Optum interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview
SDE - 1
Optum
3 rounds | 5 Coding
problems
Selected Interview preparation journey
Preparation
Duration: 12 months
Topics: OOPS, DSA, Dynamic Programming, Linked Lists, Trees, Priority Queues, Heaps, Sorting, Searching, Graph Algorithms
Tip 1 : Do all the basic to medium level questions from leetcode.
Tip 2 : Practice alot so that you can solve a new problem and it will be a cakewalk for you.
Tip 3 : Study dynamic programming and linked lists, trees well, at the same time don't miss out on OOPS concepts and basic theory of the programming language you use.
Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: Above 7 CGPA in B.Tech, 70% in 12th, 7 CGPA in 10th, after that company shortlisting was done.
Tip 1 : Mention atleast 6-7 projects at college level which are made by you only.
Tip 2 : An internship or part time experience will be a plus point but is not required.
Tip 3 : Add achievements you had, hackathon experiences (related to your field of study). Add your codechef, codeforces and other platform rating.
Tip 4 : Only add that information in the resume which you can talk about in the interview. Never put false projects and information, they would be able to detect.
Interview rounds
01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Interview
Duration150 Minutes
Interview date8 Sep 2021
Coding problem2
It was in the evening, at around 8-10:30PM.
There were 30 MCQs, some having multiple answers and 3 coding questions
1. Longest common subsequence
Moderate
0/80
Asked in companies
You have been given two Strings “STR1” and “STR2” of characters. Your task is to find the length of the longest common subsequence.
A String ‘a’ is a subsequence of a String ‘b’ if ‘a’ can be obtained from ‘b’ by deletion of several (possibly, zero or all) characters. A common subsequence of two Strings is a subsequence that is common to both Strings.
Problem approach
Step 1: I read the problem and I knew it was a basic dynamic programming problem.
Step 2: I made a dp 2d array and using loops, filled that array with the required values.
Step 3: I returned the right corner index of the dp array.
2. Rearrange Linked List
Moderate
22m average time
80% success
0/80
Asked in companies
You have been given a singly Linked List in the form of 'L1' -> 'L2' -> 'L3' -> ... 'Ln'. Your task is to rearrange the nodes of this list to make it in the form of 'L1' -> 'Ln' -> 'L2' -> 'Ln-1' and so on. You are not allowed to alter the data of the nodes of the given linked list.
For example:
If the given linked list is 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> NULL.
Then rearrange it into 1 -> 5 -> 2 -> 4 -> 3 -> NULL.
Problem approach
Step 1: traverse linked list starting from head node,
Step 2 : delete nodes at odd indexes, example, if the first index is 0, then I will remove every node occuring at index 1, 3, 5 and store it separately in a new linked list.
Step 3 : Now we have heads of 2 linked lists having even indexed nodes (head1) and odd indexed nodes (head2).
Step 4 : Find the tail of head1 and do tail -> next = head2
Step 5 : Now our 2 linked lists are merged and we can return them as an output.
02
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration40 minutes
Interview date30 Sep 2021
Coding problem2
Round was majorly based on my resume. I have mentioned that I was a competitive programmer so the interviewer asked me for some challenging problems involving dsa. I told the approach and then was asked to write the code. I did the code correctly then she moved on to basic core concepts like OOPS, OS, SQL DBMS, Software life cycle, etc. After asking certain number of questions, interviewer asked from my resume in depth. She covered all the projects, achievements and skills I have mentioned there to assure every information is correct. I was asked in depth about the projects I have mentioned there and cross questioning on the technologies I have used for those projects.
1. Delete a Given Node
Easy
15m average time
85% success
0/40
Asked in companies
Ninja is learning data structures and came across a doubly linked list. Now he wants to remove a particular element from the linked list. Can you help Ninja do so and return the final linked list?
Problem approach
This problem required the concept of self balancing tree.
2. DBMS based question
Write a query to find student having 2nd highest marks from the table
Problem approach
Do the basic approach only by finding the highest marks and then doing nested query to find highest2 marks which are not equal to highest. This way, you will get the 2nd highest marks.
Watch gate smashers videos on sql.
03
Round
Easy
Telephonic
Duration10 minutes
Interview date1 Oct 2021
Coding problem1
This round was not like an interview, but the HR called me up to ask for,
Basic introduction about myself,
Job location preference,
My curriculars and extra curriculars,
If I am willing to relocate or not, etc
I have been waiting for the call since whole day as everyone else was receiving the call from the HR. I finally got the call at 11PM.
1. Basic HR questions
She wanted to know if I am really interested in relocating or not. Also, I was asked if about the healthcare project that I made. It was a quick 10 minutes discussion over call.
Problem approach
Communication skills required as you need to talk on phone call.
Here's your problem of the day 
Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company
Skill covered: Programming
What is recursion?
Choose another skill to practice
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