Recruitment Stories - Riham's Experience at Therap (BD) Ltd.

Riham Chowdhury is currently employed as an Associate Database Engineer at Therap (BD) Ltd. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from BRAC University, where he also served as a Student Tutor and Student Mentor in his final year.

In this article, Riham shares his experience of landing a job at Therap (BD) Ltd and provides insights for anyone preparing to do the same.

During his undergraduate years, Riham participated in career-focused seminars. One such seminar was organized by Therap (BD) Ltd., which is how he learned about the company. After graduating, Riham applied for the Associate Database Engineer role through the company’s job portal website. Within a few months, he was invited to go through the recruitment process.

Typically, Therap conducts a written test as the first phase of assessment. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they conducted several phases of online interviews. The recruitment process consisted of the following phases:

Phase 1: Interview Screening process

During this phase, Riham was given a Google Form with questions regarding his availability for the online interview, his skill level, the databases he was familiar with, and more.

Phase 2: Online Technical Interview - I

This interview was conducted in two parts.

Theory-based questions - The interviewer asked Riham several basic database questions, such as database constraints, normalization, denormalization, the difference between a primary key and a unique key, and whether a unique key could be a foreign key. Riham was able to answer these questions correctly, and so the interviewer asked some intermediate database questions, such as transaction, ACID properties, isolation, indexing types, SQL injection, and so on.
SQL-based questions - The interviewer gave Riham two SQL problems to solve using the Oracle HR schema, which required the use of the JOIN clause. At some point, Riham faced some errors, and the interviewer provided him with hints to guide him towards the correct solution. Riham was able to solve both problems successfully.

Riham spent a significant amount of time preparing for this interview, utilizing resources from his university’s database course to tackle the theory portion. He also watched several YouTube videos to understand more advanced concepts and practiced on the HackerRank and Oracle Live SQL platforms to prepare for the SQL-based questions.

Phase 3: Online Technical Interview - II

During this phase of the interview, Riham practiced SQL on the Oracle HR schema and some common single-row and multi-row functions. The interviewers first asked advanced theoretical questions about architecture and the recovery process, which Riham was unable to answer. They then asked intermediate theoretical questions, which Riham was able to answer.

Next, Riham was given five SQL problems to solve on the Oracle HR schema, which were based on the JOIN clause and some basic single-row functions. This time, Riham was able to solve all the problems without needing a second attempt.

Finally, the interviewers asked Riham a few questions based on his resume.

Phase 4: Online Technical Interview - III

This session was conducted by the Team Lead of the Database team at Therap. The interviewer asked Riham about his database projects and requested an explanation of one of them. Afterward, she asked Riham to execute some basic DML statements on his schema. Finally, she asked some basic questions about databases.

Phase 5: Online HR Interview

During this phase, Riham was asked a series of questions about his background, family, interests, future goals, and knowledge of Therap. Additionally, he was asked for his views on politics. The interview lasted approximately 25 minutes.

Special thanks to Riham Chowdhury for taking out the time to share his recruitment experience with me. If you have any queries, feel free to contact him at chowdhuryriham@gmail.com