Summary
I recently interviewed for a Full-Stack-Developer position at Odoo, which involved an Online Assessment with coding and SQL problems, an HR phone screen, and a technical round where I had to build a simple room booking system. Unfortunately, I failed the interview, learning that practical implementation skills are crucial for entry-level SDE roles.
Full Experience
I recently had an interview for a Full-Stack-Developer position at Odoo. The process began with an Online Assessment, which I received a link for about a month after applying. This OA included 25 MCQs covering basic JavaScript, Django, and Python, along with two easy-to-medium coding problems and one medium-level SQL problem.
Online Assessment Questions:
- Merge Char Arrays with Backspace: I was given two character arrays and asked to merge them into a string. The challenge was to check if the resultant strings were equal, with an additional constraint: the character '-b' should be treated as a backspace, removing the character immediately preceding it. This was an easy-level stack problem.
- Implement Python's
eval(): The task was to write an implementation of Python'seval()function, which was considered an easy to medium difficulty problem. - Employee Joining Date Analysis: I was provided with a log of employee joining dates and employee IDs. The goal was to output the month name and the number of employees who joined in that particular month. This was a medium-level problem, likely involving SQL.
The second round was a phone call with HR, where they inquired about my previous work at TCS, reasons for leaving, and other generic questions. Since I had less than one year of experience, I was asked to complete an additional aptitude round immediately after the HR call.
Three days later, I was invited for a technical interview. In this round, I was told to build a very simple room booking system, including both backend and frontend, using technologies of my choice. I opted for FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Although it felt like a cakewalk, I made small mistakes under time pressure and failed to even compile the code.
Reflecting on this experience, I've realized that just focusing on Data Structures and Algorithms isn't sufficient for entry-level SDE roles. Employers are increasingly asking for these types of implementation projects, and I need to prepare for them by practicing many such 1-2 hour mini-projects.
Interview Questions (4)
You will be given with 2 arrays of chars and you need to merge both of the arrays into a string and check if the resultant strings are equal. with one more constratint we may get a char '-b' we need to treat it as backspace and remove the char if any just before it.
Write the eval() in python's implementation.
We were given with log of employees joining date and employee id we needed to output month name and number of employees joined in that month.
I was tasked with making a very simple room booking system, requiring both backend and frontend development. I chose FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, HTML, CSS, and JS for the implementation.