Oracle Application Development Engineer Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: I had a standard resume for this company as per our institute placement cell norms.I usually changed my “Areas of Interest” as per the company profile. For Oracle I mentioned subjects that dealt with coding and also about my other projects which had even little bit of programming.

Round: Test
Experience: The test comprised of different sections. These were related to general aptitude, data interpretation, programming, logical reasoning and character recognition (e.g. you had to find the matching string in a set of given strings). A large number of questions were from topics like data structure and a few were from programming. The paper was difficult – particularly the questions on data structure were very difficult. In data structure questions were mainly asked from trees and stacks. There were different comprehensions that were dedicated to the use of AVL Tree.
Also there were few simple theoretical questions on database management related to primary key, foreign key etc. For the logical questions one can go through the guild website of Oracle, where the complete set of questions asked in the paper can be found. The aptitude test was not difficult but the time allotted was the main factor that affected the performance.

Round: Puzzle Interview
Experience: The first interview was aimed at testing your logical reasoning ability and programming knowledge. The questions here were puzzle based and focused on testing the logical ability of the candidate. An example is if there are 100 beam balls, all of the same weight except one, then what are the minimum number of weighing attempts required to find the odd ball with the help of a beam balance. Then they moved on to asking some very basic technical questions like how to create stacks and queues using any programming language. The logical questions and puzzles asked in this round were quite common ones. One would need to look around on the internet – finding these puzzles etc. is tough but they are available for free.
Tips: Oracle gives a lot of weightage to the projects and the internships. If you had one of these related to some coding stuff then you have an added advantage. Also knowledge of data structures is a must.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: In the second phase of interview a mixed bag of HR questions (Human Resource) and technical questions were asked. The HR questions included questions like ‘Why do you want to join Oracle’ and ‘What are your future plans?’  The interview process was very smooth and they were not looking for essentially only coding. They were looking for people with good logical thinking and could apply their brains if required for learning and writing codes and programs.The next round was also a technical cum HR interview. They wanted check my willingness to join the company and the fact that whether I will stick with the company or not. The technical questions were simple and they just wanted to check the facts that I had mentioned in my resume.
Tips: A candidate vying to get recruited in the company should have substantial knowledge on data structures.

College Name: IIT ROORKEE
Motivation: Oracle is a renowned company. It has been coming for placements in our campus for many years. This time it came with 5 different profiles. The information regarding all these could be best found by attending the Pre Placement Talk.Walk in interview was conducted for students who had studied the course of Data Structures. They had also conducted a written test but no weightage was given to it for those students who had attended the course on data structures.

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: I had a standard resume for this company as per our Institute placement cell norms. I had mentioned all my achievements, academic and extracurricular, in my resume.I had the same resume for every company. I only used to change the subjects mentioned as my area of interest to make sure that they are in line with the job profile being offered by the company.

Round: Test
Experience: The first round of selection process was an online test. The test comprised of technical questions as well as general aptitude/logical based questions.It is important to prepare well for technical as well as general aptitude based tests. I practiced questions from CAT preparation material/books to prepare for aptitude based tests.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: The second round of the selection process was an interview round. Almost every student had at least 2 interviews.
In the first interview, most of the questions asked were typical HR type questions. They mainly wanted to gauge the candidate’s interest in working for their company. A few technical questions were asked as well. One of the questions asked was about Bubble Sorting Algorithm. Some 30 students appeared for this interview (for Application Development Profile) and 20 students were shortlisted for the next interview.
In the second interview, I was asked some simple mathematical problems and some programming based questions. The questions asked were:
There is a two digit number. The sum of its digit is known. The sum of the number itself and the number obtained by reversing the digits is also known. How would you find the number? How would you implement these equations in a program?There is a string with opening and closing brackets. How would you find (using a program) if in the string there is a closing bracket for every opening bracket?In the third interview, again some programming based questions were asked. As the interviewer himself graduated from the Electrical Engineering Department of IIT Roorkee, he also asked a few questions from Electrical Engineering. Some of the questions asked were:How would you find the number of words in a given paragraph?
How many registers are there in a microprocessor (say 8085)? How is the information stored during a program run?Questions related to Control Systems.Questions related to Magnetic Levitation.
Tips: If you are thorough with only C++ then mention only C++ as the language known in your resume. Do not mention things/languages/courses you do not know or have not studied. Also Electrical Engineering students have more chance of getting selected in the application development profile as compared to other profiles offered by Oracle (like Systems, Communications etc.) if they have studied the relevant courses or have the slightest of interest or knowledge about programming.

College Name: IIT ROORKEE
Motivation: My main source of information about the company and the profile was the company’s pre-placement talk and the company website.