 questions on cryptarithmetic, data interpretation, data sufficiency, and logical reasoning.
2. Quantitative Aptitude: It has 20 questions related to the number system, geometry, permutation and combination, ratio and proportion, time and distance, and algebra.
3. Verbal Ability: This section also had 20 questions based on reading comprehensions, Para jumbles, grammatical errors, sentence completion, and sentence correction.

Based on my eLitmus score, I was shortlisted for the next round of the oracle interview process.

Round 2- Coding Round

In the coding round, all candidates were asked to write some codes using pen and paper. Apart from coding questions the paper also contained some puzzles which were to be solved in a given time. Some of the questions asked in this round are as follows:

1. Priyanka works for an international toy company that ships by the container. Her task is to determine the lowest cost way to combine her orders for shipping. She has a list of item weights. The shipping company has a requirement that all items loaded in a container must weigh less than or equal to 4 units plus the weight of the minimum weight item. All items meet that requirement will be shipped in one container. What is the smallest number of containers that can be contracted to ship the items based on the given list of weights?
2. A 2n+1 (odd) size square matrix is given. We have to check if the center element is equal to the individual sum of all the half diagonals in only ONE for loop.
3. There are three crates in front of you. One crate contains only apples. One crate contains just oranges. The other crate contains both apples and oranges. And each crate is labeled. One reads “apples,” one reads “oranges,” and one reads “apples and oranges.” But the labeling machine has gone crazy and is now mislabeling all boxes. If you can only take out and look at just one of the pieces of fruit from just one of the crates, how can you label ALL of the crates correctly?

Round 3- Technical Interview

After the coding round, I was called for a Technical interview. I greeted and interviewer and took a seat. He went through my resume and asked me to introduce myself. Then he gave me certain questions for which I had to write algorithms.

1. Write an algorithm to detect and remove the loop in a Linked List.
2. Implement Stack using queues.

Then he asked some database related questions such as:

1. In which files does SQL server actually store data?
2. What is a reference cursor?
3. Write a query to fetch even-numbered records from a table
4. What are the advantages and disadvantages of view?

Apart from technical questions the interviewer also asked some puzzles such as Ant puzzle and get 120 using five zeroes. Overall it took approximately 1.5 hours to complete the interview.

Round 4- HR Interview

The HR round was also a bit difficult. Here the HR did ask me about my hobbies and interests. Instead, he gave some real-life business situations and asked for my opinion. For instance, he asked me if my manager is unhappy with my work then how I will ascertain him that I will improve my performance. Later many similar questions were asked, and I tried to answer each one of them with honesty.

Fortunately, my performance in the interview and coding round was satisfactory, so I was selected for the job. It was like a dream come true for me.