Anatomy of an Interview @ Oracle India Pvt. Ltd.

These are just my personal view during the interview I gave at Oracle India Pvt. Ltd. Thiruvananthapuram Office Kerala.

I am currently working in a Start-up @Bangalore.

Result : Has been rejected ( And I have moved on in my Life.)

Purpose of Writing : How the whole thing went wrong ( Probably from Both the Sides ).

whole process breakdown :

1) Referral asked from current Employees
2) Resume short Listed for Face-to-Face Interview
3) Face-to-face Round 1 interview
4) Face-to-face Round 2 interview
5) Rejection

Oracle as Reputed MNC has shown a very bad(During this drive) image as a whole interview Process.

1) Referral asked from current Employees.
   with not so clear ( even to their employees ) Job description. that if this will be as Fresher or the Experienced category I still count my odds and apply by sending my resume.
One of my friends Posted on Facebook the Oracle is looking for 6 months+ experience candidate.


2) Resume got short Listed for Face-to-Face Interview.
   with no direct contact to the candidate ( details were there in the resume ). employee who referred gets this mail
   Please inform the following candidate to come down on Sunday, 15th Jun @
	9 AM to our office in Trivandrum.
	XXX XXX - ( My NAME )
   Are you Kidding me? I thought. I was staying almost 730KM. They couldn't spare a week's time for the candidate to prepare? after all they are looking for experienced one we need some time to brush up the concepts learned during under graduation.

3) Face-to-face Round 1 interview

   With Face-to-face interview scheduled so surprising early,I missed all my chances of getting a train Ticket to Thiruvananthapuram thus, only option was BUS.

  Bus managed to reach night before the interview Day.
  So, Here comes "THE" Day , i was told to report at 10 via a mail ( again to the employees not the candidate )
Hi,

To reduce the waiting time for candidates, i have made some changes in
the schedule. Please keep the candidates informed

Candidates from
XXXX - 9:00 AM
XXXX - 10:00 AM - ( MY SLOT )
XXXX - 11:00 AM
XXXX - 11:30 AM

I reached almost on Time.( Saw fellow candidates and talked to them )

Most of them were from TCS. Few from Wipro and one or two were like me from a startup background looking for better career opportunity.

10:30 I was called and asked for my Resume. ( No other Documents were asked )

10:40 I was called for the interview

I am taken inside one room.

First Question why I want to leave Bangalore and come down to Thiruvananthapuram. Answered with all my valid points.
About my Personal Introduction.

then he looked at my resume, saw some of the technologies he knew well and asked few questions on them, I answered them to the best of my knowledge.

He moves on the Traditional way of asking DS and algo. ( Topic of the Day was Linked List).
He asked one Difficult Question then broke down into a simpler one and asked me to solve one by one.
He even gave a hint where I was struck, which eventually was solved by me.

Then he asked questions regarding my Projects which were very Genuine, and to the point. He even asked if one my android projects were implemented as live.

Then he asked about the PAPER I published which was also my Major Project, I told him how exactly we implemented our whole project, and how it works based on external APIs.

He said to move to other Room when he was done with round.

Here comes the waiting time for the Second Round ( as Leaving Door was other end of the floor I accepted myself as one the candidates who passed first Round )

 It was Sunday most of the restaurants are Closed in that locality on that Day.
 But with No Snakes ( in the morning ) , Candidates were asked to leave for the lunch on their own and report back in next 1-2 hour.
I and two more candidates were asked to stay as our second round was soon going to get started.
Both of them left and I was left alone for a while.

3) Face-to-face Round 2 interview

I am taken inside another room.This person seemed senior on position in the way he asked about my reasons to leave Bangalore and move to Thiruvananthapuram if I get the job. ( he was not at all impressed with my answered i guess )

Then he doesn't ask about anything and hands me over the sheet of paper where some analytic/Data question interpretation were given.

I am asked to solve two from them ( no choice given )
first one was array based. ( write a program question )
second one was data interpretation.

this question was so ambiguous( well so many unknown I would say ) that I still remember that question or the most part of it.
for a hint question was four persons were travelling from four sources to four destination. ( nothing mentioned if unique ) or to solve the no of variables given were also less.

I was left alone in the room to solve those.

after some time he comes back to see my progress. I told him that I was not able to solve this ( I showed him my approach and the many unknown variables i got from the problem  )  He ignored that and asked about the other question given to me. I solved it the way I thought it was correct, but he said I was not optimal with soln.

he goes out, and brings another question paper and says .. this one is the simple one lets see if you are able to crack this or not .. and he gives another programming question as well.

I solved both.

( Not to mention for the whole experience he seemed to be very busy .. like he was taking more than one interview at a time by moving from one room to another )

He started asking :

HIM :You know JAVA ? How Good are you In JAVA ?
I : Sir, I have done some project in JAVA in my collage days, Now I am working on Python,Groovy and Grails.

HIM : You are from CS Background ? you must be knowing Mutexes, semaphore.?
I : told him about the semaphore n got confused abt mutexes. ( He was asking everything like it was rapid fire round )


HIM : you have worked on Python?
I : I have been working in a start-up, I worked on Python,Grails,AngularJS. ( even told him that I was working in a product based start-up and what all my major contributions were ( writing controllers, services ,modals on grails ) and Google Chome Extension as first independent Project.

"I Don't know what made him write in big letter on my resume - """SCRIPTING""" , that instance gave me so much of bad energy about the whole process.

then again in a ( hurry ) he said I was done for the Day, Is there anything I wanted to know.

I thought best could ask for feedback if he asked I can tell that what he wrote on my resume as "SCRIPTING" is not actually at all correct. ( maybe he has never worked on grails,Angularjs or know that Python is only used for SCRIPTING ) I am going to work for him ?



but, all he said was my chances are not that great, I solved only easy question, and he is interviewing other candidates too, so they will let me know about my status. and I was asked to leave for the day by him.( Not even asked for any travel reimbursement)



5) Rejection : I was not even mailed not even called. again the employees of the company got internal mail with the list of candidates who were asked to come again for the next round.


 Summary : this whole interview showed,How image of the company is represented by a person who is taking the interview, and his personality can directly affect the environment of the whole process.
 ( More than i was willing to leave bangalore, they were not ready to accept me at Thiruvananthapuram )