I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at SAP Ariba (Bengaluru) in May 2011
Interview
Went through a local IT recruiter. There was an initial phone interview which went well, interviewers attitude was good and he explored stuff on my resume. Also the typical questions on data structures, how does a hash map work internally etc. I was shortlisted for the next round which would apparently be an all-day event. All good.
Landed at Ariba Bangalore office at designated time. First interview panel (one guy) had great attitude, asked questions relevant to architecture and Ariba domain. Example: how would you design a data-model for master-detail where detail could have unlimited attribute key-values. Are there options beyond RDBMS etc. All good. Questions on web-applications. How can you make the UI more richer and responsive. What if you wanted to "push" updates in real-time from the server.
Unfortunately from the next interview onwards, things went downhill. The next two panels (again one guy each) were intent on treating the interview as a ragging session rather than a means to understand candidate skills. If you want to get a job at Ariba, read up on data-structures, all the way from linked-lists, stacks, queues and especially trees. Keep in mind that the guys interviewing you have interviewed so many people before you so because of that, their fundamentals are much better than the lesser mortals who invented data structures. So my advice is, early on in the interview try to understand the interviewers intent, if they want to prove your ignorance about the finer details of binary tree traversal, you have no choice but to swallow your pride and let the alpha-male in the room take control. Try to divert the interview to other topics that you know about as fast as possible.
A possible question you could ask the interviewer in the end is to throw more light on the "bug fests" that happen at Ariba and the interviewer's thoughts on how much of data structures theory applies when handling these bug fests.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Trim a string in Java (remove leading and trailing white space). You can't use the String.trim() function. Do it just using an array. Keep in mind the string could have white spaces within it.
4 rounds of Interview. 2 Technical and 1 managerial. Final HR discussion. There will one online assessment too. Interview process was smooth and took 3 weeks to complete the process.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at SAP Ariba (Bengaluru) in May 2016
Interview
It was pathetic experience.
I felt that the interviewer was there to tell what he knows and questions were so specific to some concepts in the technologies which are being used very rarely. He didn't even have manner to talk and was actually behaving insane. I even felt like leaving in between the interview. Interview went on for 2 hours.
I am sure that he was never trained on how to take interview and how to judge people.
He wasn't able to communicate the requirements properly and he was expecting the answers he knows but nothing else. If you tell some approach which is better than what he knows of then also he will not agree to your approach. This happens when somebody is not open to others' suggestions and understands the concepts by mugging up things.
One thing is sure that he needed training on soft skills.
I was told that they can consider me for "Senior Software Engineer" but not "Principal Software Engineer" hence I said no and left. In any case I wouldn't have joined this company after the experience I had in the first interview.
I want to highlight that HR person was good.
I applied online. The process took 4 months. I interviewed at SAP Ariba (Bengaluru) in May 2012
Interview
I started interview in May, 2012 first week. I live in US and the job was in Bangalore. The first interview was scheduled but did not take place on that day. Was rescheduled. First interview covered whole range including Java (algorithms , internal hash implementation, Btree, threads). Next went into Oracle/DB questions such as query optimization.
Second interview by Phone in mid-June. This was more of application architecture like how do dynamically send updates for millions of users..
Next, they took a month to call me to California for a face-to-face. This was sometime in early August. Five tech people interviewed. Two asked me to write code. Third interviewer was very distracted, took phone calls in between. Asked questions of internal Java implementations of equals, hash. Talked about caching. Fourth interview was hardest. I think I flunked here. Talked about writing algorithms. Fifth was writing word processor.
They came back to me September with negative feedback. Took too long to decide. Company very slow in decision process. It also took enormous time to get reimbursed for interview expenses.
However, the interviews very challenging and interesting
