Bhabha Atomic Research Center(BARC) Interview experience for OCES/DGFS Scientist Officer
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Hey everyone! Here, I am sharing my barc interview experience that took place on 16 June 2023 which one can refer for any PSUs or company interview. It was a matter of gre...
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Hey everyone! Here, I am sharing my barc interview experience that took place on 16 June 2023 which one can refer for any PSUs or company interview. It was a matter of great pride to be within the premises of BARC, such a prestigious organization working to harness nuclear power. So, let's understand the whole process now:- 1. Written Test There will be a 120min online test consisting of 100 mcqs with +3 and -1 marking strategy. The syllabus is similar to GATE but you need to study one more extra subject which is software engineering . From here you can expect at least one theoretical question, especially from all the software development models. I personally referred to geeksforgeeks software engineering notes that you can find here- Software Engineering Tutorial - GeeksforGeeks TIPS- Focus more on speed as you will get less than 1.5 mins to solve a question, so leave the questions that seem lengthy or tricky. Try to scan the whole paper and solve all the easy questions first. The questions are of easy to moderate level. If you are preparing for GATE then doing all the gate pyqs will make you prepared for this test. 2. Selection Procedure They shortlist students both from written test scores as well as from gate scores. I was selected on the basis of my written test score and this happened on 24 Apr. Generally, they shortlist 200+ students for the interview. So, I have to choose the interview date between 16 May-16 June which will be held in BARC training school, Mumbai. Usually, you will get 1 month for the preparation for the interview where you have to focus on in-depth concepts where gfg articles helped me immensely which you can find here- GATE CS Topic wise preparation Notes | GeeksforGeeks 3.Interview(Highly deep and conceptual) There were 6 panelists taking the interview. They have provided some papers to write the codes and to explain the answers. Firstly, they asked me to write my favorite subjects to which I wrote: OS, C, DS, DBMS, and COA. Then, they said that they will start with C language and then they asked the following questions:- C What is a function, write a function explaining its parts. Need of a function and can a function return more than 1 data !? Write a function in c that takes an unsorted array as a parameter and returns the top 3 values of that array. OS] Functionalities of OS . Difference between process and program How does a program converts into a process, explain in detail. Ds Write a program to create a stack that will store complex numbers in the form a+ib. DBMS What is normalization and its need!? Define 1NF, 2NF, 3NF Draw tables showing that the schema is in 2NF and 3NF The interview took around 1hr and the level of cross-questioning was too much it made me realize that asking the why, what, and how of any concept deepens our understanding and can make these types of interviews more intriguing.
About This Question
This is a reported interview question from a barc interview for a data science role during the oa round reported in 2025.
It covers the following topics: Ml, Sql, Stack Queue, Arrays, Stack .
Difficulty rating: Easy
Topics
About Barc Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Barc. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Barc are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Barc interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Barc reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Barc Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in Barc reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.