IIT Placements & Internships: How does one prepare for an IT company interview such as Oracle?

1 Answer

Vivek Verma, IIT Delhi, Maths and Computing, 2013

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It’s possible for you to get into Oracle with decent preparation. You need to do Computer programming basics which include one programming language (C++ preferred over java), OOP concepts and translating ideas to code. Then you need to know Data structures, the very basic ones like linked lists etc and manipulating them along with trees. Binary trees are important.  A lot of interview questions and written exams would be around trees. They are the easiest to ask and almost all companies would ask a lot about trees. You can do standard questions and you’ll be fine. After this a course of Algorithms is required. 

The placement process of Oracle here at IIT Delhi consisted of a test first and then interviews. The test had an English section (very basic),  a data observation section (in this you had to look at a table with data and find faulty stuff etc.), a section on aptitude (you would be able to do this), a section on DBMS and a programming section (questions on trees, questions where code is given and you give the answer, or fill the blank with code where options are given).

For the interviews I was asked to write the code for merge sort on paper. Sorting techniques are important. I was also asked why I didn’t know C/C++ (I’ve only done Java) . It was fine other than that. They also asked me a puzzle:  a flower in a pond grows to 2 times its size in a day. If it covers the pond completely in 10 days then how long does it take to cover 25% of the pond? It’s easy. That was most of it and they were in the mood for selecting me (I have a decent GPA which also contributes I guess).