Optum interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

Software Engineer

Optum
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3 rounds | 5 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
My name is Niraj Kumar, and I come from Darbhanga, a district in Bihar. I completed all my schooling till class 12 in my hometown and graduated in 2018 from the CBSE board with 92%. From 2018 to 2019, I prepared for JEE in Kota, Rajasthan. I cleared JEE in 2019 and was admitted to NIT Mizoram to pursue B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering. In my 2nd year of college, I maintained a CGPA of 9.02 and stood first in my branch, which allowed me to change my branch to the CSE department from the EEE department. In July 2022, as I entered my final year, placements began at my college. OPTUM was the 7th company to visit for hiring. Around 60 final-year students applied for the job, and most received the test link. What is very positive about OPTUM is that they didn't eliminate anyone based on a weak resume. The eligibility criterion was straightforward: a CGPA of 7 or above. After the online assessment, ten students were selected for the interview scheduled for the next day. My interview went well, and a total of five students were selected. I was very happy with this offer. The result came out the same day, and I partied very hard to celebrate.
Application story
I applied on campus only through my college's training and placement cell. There was one coding round for all the participants who applied. The coding round is having 4 DSA questions. After the coding round, we had one technical interview. After this, you get your offer letter.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
I was selected for this role because I had a decent knowledge of data analytics. Moreover, my preparation for my core CS subjects was very good. Apart from this, I was able to communicate my skills very, very well. They were very much pleased after listening to my project. Along with that...I have practiced a lot in coding, so it was easy for me to crack the interview round, and I gave them point-to-point answers with proper real-life examples wherever needed.
Preparation
Duration: 4 months
Topics: DSA, C++, OS, DBMS, Cloud Computing, Machine learning, Python
Tip
Tip

Tip 1: Mention some good and simple level basic projects
Tip 2: Do not boast anything on your resume
Tip 3: Do not dive too much deep into the subjects as that much is not required by the interviewer. So save your time.

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: 7 CGPA and no active backlogs
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1: Mention some good and simple level basic projects.
Tip 2: Do not boast anything on your resume.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Hard
Online Coding Interview
Duration90 minutes
Interview date20 Aug 2022
Coding problem3

The round started at 10 AM and ended at 11:30 AM. It was an online round conducted on the Mettl website, which had a very user-friendly interface. We were given three DSA questions: one was easy, one was medium to hard, and the last one was very hard. I solved the easy question completely and the two medium and hard questions with 80% and 69% accuracy, respectively.

1. Check Permutation

Easy
15m average time
85% success
0/40
Asked in companies
AmazonGoldman SachsCIS - Cyber Infrastructure

You have been given two strings 'STR1' and 'STR2'. You have to check whether the two strings are anagram to each other or not.

Note:
Two strings are said to be anagram if they contain the same characters, irrespective of the order of the characters.
Example :
If 'STR1' = “listen” and 'STR2' = “silent” then the output will be 1.

Both the strings contain the same set of characters.
Problem approach

This was a very easy problem and I had the solution memorized only so directly I solved the best approach.

Try solving now

2. Minimum Jumps

Moderate
25m average time
75% success
0/80
Asked in companies
DirectiMakeMyTripOYO

Bob lives with his wife in a city named Berland. Bob is a good husband, so he goes out with his wife every Friday to ‘Arcade’ mall.

‘Arcade’ is a very famous mall in Berland. It has a very unique transportation method between shops. Since the shops in the mall are laying in a straight line, you can jump on a very advanced trampoline from the shop i, and land in any shop between (i) to (i + Arr[i]), where Arr[i] is a constant given for each shop.

There are N shops in the mall, numbered from 0 to N-1. Bob's wife starts her shopping journey from shop 0 and ends it in shop N-1. As the mall is very crowded on Fridays, unfortunately, Bob gets lost from his wife. So he wants to know, what is the minimum number of trampoline jumps from shop 0 he has to make in order to reach shop N-1 and see his wife again. If it is impossible to reach the last shop, return -1.

Problem approach

Let's suppose we are at index i. We will loop from i+1 till nums.size()
and check whether we can jump to the current index.
To check whether you can jump just ensure that the condition is fulfilled:
abs(nums[ind]-nums[i])<=target
If we can jump we will move to index find , increase jumps by 1, and calculate ans for ind;

Try solving now

3. Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum

Moderate
20m average time
80% success
0/80
Asked in companies
FacebookSamsungCoinbase

You are given a binary tree with ‘N’ nodes.

Your task is to find the “Maximum Path Sum” for any path.

Note :

1. A ‘path’ is a sequence of adjacent pair nodes with an edge between them in the binary tree.
2. The ‘path’ doesn’t need to pass through the root.
3. The ‘path sum’ is the sum of the node’s data in that path. 
Problem approach

Declare a variable to store the maximum path sum and initialize it to a very low value.
Start a depth-first search (DFS) on the binary tree from the given root node.
Inside the DFS function:
Check if the current node is empty or null. If so, return 0 as the base case.
Recursively call the DFS function on the left child of the current node and store the result.
Recursively call the DFS function on the right child of the current node and store the result.
Calculate the sum of the maximum path from the left subtree, the maximum path from the right subtree, and the value of the current node.
Update the maximum path sum if the current path sum is greater.
Return the maximum sum that can be extended to the parent node.
Call the DFS function starting from the root of the binary tree.
Return the maximum path sum.

Try solving now
02
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration40 minutes
Interview date21 Aug 2022
Coding problem1

My interview started at 2 pm and ended at 2:45 pm. It was an online interview on the Optum platform. There was one interviewer. He was very helpful and gave me hints where I got stuck.

1. Design Question

Implement the lower bound function of STL. (Practise)

Problem approach

I used binary search to solve this question. The lower bound is a very standard problem so I did not face any issues and solved them in one go. The interviewer was very much impressed.

03
Round
Easy
HR Round
Duration25 minutes
Interview date28 Jul 2023
Coding problem1

1. Basic HR Questions

1, Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

2. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

3. Project discussion

Here's your problem of the day

Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company

Skill covered: Programming

How do you remove whitespace from the start of a string?

Choose another skill to practice
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