I was contacted by a recruiter on LinkedIn on Wednesday night. The interview took place on Saturday morning, after I had cleared their online tests. I had basically no time to prepare.

I am a QA analyst, but this interview was for a Developer position, and the recruiter did not mention this to me, eventually leading to a lot of embarrassment for me. During the interview, I was taken to a separate room, and there were two people who asked me technical questions. They also probed me about my academics and whether I had a lag year, and if I had ever failed a subject.

They were nice people. Even though I could not answer most of the questions, they did not discourage me but gave hints, trying to help me out. However, when I asked one of them, "What is it like working in Oracle?", he gave me a reply that made me feel bad. He said, (quoting from memory) "In Oracle, we are responsible for our own work. We don't deliver work to clients somehow and then run away like service-based companies do."

Now, I have four years of experience in a service-based company, and I assure you that is not how we function. I did not say this aloud, but apart from this small incident, the interview was good. I learned a lot.

1. OOP concepts: inheritance, static keyword

2. Design classes and methods to implement a "Parking Lot" problem.

3. SQL queries for scenarios: Lead, Lag, Rank, GROUP BY, JOINs.

4. Difference between analytical functions and aggregate functions.

5. How can you swap the values of two columns in a table using a single query?

6. What is the reason you are looking for a change of job?