Ocado Technology Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Ocado Technology (Birmingham, England (UK)) in June 2017.

Interview

Only got the online test now. Given limited time to finish, can be answer in C#, Java and C++. No need to worried. Submission took 1 month, still waiting for the next stage now.

Interview Questions

Application

The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Ocado Technology (Hatfield, East of England, England (UK)).

Interview

The on site interview took at about 7 hours. The interviewers and the member of HR department were all very friendly. The whole process was well organised. Overall, it was an enjoyable experience. I was thinking that I performed quite well. However, I haven't received an offer and no detailed feedback has been provided.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Ocado Technology (London, England (UK)).

Interview

The interview process was quite interesting actually. It was a full day process, with an initial written test, then a face to face interview and then a visit to the factory. After all that, there was a second face to face interview. Everyone seemed nice and approachable. The office was a little bit too far away from central London but a good experience overall.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Ocado Technology (Barcelona (Spain)) in April 2016.

Interview

- First call with an outsourced recruiter. General conversation about my experience and my expectations.

- Call interview with the CTO. He was very kind. He explains what Ocado does, business areas and working methodology.

- On site interview: first with a Product Owner and a software manager go through my CV and general question about the projects I have worked on and my soft skills.
Second technical interview with a software manager and a software engineer. It was a kind of a role playing game where I was suposed to implement several methods that were left unimplemented from other co-worker. One interviewer was a Product Owner to which I could ask questions to gather details and requirements.

- Final technical logic exam where I had to solve in a kind of assembler sintax 10 exercices.

All the interviewers at ocado were very friendly, but the outsourced recruiter just did nothing, she was not even present the day I was scheduled for the interview. I had no feedback at all about how was the process and interview, not even the mark I get in the logic exam.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Ocado Technology (London, England (UK)) in August 2016.

Interview

I was contacted by an Ocado recruiter, which was the first step in the interview process.
Then, I had a Skype interview with two team leaders with some technical questions: multithreading in java, differences between java and c, brief explanation of how the garbage collector works.

The third step was a codility test (3 questions, 2 of them simple questions and the third one a bit more complicated. Make sure you give enough time for the third question). After resolving the test, the recruiter sent me an email to attend to the onsite interview. This interview had the following parts:

*Logic Test – approx. 1 hour – paper based logic test with around 15 questions – (Must pass to progress)
*Pair Programming Interview - this will be up to a 2 hour session where you will be required to solve a problem using laptop/IDE and you work collaboratively with a Senior Software Engineer /Team Leader. This will include technical questions. We will provide a laptop for the candidate.
*CFC Tour – approx. 45 minutes – a guided tour of our automated warehouse to see what Ocado Technology is all about
*IT Head Interview - a 30 minute interview conducted by the IT Head of Department. The purpose of this interview is to check your fit with Ocado and to further exploring your technical competencies beyond that which was demonstrated in the Pair Programming exercise.

The logic test consisted in building new functions using 4 basic operations (set to zero, increment, loop, copy value from one variable to another). I recommend to exercise this beforehand, because you need to reply everything really fast.

The pair programming interview consisted in fixing one broken program. This program was written in Java and had some JUnit tests. The JUnit tests were failing, but after fixing the program they were passing. This program is not complicated at all, if you have experience with Java, you will resolve this. Then, they asked how to make the program faster. We talked about sorting, binary trees, multithreading and linked lists. Make sure you know all these concepts.

After this part, Ocado provided lunch for you and they take you for the warehouse tour, which is really interesting. Once this is finished, the last step is the interview with the IT Head. This started by making an algorithm in a whiteboard. Then, the interview is focused on if you are a good fit for Ocado, in terms of culture and previous experience.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Ocado Technology (Hatfield, East of England, England (UK)) in August 2016.

Interview

Logic test 1 hour, programming test 1 hour, interview 1 hour. The logic test can be tricky, essentially an IQ test. The programming test is more of a test of your background programming knowledge, and ability to absorb and understand code. Once you pass this, it eventually turns into a creative problem solving test.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Ocado Technology (Hatfield, East of England, England (UK)) in March 2018.

Interview

The interview is indeed a pentathlon as described in other reviews. Some preparation is required for the logic test. Having experience with a bit of assembly I found this to be okayish, nonetheless, it took me a whole hour. Behaviour interview went on for another 1 hour, it was basically a long chat about past projects and the key points of Ocado Technology. The CFC Tour was interesting but nothing spectacular, I believe they also want to see whether interviewees are actually interested in the business operation. Lunch was literally 30min, as soon as I finished lunch I was taken to the pair programming interview, no time for coffee. Pair programming interview was also okay, I managed to get the code up and running, I believe this is very simple for someone with experience in java. Unit tests were failing, had to write code for unimplemented functions. The interviewer will ask questions on why certain design patterns were implemented. After we managed to get the code working we moved into optimisation and how the code can be optimised (I used the whiteboard). Technical interview was about Java, some CV questions on past projects and then code review, there was also a whiteboard question on finding the longest palindrome in a string but we did not have time. Final interview with head of team was a very nice chat and we went on for about 1 hour and a half. Overall I thought the interview went very well but I was informed I wasn't what they were looking for technically.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Ocado Technology (Wrocław (Poland)) in March 2018.

Interview

The whole process took a month, during which one of the recruiters went on holidays, the second one didn't know anything about my recruitment so I had to guide her myself. Test project review took 2 weeks, after a positive outcome it took another week and a half to get to the conclusion that they don't want an engineer specializing in mobile applications and instead they want a React app and they're looking for a frontend guy. Right from the start they didn't know what they wanted, the process was opaque and from my perspective it looked like a really badly managed company with employees that don't feel responsible for their work. Massive waste of time, appaling communication and incompetence at every level.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Ocado Technology (Hatfield, East of England, England (UK)) in February 2018.

Interview

I was invited for a one day assessment to the company's technological center.
In the morning there were a logical test and a behavior interview. After the morning session there was a warehouse visit.
Only the candidates can go to the afternoon session who passed the logical test and the behavioral interview. They sent home the other candidates.
I am very disappointed with the full process. I was not informed about the morning session is a pre-selection and got the information, the company provides lunch during this one day assessment, but in the end only candidates invited who passed the logical test. I spent 2 and a half hour to commute to the office. Filled the - I think - very easy logical test, and after the warehouse visit they told me I didn't pass the logical test, and go home and I can try to apply 6 month later. They didn't explain me what were my mistakes, nor took a look to my sheet. So, I commute 2 and a half hours back to home.
I am very disappointed. I took my time, commuted almost 5 hours in my own expenses to write a very dumb logical test, after they sent home without detailed explanation and discussion and with no compensation for my time. They could arrange this test online, and candidates fill it, and call only the people who pass it, or just let the candidates do the full process anyway.
Worst interview experience ever. I never consider to join Ocado again. Do you care your customers in the same way?

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Ocado Technology (Barcelona (Spain)) in May 2018.

Interview

I have been directly contacted by Ocado Barcelona recruiter and did a phone interview. After that I have been asked to do a hangout technical interview with a team lead and a senior software engineer for about an hour. Got a call from the company recruiter to congratulate me that I have been successful and selected to attend a half day long, on premise 4 stages process. An Ocado aptitude test, a behavioural interview, a 2 hours pair programming session and a final interview. All done to the final interview, when the recruiter came and said that they are stopping the process because I didn't pass the aptitude test!
I challenged here that it can't be realistic, so someone came with the aptitude test papers, where it was obvious that it was done intentionally, as there were no logical mistakes but something like: you should have declared a variable instead of using the expression inside the bracket! By the way there was no mentioning about this in the requirements!
When I challenged them on this they said "they ran it through a parser" that's why, although the logic is correct but the parser failed it!!!
My answer to them was "You are good with robots ... you should continue on that and hire robots ... I am glad I am not going to work for you :)"

Interview Questions