First and foremost, congratulations on your internship with such prestigious firms. Could you tell us about your present position at Flock?

Currently, I am working as an Software Developer Engineer Intern at Flock. Basically I am working for the React Architecture team which is all about changing the design and architecture of the front-end.

Can you tell us about the interview process in Flock, and the questions asked in it?

The first round was a coding round. In the coding round, there were 2 questions — both being medium to hard in difficulty level. The interview process was pretty straightforward. In the first interview, they gave me a question and it was pretty difficult. It was based on Dynamic Programming. It took me about 1 hour to solve the question.

Dynamic Programming - GeeksforGeeks

The second interview was conducted on the same day itself. They gave a question in which I had to mutate a string into something else and I had to tell the minimum number of steps to do so.

Transform One String to Another using Minimum Number of Given Operation - GeeksforGeeks

The final round had questions about everything — from coding questions to core subjects. This round was of 1.5 hours, and after a few days, I got an email that I have been selected as an intern there.

You have also been an intern at HackerEarth as a back end developer. Can you please brief us about your job profile there?

This was also a six month internship. The majority of my work was on Python Django itself. They hire interns on the basis of their knowledge in that domain, so people who have a hold of Django slightly get an edge.

Django

Most of my work there was based on the candidate interview platform where my team would ease the hiring assessment or interview assessment, which involves the whole hiring process for the company, and I had to fix some bugs as an intern.

Can you share with us about the HackerEarth interview process?

It was similar to that of Flock. The first round was a coding round. After you clear that, you need to sit for 3 interviews for assessment.

In the first 2 interviews, there were little to no DSA questions. All questions were for testing your coding skills, and of medium difficulty level.

The third interview was taken by the hiring manager. He asked about everything — from core subjects to my open source projects. He also asked questions about SQL and some basic DSA questions. My profile was coding-oriented, so most of the questions were coding related.

SQL Interview Questions - GeeksforGeeks

Can you tell us about your preparation approach for the interview? Also, can you tell us about some of the materials you used?

There are mainly two things which I had focused on — coding and core subjects .

For coding, I would suggest not to wait for the last day because coding requires a lot of practice, and therefore I have been active on many coding platforms like Codechef, Codeforces for coding practice , and Leetcode mainly for interview-based problems.

• Codeforces
• LeetCode - The World's Leading Online Programming Learning Platform

For the core subjects, I started looking at them a week before the interview or so. Also, preparing for these questions does not require much time.

In the final weeks prior to the interview, I looked for the particular questions asked in the interviews before, to get an idea for the difficulty level of the questions which eventually adds up your confidence for the interview.

On the day of the interview, how would you rank your confidence and preparation? Did you use a checklist to help you with your last-minute preparation?

I got pretty nervous at the time of the interview. To keep myself calm, I didn’t study anything on the day of the interview. This kept me relaxed. I didn’t have any particular checklist but before the interview, I used to go to sites like Geeks-for-Geeks and see past interview experiences.

Can you tell us about your experience as a programming enthusiast? How did you get started, and what were your goals?

In my opinion, instead of straightaway giving the contest, it is better to build some basic knowledge of the concept, because the results can be intimidating at the start. So, it is better to build up a base, and for that a good DSA course can be considered, which is not required to be paid. Some courses are present on Coursera. Even YouTube videos can be used to get the basic concept of DSA, and once you are confident enough regarding the topic or you develop the basic understanding of the topic, you can go for the contest which will tell you where you stand among your peers .

Coursera | Degrees, Certificates, & Free Online Courses

Another approach, which I personally used, is coding with a partner which helps in time management and also gives you the motivation to continue coding with him/her. You can create a group of two or three people who are consistent enough. It will be the best idea for coding and contest .

You have also been an ACM ICPC Regionalist, and also aced a lot of competitive programming contests like KickStart by Google, and HackerCup by Facebook. What has been your strategy in these contests? And, how did you tackle the pressure?

These contests are not very different from contests in Codeforces, Codechef etc. The only difference is that it is a team contest, which is actually better because it kind of unburdens you. Also for preparing for these types of contests, you cannot prepare from just 1 or 2 months before. You need to give time for them, because these are very good level coding contests.

I would suggest to focus on coding only if you are really passionate about it, but if you are preparing for just an interview then it is better to go on with Codeforces and Geeks-for-Geeks questions.

What, according to you, is the right balance between coding and development? Which part should one highlight in their resume?

As per my experience, it doesn’t matter in which field you want to pursue, because there are ample examples of people who cracked good companies in their respective fields. But one should have an idea of DSA in both the fields. In my opinion, at least 1–2 projects should be done for development, and when it comes to coding, the basic ideas and concepts should be cleared and well known .

You have experience as the Head of Event Management Team and as an event organizer (Infotsav 2019). What according to you are advantages a person has from those who are not involved in co-curricular events? Also, did they help in your interview process?

Yeah sure, they help a lot. Not only it helps in the interview, but also it contributes to overall personality development. Going to these events and connecting to a lot of people improves your communication skills and also gives you management skills.

“These things not only help in the interview but also throughout your life”

How would you rate yourself if you were a 5-year-old version of yourself? If you could go back in time and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?

There are some things which have improved a lot, like in the case of technical development. I have grown a lot , but at the same time my involvement in physical activities have taken a step back .

One thing I would tell myself would be that there should be a balance between all the aspects of growth.

What role do communication skills and personality advancement play in the interviews , and how may they be improved ?

I think all these soft skills are very important at the time of the interview because even if you have all the knowledge, it totally depends on your communication skills that how you present them. So, these skills play a great role in the interview.

I think any person who is preparing for an interview should prepare for these skills as well. For developing these skills, there are clubs, management activities in events. They helped me a lot.

Since you have been part of interviews, what are key points the interviewer looks at in an interview? Also, what should we do if we get stuck somewhere?

One thing to keep in mind in an interview is that the interviewer is there to hire someone. So, despite your disadvantages, they will look for the qualities required for that job .

When stuck at any point in an interview, it might not be difficult, even at that time the interviewer will build up an approach which you will be able to grasp to figure out the answer .

They might also give hints which will give you relief from stress during the interview because during an interview our mind is filled up with nervous thoughts, and the interviewer has gone through your situations and will come up to help you .

What recommendations would you provide to your juniors? What are some of the mistakes you’ve made that you’d like to discuss so that we don’t make the same mistakes?

We are bound to make mistakes and it’s not a bad thing. I too had made a lot of mistakes in my earlier days of college. I had taken my CGPA so lightly and it had given me some bad experiences because sometimes you are shortlisted according to your CGPA. And it’s not so difficult to improve your CGPA, you can easily score a decent CGPA. You should basically keep a balance between CGPA and learning other skills.

One more mistake is that a lot of people fear starting a new thing like machine learning, development etc. You should always start once and if you feel interested in that particular topic, you can continue or you can switch to some other things. And it’s not that big of a deal.

So there is no problem in making some mistakes, you should learn from them.

What is the main difference between online and offline mode? Which is better according to you?

I think everyone should experience offline mode because it is a great experience and you learn a lot of things just being around people because there are seniors, teachers, you keep learning a lot of things and at the same time you have a lot of fun.

On the other hand, in online mode you get a lot of free time so you can improve your skills and explore other domains.

So both have pros and cons but in my opinion, offline is way better.

We are concluding our interview here. Thank you for sharing your precious time and experience with us .You are a source of motivation and inspiration for many and we wish you a bright future ahead.

Interviewed by Mrigank Shukla and Akshat Jain

Co-ordinated by Aniket Gautam

PlaceKode with Prashant Rawat interned at Flock was originally published in Uthaan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

First of all, congratulations on getting selected in Google, a dream company for many of us. How fascinating does it feel to get selected there? What was your immediate reaction after this?

It was quite relaxing for me, to get an internship in a great company like Google within a short period of time. It was really a big deal then.

Can you walk us through your interview process, and what was your state of mind after that?

In the interview for the internship, there were 2 rounds, each of 45 minutes. In the first round, they asked simple questions. In my case, they asked me to make an API call, and once my concepts got cleared, they started building upon it. Proceeding to that, they asked me about algorithms to improve the API call.

• What is an Application Programming Interface (API)
• How to Optimize REST API calls

In the second round they asked the question on the Running Median. The question was not direct in that sense, but they wanted me to answer in that context only.

Median of Stream of Running Integers using STL - GeeksforGeeks

You received amazing offers from both Google and Amazon. How did you prepare for it?

Amazon interviews had started quite early, and our batch was the first one to experience the Amazon program. Generally, most of the students start their preparation in August, but I got to know about it in April and the interview was in June/July. So, I just solved questions from Geek-for-Geeks and then solved the questions asked in Amazon, from LeetCode.

I followed the same procedure for Google, practiced questions from LeetCode and gradually increased the level of questions from easy to hard, and then solved the questions that were asked in Google interviews itself.

• LeetCode - The World's Leading Online Programming Learning Platform
• GeeksforGeeks

You also have an expertise in the domain of Machine Learning. Can you please brief us about the roadmap you had followed in this field?

To start your journey in Machine Learning, it is good to go with Andrew NG’s Machine Learning course from Coursera. It took me about one and a half months to complete this course.

Supervised Machine Learning: Regression and Classification

Then, I started to do contests on Kaggle.

AI Competitions and Hackathons | Kaggle

I also started to participate in few hackathons, as the judges used to like solutions in Machine Learning. Then, I shifted my domain to problem solving. I have also done 2 internships in machine learning — one was a semester long, while the other one was for 2 months.

What was the main focus in the Machine Learning internship? Can you elaborate the projects you got to work on?

I worked in Caliche for my machine learning internship.

It is a company which uses petroleum industry data to optimize the performance of the fuel tank which they were generating. So, my main task was to clean the data and to identify anomalies of that data.

Caliche - an inventions' company

Can you tell us about the online resources you have used for the preparation of DSA and Machine Learning?

For practicing machine learning, I just took part in contests on Kaggle.

Kaggle: The World's AI Proving Ground

Apart from that, for DSA, initially I was not very accustomed to the coding platforms. So, I started with Geek for Geeks, and then gradually shifted to Leetcode.

The thing which helped me is the consistency. You have to do 2–3 problems daily to get better in these topics.

You have worked on a lot of projects. What role did they play in your interview?

Firstly, they looked good on resume and helped in the shortlisting rounds. They give you something to talk about in interviews. You can talk about the tech, the idea and the approach. They also gave me a huge confidence boost in terms of my learning abilities.

How did hackathons help you in improving your coding skills? Also, can you tell us about a few hackathons that you have participated in?

Hackathons are really helpful, as one gets a limited amount of time for solving the problem statement in hackathon. I used to participate in on-site hackathons and then moved towards online hackathons. Till date, I have participated in about 7 hackathons. I have visited MNNIT Allahabad for one of the hackathons. I have also participated in hackathons organized by SGSITS Indore and AASF.

From there, my journey started. In my first year, I have learnt a lot of things from them. You will be having a very short amount of time to learn and execute things. From the seven hackathons in which I participated, I have learnt that even if the program seems really amazing, it is not useful unless it serves the purpose of the problem. It greatly instilled confidence in me.

What role does the communication skills play in the interview and how can one improve upon them?

Mainly, it does not depend on the communication skills, but on the confidence that you have.

“Communication skills cannot be improved in a single day. If you want to ace it, take part in activities where communication plays a major role”

This will actually help you to ace your communication skills and instill confidence in yourself.

You have aced a lot of things in different fields in merely 4 years. Did being in a 4 year course ever felt different compared to your 5 year counterparts? Also, did you face any difficulty in the placements?

5-year integrated courses have more time to experiment with the technologies. But in our case, it was a bit rushed, at least for our batch, because we were under the hypothesis that first year of college is for enjoyment. This is not advisable for a student of 4-year course.

Coming to placements, the only difference was that the students from 5-year courses had higher packages than us, but not by a high margin. There are certain companies which came for the 5-year batch, but at the same time there are certain companies which came only for the 4-year batch.

Can you share with us how you had used the lockdown period to develop your skills?

If you are in your first or second year then keep experimenting, explore all the domains and find out your interests. Always keep doing something which helps to develop your skills. A lot of people say to enjoy the first year, but my personal opinion is that the best time to enjoy your college life is after you get placed, you have everything so you can just chill out.

Don’t be competitive with your friends, they are on the same journey. We have many competitors in the outside world, so considering your batchmates as your competitors will add to your burden. Helping your friends solve their problems will help take you forward rather than considering them as competitors.

How much important is our academic performance in the placements?

Generally, first and second year topics are very important. So, you should be equally focused on them. Do some fun, but at the same time remember that you are here to study and it is equally important. Some companies are putting a CGPA of 7.0+ as a barrier while others put it at 8.0+. Things are changing, and I believe that it’s importance will decrease in subsequent years.

Kindly walk us through the memories which you cherish in the 4 years of your college journey.

We were the second batch of 4-year course in the institute. Most of us had made a mistake that we used to contact the seniors of 5-year integrated courses. But I found a few good seniors from 4-year batch itself. I started participating in AASF contests. AASF had a web development contest in which we took part.

We had Infotsav in our first year ,we contributed a lot and enjoyed ourselves much. I got selected in Uthaan which gave me a lot more memories to cherish.

We had our Parichay in which I danced on the stage for the first time. In the second year, we were more inclined towards our studies. We had Aurora in which I didn’t take part but it was an amazing fest (shoutout to everyone who were part of that).Then, lockdown happened. In lockdown, it was all about internships and we started preparing for an internship. Lockdown part was blurry, I only remember preparing for internships, and doing internships.

Currently, the juniors are sitting idle at home. Is there something they should focus on in this free time that can help in the long run?

I would advise them to try as many fields as they can. Due to the online classes, students get more time to work on themselves. Also, due to the less academic pressure usually in the first year, a student can try various fields freely, with less pressure of academics and more time.

Sometimes, it happens that we get demotivated by seeing others working more efficiently than us. How to get out of this peer pressure?

In my opinion, it actually has a positive impact. If you are feeling pressurized you should work, it motivates you to study. It’s true that you get a bit anxious but it is better than realizing in the pre-final when companies come for interviews. You should take it in a positive way as it will help you in development without being anxious.

We are concluding our interview here. thankyou for sharing your precious time and experience with us .You are a source of motivation and inspiration for many and we wish you a bright future ahead.

Interviewed by Dhruv Sanghvi and Akshitha Mittapally

Co-ordinated by Kailash Kejriwal

PlaceKode with Aditi Singh placed at Google was originally published in Uthaan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

First of all, congratulations on getting selected at one of the foremost investment banking companies of all time, Goldman Sachs. How exciting is it to be offered an internship at Goldman Sachs and be put there? What was your initial reaction?

After knowing that I got an internship in Goldman Sachs, I was so excited, and I rushed to my family members to tell them about this good news. Getting an internship there meant a lot to me because the selection procedure for Goldman Sachs is quite tough. Moreover, getting a good result after your hard work is quite satisfying.

Can you share your experience as an intern in Goldman Sachs?

It was a summer internship that comprised eight weeks. But Goldman Sachs reduced it to 6 weeks. The first week went into orientation. I was assigned to work on the frontend part, but I also needed to work on the backend with GraphQL, which was new for me. Also, I was asked to host my project using Docker and Kubernetes. I learned all these new skills from this internship. Overall, it was a great experience either in learning or in corporate life.

Can you give us a rundown of your interview procedure and how you felt afterward ?

Goldman Sachs conducted interviews in a total of 3 rounds on the same day. It started off at 9 AM and ended at 6 PM. All the students appearing for the interview were asked to join a zoom call. Each student was then called into a separate room. The interview served as a formal introduction. Then, there were project discussions, 1–2 questions on coding, questions from CS fundamentals, and puzzles. After every round, the selected students were made to join into a common room.

How important was the Prographer internship experience in the Goldman Sachs interview process?

When I got an internship in Prographer, I realized that working with a firm is totally different from working as an individual. When you work with a firm, you get to know what is going on in industry and how things work there.

My job profile there was related to the frontend part. But the main thing which the company taught me was time management, work division, working as a team, and I think this helped me a lot in my future internships.

prographer

What projects did you work on prior to the interview, and how did you prioritize them for the resume?

Most of the projects mentioned in my resume are based on Internet of Things or IoT. My team and I did my first IoT project in a hackathon. This project was about queue management. We came up with a solution to reduce the queue in supermarkets and malls. We created a smart shopping cart. It generates the bill of all the items we put into it.

I recommend preparing a complex software-based project that creates a good impact in the interview and makes a good impression in the resume.

How was your week prior to the interview like? Did you have any checklist for last minute preparation?

There is no last minute checklist. We can take up the questions from LeetCode, which were previously asked by a particular company. Even on GitHub, people put up the question previously asked by the company, and we can use it as well. I did solve the problems from the interview section of LeetCode.

“Our hold of a concept is known when we are working in a time-bound condition”

This helped me a lot to solve the problems in the interview beforehand.

Can you please share the online resources you had followed for your interview preparation?

LeetCode and Geeks-for-Geeks were the primary resources I followed. For the system design section, I had referred to different articles from Medium.com. I think this would fill most of our requirements.

• LeetCode - The World's Leading Online Programming Learning Platform
• GeeksforGeeks

How did hackathons aid in the development of your coding talents, and can you tell us about some of the hackathons you’ve attended?

My first hackathon was the Hack-A-BIT at BIT Mesra which is the second largest hackathon for students. It was my only on-site hackathon. Personally, I enjoyed the atmosphere there. It did not help us in a direct way, but from the development point of view, these hackathons were really very helpful.

The other major hackathon was Smart India Hackathon 2020 — Hardware Edition which was organized in a virtual manner. We managed to bag the first place there in our category and the overall experience was good. And lastly, we also participated in Microsoft Imagine Cup and we managed to reach the India semifinals there.

One more thing I would like to include is Google Build for India. It was not exactly a kind of hackathon but somewhat related to startup ideas and all. We went to Google’s Gurugram office and it was fun doing a presentation there.

I can also remember a few instances when our code stopped working just before the final assessment. But we managed to solve those issues by doing some last minute changes.

• Hack-A-BIT | Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra
• Imagine Cup
• Build for Digital India - Student Developer Solve for India - Home

You had a CGPA of 10 in the first semester, and you have consistently maintained a good CGPA throughout your 5 years. How did you manage your academics along with coding and development?

Maintaining a decent CGPA does not require any additional effort. You just need to maintain consistency, because college life is different from school life. I used to remain indulged in my studies during my first year.

But it is not about getting a 10 CGPA every time. When you come to college with a high expectation to grab a good placement, then you must maintain somewhat-decent grades. One should always try to aim for 8.0+ CGPA.

At the same time you should also prioritize the subjects which are more important for you.

How did clubs help you in personality development? How was your experience in the dramatics club?

Clubs helped me greatly in the formation of my personality. I was fortunate enough to meet several wonderful people there, and it greatly helped my ability to express myself. At the same time, it assisted me in overcoming my fear of speaking in front of a large audience.

The dramatics club of our institute encouraged me to express myself while also interacting with others.

After completion of your internship and before getting the full time job offer there, how did you utilize your time?

I still remember the last day of my internship. I had a discussion with my mentor about my work. And he asked me whether I wanted a PPO there. And I was like “Yes, of course”. Who does not want to? The way he talked to me gave me a feeling that he was happy with my work, and this made me confident that the company will give me a PPO. After my internship, I had a week off before receiving my full-time offer via email.

If you are doing an internship in Goldman Sachs, you have a high probability to get a full time offer, compared to other companies. Getting an internship there is quiet tough. But if you do, there is a high chance that the company will give you the offer.

This was my case. Generally, you need to keep yourself motivated, your morale high and do coding consistently, so that if you get a better opportunity, you don’t miss it out.

If you are made to begin your journey as a first year student, what would be the mistakes that you would avoid?

As I have already stated, in my first year, I was a student who always remains indulged in the academics. But, I would suggest my juniors to get out and explore, make some friends, play sports, interact with the seniors, and then focus on their academic work at the same time. I believe that having fun is crucial for maintaining a healthy mental state. Finally, you have to cover all of these points, so make every effort to enjoy the journey.

Our interview is coming to a close right now. Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge and experience with us. We wish you a prosperous future because you are a source of encouragement and inspiration for many people.

Interviewed by Ayush Jha and Ponnolu Yushmanth Pali Reddy

Co-ordinated by Arushi Agarwal

PlaceKode with Ashish Kirti Singh placed at Goldman Sachs was originally published in Uthaan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The IT industry is ever-evolving. Every day, new technologies come into existence, washing out the old ones. The rapid evolving of this industry is marked and is changing the shape of business measures. In such a vast sector, alone academics can’t keep you up with industry standards. You have to learn from external resources to be in the race. You have to be consistent, you have to be hardworking to set yourself apart from the crowd. You have to be unique. On this edition of PlaceKode by Uthaan we have excerpts from the interview of Ritika Agarwal, who is placed at Morgan Stanley. So let’s get to know how she flew high with her efforts and stood as an inspiration for many.

Firstly, many congratulations on being placed at one among the foremost investment banking companies of all time, Morgan Stanley. How do you feel about being placed there?

Thanks for the congratulations. It has been a very awesome experience to be placed at one of the topmost global investment brands. When I interned here, the experience was quite excellent, and I’m pleased to be placed there.

We are going to build up a chain by attaching all the links we could, and this process kick starts with your job profile. So, could you tell us about your job profile?

I am a summer technology analyst. Presently, we are building a search program that filters financial analysts. The current system had methods that take a long time to process. The task was to make a search system in which the person could type in their query. The system should search for the query using natural language processing to get the results. This is basically what I am doing now.

We would like to know about the significant changes you have observed in work life, after placement, or as an intern, due to pandemic?

At first, I had been quite excited that I would get to join the Office of Morgan Stanley campus. But, everything became remote due to the pandemic. The administration made a Citrix workspace for us. We had a login so that we used to log into the host computer at Morgan Stanley’s offices and then work from there. We had regular meetings with the manager. We have personal mentors called our buddy with whom we had regular meetings. The administration used to take other HR meetings for us on group calls and a private platform, making work more straightforward. That is why, for interaction and the work part, we did not face any difficulties.

Can you please walk us through your interview process? We would like to hear in-depth about the rounds within the selection procedure and the questions you have encountered.

So, there were four rounds in total, including the coding round.

The first coding round had three questions, and we were given 2 hours on the platform. The questions were based on graphs. There were some aptitude questions, as well. The difficulty of the coding test was, I would say, medium to hard.

The next interview round was held over a phone call. The interviewer asked me a bit about the projects I had in my resume. I had to explain the project and the essential points, such as methodology, and then he asked me to put in questions. One among those was how you would fit over a 20 GB process on a 4G RAM? So it would have to be solved using virtual memory, an operating system concept. Then there was another graph-based question.

After that, in the second round, the interviewer asked me a bunch of questions about the operating system and DBMS. These two subjects are the basics that you should cover during your preparation. Then she asked me a bunch of coding questions based on sorting algorithms and other data structures and algorithms. There is also always a system design question based on object-oriented programming. For me, she asked how to design a library system. This was the second round.

Then in the third and final round, the interviewer was the same. He asked me the same question which he asked me in the first round; the graph question and the second question was based on a sliding window technique. So, these were the things.

Along with the questions and stuff, we would like to know how you could describe your mind amid the interview process, like how have you encountered your nervousness and anxiety, maintaining your Peace of Mind for the consecutive rounds?

I was usually nervous before the interview, but I would just go into a calm zone during the interview. I get relaxed during the interview. You must keep in mind that the interviewer just wants to see how much knowledge you have, and usually, if you are stuck, they will give you some hints to push you along. So, you should not get hyper. It would be great if, before the interviews, you practice giving a mock interview. That is an excellent method to assess yourself and practice the state of your mind.

Practice giving a mock interviews.

Continuing with this, How would you evaluate your confidence and preparation on the day of the interview? Did you make a checklist for your last-minute preparation?

To be precise, I didn’t do last-minute preparation. I had been continuously preparing since August itself. I had been practicing coding on the Geeksforgeeks platform. I looked at all the questions which make use of the basic concepts. The basic concepts should be concrete. And that’s what they focus on. The interviews’ questions are not very difficult, and they’re usually basic questions. They check the knowledge whether you know the basic concepts and stuff.

So then, what should we do if we are stuck on a question during the interview?

You can ask the interviewer, and he will give you hints. Like in my case, I could not determine what data structure or approach should I take for the graph question, which he asked. So I asked him if he could help me along. He said that that question was really tough, so it was okay to ask for help. That was a pretty good game that I was able to use. Don’t be afraid to ask for hints.

Coming to your internships, you have internship experience at Netaji Subash Institute of Technology. Can you please describe your experience there? Please also include the way they helped you to acquire the next internship.

So basically, that was a research internship I did there under a professor. I had to develop a method to stabilize the neural networks using extended Kalman filters. It was a good experience. I learned a lot, especially as my field of interest is machine learning and deep learning. I would say it helped me grab an internship at Morgan Stanley. Yes, having experience like this on your resume is very helpful as they can see that you are proactive and want to work.

So as you said, you have also interned at ‘Morgan Stanley’ as a Technology Summer Analyst. How was your experience there? What qualities did you grab, and how did they help in securing the placement?

The experience was extraordinary.

First of all, what we had was training. Morgan Stanley is very focused on interns to learn stuff. We used to have regular classes during the first month, where we were taught things like data structures, java, and different courses. Usually, your managers will be selecting the type, of course, you will be taking. If you want to enroll in another course, you can request them, and they will change the schedule for you. As Morgan Stanley is a financial investment bank, we had day-long courses on finance. They taught us about stocks, hiQs, and all types of financial terms. They also conducted an interactive game, which was an excellent way to interact with other interns.

We also had regular meetings with the manager, the HR, and the mentor called buddy. There was a parallel hierarchy where we could talk with anyone we want regardless of their position in the company. We were on a virtual platform, we had contacts of everyone working in the company, so it was straightforward. Lastly, after the project completion, they had a science exhibition where we had to present our project.

You have got a pre-placement offer from Morgan Stanley. How would you describe the day you got to know that? For the PPO, if you were told to accept it at that instant only or else you would lose it, what would you have done?

So, we had been waiting for a month for the placement offer, and I was very excited when I got the mail that I was selected. We were given 3 to 4 days to accept the offer letter. Of course, I accepted it.

Going forward, Considering that your interest lies within the neural network and machine learning domain, can you please share how you began with it and what did you aim for?

Firstly, I took Andrew NG’s course on Coursera, which is a great beginning point. There are a lot of blogs I usually refer to as machine learning Mastery. You have medium articles which you can search for, and also there is one blog named PaperSpace. They post remarkably great in-depth articles about different concepts like stochastic gradient descent and other machine learning algorithms, which is a great place to look behind all the concepts’ math.

You sure did put in a lot of effort towards your aim, ma’am.

We’ll like to know how the college environment was during the internship season? Was there a sense of competition among all? Or the people we’re helping each other?

Yeah, there is a bit of a sense of competition, but everyone is pretty much helpful. I had made a partnership with my friend. We used to study together from the morning itself. People usually do things united because everyone wants to achieve the same thing. It’s better if you do it with your friends. That way, you can learn more through discussions. Do things united.

Coming to the beginning of your journey. What was your college life like? How have you handled both academics and your extracurriculars?

In the beginning, I joined Uthaan Club. I was in the writing Department. I guess I handled it pretty well. We used to host different events, and then there were fests. I used to participate in them. I have also organized some events. As for the academics, I made time for that as well. I made it pretty balanced. Usually, the events are held on the weekends so that we can study on the weekdays. You have to make time for everything if you plan properly. You can make a timetable of when you want to study and when you will be taking part in the co-curricular activities.

We know that you like to volunteer, and you were involved in the TechTogether in New York and HackDuke as a student mentor. Please tell us about your experience and what stuff you gained during these events.

I was the student mentor at these events held by MLH. That’s a hackathon organization that holds many hackathons. They sponsor these events. These events are usually held in discord for students. I was a student mentor. We had a timetable of when we would mentor the students participating in the hackathon and help them with the problems they were facing, like doing their projects. As I have experience in machine learning, the students facing issues with their machine learning projects asked me through discord. We had a video chat wherein I looked at their code and helped them by providing them with links where they could find the related stuff and get an idea of where they were going wrong. I was explaining to them where were they going wrong by debugging their codes. So these events are held quite seamlessly, given that they are organized online. Everything was appropriately scheduled. Mentoring gave me an experience of how to coordinate with other people and help them.

You have come a long way. How would you look back at your younger self?

I think I haven’t made any mistakes as such. I don’t have any kind of regrets. I would say that one should be consistent and believe in themselves.

Were you inclined towards neural networks and machine learning from the very beginning?

In the beginning, I was kind of iffy. I have done a project in Android as well. I was kind of introduced to machine learning by my father. I have a keen interest in Math, and deep learning and machine learning look all about probability, statistics, and math when I looked at it. So that’s why I got inclined towards it. I have an interest in the research-based part of it. I like discovering new things and from things that have been made. I have also done a research project. In it as well. So, it’s a fascinating field for me.

That’s interesting. Could you tell us about the websites you used to get maximum leverage out of there?

First of all, I took all the Andrew NG’s Machine Learning courses on Coursera. I also used blogs. Usually, what I do is I search on the Internet, and then I see whichever article explains the most. I think that’s the best way. In machine learning, take a good look at probability and statistics. A lot of machine learning methods are primarily based on it. You need to add the feature engineering part because data cleaning is an essential part of machine learning algorithms.

Thanks for the resources, ma’am. Interested will try doing this. How should we get highlighted from a crowd, and what techniques should we follow to get successful?

First of all, I think you should be hardworking. You shouldn’t be willing to give up if you face a hurdle; that certainly highlights one from the crowd. One more suggestion is that people usually make a clone of a website already made. That’s not a very worthwhile project to pick up. You learn from it, but putting that in your resume is not very impactful. You should look at the projects useful in daily life or research-based projects if you are into deep learning or machine learning.

Be consistent. Be Hardworking. Be unique.

According to you, what role does a person’s Co-curricular experience play during interviews?

Co-Curricular experiences are essentially all about personality development. You learn how to interact with people, how to coordinate, and how to organize things. During an internship and the interviews, you have to interact with the people in a remarkably optimized way. So the co-curricular activities help a lot with these things. They give you a broader perspective of mind as you organize different things and face various difficulties that sharpen you.

Was your interview experience based on machine learning exclusive, or was it much more inclined towards coding?

Morgan Stanley is still making a breakthrough in its machine learning and AI Department. So they truly did not ask me about my machine learning experience. They were more focused on data structures.

What percentage of the coding part can we expect in the interview when one is involved in the machine learning domain?

That depends on what you are interviewing for. If you’re interviewing for a machine learning-based position, for example, more prominent companies are focused on the coding part. So if you are interviewing for a machine learning-based job in a more prominent company, you should focus on both aspects, machine learning and coding. In startups, if you are getting interviewed for a machine learning-based position, you will be asked many in-depth questions about machine learning.

So, even if we are interested in machine learning, we have to code a little bit?

Coding is a must, as I said. I’m certainly interested in machine learning, but the interviewers didn’t ask me anything about it. It was just an introduction I gave them about my project.

What advice would you like to give to the freshers like us for their academic and career journey?

I would like to say that you need to be hardworking and consistent. Always have an excellent grasp of the basic concepts of whatever you are doing. I have seen some people in the interviews giving the example of machine learning or deep learning, but then they don’t know basic stuff. During interviews and in your career, learning and understanding the basic concept is very important. It is the only way you can build up a strong foundation.

Basic concepts should be crystal clear.

There’s a last-minute question. This question revolves in everyone’s mind. So suppose me, I graduated with my bachelor’s degree and was offered an outstanding job for some 40 lakhs package. Should I go to the position immediately or opt for higher studies or I should do the job for a year and then opt for higher studies? Most are confused about this. What advice would you give?

So what I would say is that usually, you want to opt for higher studies if you’re going into research-based positions. If you don’t want to go into research-based positions, you can first earn money, do the job and then go for higher studies if you wish. Suppose someone truly wants to get into a research-based position. In that case, usually, companies look for PhD candidates, so I would say do research. Do your higher studies and then go in.

Interviewed by Laukik Atul Shah and Lingala Sreya

Coordinated by Shivam Yadav

PlaceKode with Ritika Agarwal placed at Morgan Stanley was originally published in Uthaan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How fascinating does it feel to get selected from such a renowned company like Dell? What was your immediate reaction after this?

I’ve got two offers, the first one from Dell, which came from campus placement, and the second one was a Pre Placement Offer from MakeMyTrip, which got confirmed after two-three months from the offer of dell. So this was my first offer, and as I remember, Dell was the second or the third company which visited our campus. I was happy and relaxed at the same time because I got placed quite early and at such an excellent product-based grade-A company.

Could you briefly outline your work profile at DELL?

I’ll be joining Dell as a Software Development Engineer-II. I’m currently interning with Dell and most probably I’ll be joining as a Software development engineer in the same team. I am a part of the Support Assist Enterprise team.

Take us a week before your interview. Were you having any kind of checklist for last-minute preparations? What were topics that needed more attention?

Dell conducted an online assessment, and after two-three days, I got a confirmation for the interview. So basically, there were two days left for me to prepare for the interview. I went through the “must do” and “company specific” coding questions mentioned in Leetcode, InterviewBit and GeeksforGeeks, and it’s a good practice to brush up our previously learned concepts before appearing for the interview. I also went through my data science projects and revised all the concepts like the implementation part and the algorithms I utilized in them.

For data science part, as I was too lazy to prepare notes, I had bookmarked important articles on medium earlier while studying. For core subjects like Database management systems, Object-oriented programming systems, I reviewed my notes which I made during my GATE preparation. I followed videos on YouTube, especially of Ravindra Babu for these core subjects. So when you have notes prepared, articles marked and also when you go through these specific coding questions , it just takes two- three days to revise everything. So yeah, that’s my checklist.

Engineering students prepare for almost 4 to 5 years, which is approximately 1600 days. Hence it’s challenging to showcase your 1600 days of work in just one day of the interview. Could you express your state of mind on the interview day? How did you retain your thoughts centered considering the tense environment around you during the interview?

Yeah, it’s a tough task to showcase all your knowledge in just one day because things don’t always go in your favor. I gave various interviews before that particular interview and that was one of the reasons why I was quite relaxed before my interview at Dell.

I resolved to keep giving interviews with full confidence, and it’s my motto, “do the best and leave the rest”. I don’t like to have many expectations before my interview because when you keep a lot of expectations, you are bound to get nervous. And when you get nervous, you won’t be able to give 100%. Also I don’t think much after giving the interviews too, even if my interview goes well, as there are certain factors which would affect your chances of getting selected and those are not under our control. I just think that I have to give my best in that particular interview.

Now comes the most critical part, your interview. Give us a brief description of the interview process round by round? What were the questions in each round, and how did you handle them?

For MakeMyTrip

It was through the off-campus placement. My resume was shortlisted, and I directly got a call for the interview. It was for a data scientist’s profile, and I had just one round in the interview. You can have second round of interview too depending on your performance. If you perform well in your first round, there won’t be a need of second round.

Coding questions

Count the total number of pairs in an array with the given sum.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/count-pairs-with-given-sum/

Data Science questions

Questions related to Project

My project was based on “Image captioning system for the Hindi language,” they asked questions based on that, implementation details, the algorithms I used for it and the preprocessing steps as well.

Then apart from my project, there were some very general data science questions too. They asked about my favourite classification algorithm in ML to which I replied ,“decision trees” and then, there were some questions based on that topic.

Coursework questions

There were questions based on normalization from DBMS, some complex queries from SQL , also they asked me to explain the different types of joins in SQL. There were questions from Operating Systems about the concept of paging and the difference between paging and segmentation.

For DELL there was an assessment round for dell consisting of 3 sections.

MCQs were based on core subjects like DBMS OS, CN, OOPS, and C++ in the first section.

In the second section, there were questions related to code debugging. Those questions were quite easy. You just had to select the language you are most comfortable in to debug.

And the third section was related to coding, and they had two easy and fundamental questions.

Then there were three rounds of the interview out of which two were technical and third was HR round.

For the First technical round, they asked me about my favorite data structure, to which I replied, “Linked List”, so they asked me two coding questions based on that topic.

“insertion after a node in the doubly linked list,”

https://www.javatpoint.com/insertion-in-doubly-linked-list-after-specified-node

“ Given only a pointer to a node to be deleted in singly linked List, then How would you do it?” (in O(1) time)

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/in-a-linked-list-given-only-a-pointer-to-a-node-to-be-deleted-in-a-singly-linked-list-how-do-you-delete-it/

They also asked some subjective questions like

Advantages of a doubly-linked list over a single-linked list,

The best sorting algorithm for sorting in an almost sorted array.

And then, there were questions related to data science. So they asked me about correlation matrices and then asked me to define the difference between false positives and false-negative and derive the formula for them based on the correlation matrices. There was another question about the difference between Precision, recall and accuracy and when to use which.

Then there were questions based on my project, and I had used CNN and RNN, so they asked me to describe in brief the working of CNN and RNN. My project was based on an Image captioning system for Indian languages. Therefore they also asked me how would I extend my project to work for blind people? I waited for one hour and got a confirmation call for the second round with the team manager.

In the second round, there were two coding questions,

rotate the linked list to the right by three places,

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/rotate-a-linked-list/

reverse the singly linked list.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/reverse-a-linked-list/

Subjective Questions:

Advantages of heapsort compared to the merge sort and quick sort.

What are the characteristics of a good program, and how would you ensure them in your program.

There was also a discussion around another project of mine “recommendation system for movies” so he asked me to explain in detail about the algorithms used in it, like nearest neighbor collaborative filtering, content based filtering methods, Matrix factorization method.

Then he asked some general questions like How many programming languages I know and with which language am I most comfortable? And if given a choice, which team( Web development, Data Science, Data Engineering etc.), I would like to join. And then I got the confirmation call for the HR round in 15 mins.

The HR round was simple, where they asked about myself, my childhood, my confidence level, my mistakes in life, my best decision in life and why I wanted to join Dell?

They wanted me to keep speaking, think aloud. They were interested not only in the solution, but also wanted to see my thinking process.

What were the study materials and resources you followed for Both Software Development Engineer and data science? How should we use resources precisely to uplift ourselves?

Initially, I was involved in competitive coding and made my account on multiple websites like CodeChef, HackerRank, etc. I practiced coding on all these platforms during my first year, but when the first year was about to end, we had a session on data science which I found interesting, so I started to explore this field also along with coding. You should always start with machine learning, don’t go for Deep learning in the very beginning. Firstly, I followed the ML course by Andrew Ng. After watching those videos, I also studied in depth about the various algorithms like classification and regression algorithms, and I marked the articles related to them. Time passed by and I got more interested in deep learning, so I switched to it . I have done multiple courses like Byte-Sized-Chunks: Recommendation Systems, Deep Learning: Advanced Computer Vision course and another course on NLP, Hands On Natural Language Processing Using Python and I made notes while going through these courses for revision before interviews. Then during my final year, I brushed up my knowledge through company-specific coding questions on the websites like LeetCode, InterviewBit GeeksforGeeks, etc.

What should we do if we are puzzled about a topic?

A very important tip, “you should watch editorials for all problems”. It doesn’t matter if you solved that question by yourself or got stuck because of some issue, you should always refer to the editorial. Editorials help you to troubleshoot when you get stuck on a problem. Also, at times editorial may have described some optimal approach or a new concept which would definitely help you to learn something new. Our purpose is to learn new things, not just solving the questions. One more thing after going through the editorial, make this a practice to reattempt the question or questions similar to it-trust me it helps a lot! If you are stuck on some topics related to machine learning or data science, you will find the solution on GitHub or Kaggle or even medium, some other person must have done that before you and it’s always a good practice to refer to some other person’s code if you get stuck!

What role do communication skills and personality advancement play in the interview, and how can one improve them? Do college ventures help for the same?

Communication skills play an essential role in presenting yourself in the interview as well as in the corporate life ahead. Participating in college activities and proceeding forward as a volunteer for the college’s fests would help you go out of your comfort zone and prepare for such skills. When I entered the first year of college, I was also not very confident, but when seniors motivated us to participate in such activities, I gained a lot. I gained confidence through it, and in some ways, it helped me for my interviews too. So one should get actively involved in various clubs, activities conducted by them and also volunteer in college fests because it will carve you for the corporate world.

What, according to you, is the best counterbalance between coding and development?

You should be equally good in coding and development. Coding and development go hand in hand. Both are not separate, and knowledge of only one aspect can’t fetch you a job. Development is a necessity in a coder’s life, and it is something you will be doing for the rest of your life. Coding, on the other hand, is an essential requirement for it. For example, you will learn data structures and time complexity through coding, which become very useful in development because in the corporate world the code needs to be crisp, short and precise and to make the code like that you need to come up with a better algorithms, feasible data structures while solving and optimizing problems which you learn while you code!. If you have a balance of both on your resume, it will make your profile healthy, making a positive expression on the interviewers.

Last but not least, Any recommendation or suggestion to your fellow juniors so that they can also achieve something unique like you?

So finally, stating as a summary, focus on smart work. Try to manage your time wisely. Academics, coding, development, club activities, participating in fests and making friends are essential and can be handled by having a proper balance among all. The overall motive is personality development, not just securing a good job. Try to explore all the fields, before choosing your interest, whether it be machine learning or web development or cloud computing, etc. You can start with competitive coding in the first year. Also, try to make notes for whatever you study to refer to those topics if you forget something in the future. For the core subjects like DBMS, OS, OOPS, you can complete it with your academics or there are various excellent instructors on YouTube as well who can help you with it. Start training yourself through regular practice for the near corporate world, and if you are preparing well with all the resources available with you, you are bound to crack any interview. And again, “Do your best and leave the rest.”

Interviewed by Akash Gupta and Ujjawal Gupta

Coordinated by Soumya Singh

PlaceKode with Kriti Gupta placed at Dell was originally published in Uthaan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Going off with the mainstream crowd can set you apart!

The IT industry is ever-evolving. You can always switch away from mainstream Coding or Machine Learning and do what your heart desires. In this edition of Placekode, we have Shubham Bhattacharyya of the IPG-2016 batch, talking about his interview experience for GoIbibo. He did make full use of his 5 years journey, trying hands-on Android Development, Game Development, AR-VR along with making wonderful memories! Go check out this PlaceKode interview if you want to kickstart your journey in any of these fields.

To start with, Congratulations on being placed in such a renowned company. A new job means a fresh start, a new goal, a new world, and a new segment of life. What was your instant reaction when you came to know that you got placed at Goibibo?

Frankly speaking, it was a feeling of satisfaction as I have achieved what I dreamed of. The most precious phase, which is motivating us since the beginning, is our career. The long and awaited journey of almost seven years comes to an end when you get a job with a new commitment to improve yourself further. So, the main thing is its finally over now, and I can relax for some time.

Could you please tell us about your job profile a bit?

Goibibo is focused on travelling and tourism. There are many teams, and they cater to various categories like hotels and flights. I am in the flight’s team, so any changes which have to be made in the flight’s section of the Goibibo’s android app are done by my team. I was an intern there now I am converted into a full-time employee.

Could you please walk us through your entire interview process, about the rounds, the types of questions asked, and how were the interviewers? Were they helping you to come up with the solution?

First, you need to understand the hiring process. Companies’ hiring process involves reviewing the applications, shortlisting the potential candidates, testing the candidates through interviews. In pool hiring, every team in a company gives a list of available positions to HR. He conducts hiring drives in schools and colleges, selects the candidates, puts them in the teams, and they are not selected based on their profiles. But in another type of hirings, there is an opening at a company. Potential candidates from a particular profile are chosen for the specific opening. If you give an Android development profile interview, you will get selected in the Android development team. My referral got selected; on 2 Dec 2019, I got a call and the interview scheduled for 4 December. There were two telephonic interviews followed by a discussion with HR. In the first interview, there were two questions based on data structures and algorithms,

The first was on the basic BFS approach:

Breadth First Search or BFS for a Graph — GeeksforGeeks

The second was on a reverse linked list:

Reverse a linked list — GeeksforGeeks

The next was a technical round and the questions asked were how the code behind the for loop works in C++ (The actual question was related to Android development, this is a parallel question in C++)

What does the code behind a “for loop” look like? — Quora

and also asked about android architecture, android framework and application of DFS.

I received another call on 6th Dec, for the next interview, the interviewer, Damanpreet sir, asked me whether I am into competitive coding or development, and to challenge me as I was into development, he gave me a question, asked to code in java instead of C++, and also asked about Dynamic programming, Greedy algorithms and HYPS(Hyper-programming system). He also asked about DBMS(Database management system), basics of CN, OS, OOPS, and some questions related to android.

Next, I got a call for the HR round. It was a generic round. There were some questions like, where do I see myself in five years, questions related to my hobbies, and playing the guitar. They also asked me if I got an offer from a bigger MNC, would I leave Goibibo, so I said no, I didn’t know where they would put me, but in Goibibo, I knew what I would do.

How did you manage to tackle the nervousness during the interview?

The interviewer’s only motivation is to select you, so they are so friendly and set the environment lively and comfortable. In my case, I have never talked to those people before. Everyone was 8–10 years older than me. Still, they made the environment very comfortable, so when he asked me to code in java instead of C++, I told him I don’t do competitive coding in java, then he helped me a bit. In the end, I wrote the code in java. Also, these interviews are not time-bound. It’s a beneficial factor. In an interview, you have to be expressive, not panic, and the more friendly and lively you get, the easier it gets. If you cannot write the actual code for a question, you can try pseudo-code or tell them your approach. They want to see your thinking. In my Microsoft interview, I wasn’t able to remember an algorithm, so I showed them the concept on a whiteboard, and I cleared that round. So if any problem arises during a question in the interview, you should keep yourself calm and relaxed and target the next question if the previous didn’t go well.

As you are experienced in multiple internships in Android and Game Development. How did your projects and internships at Zoudiy private limited help you to crack this interview? And how did you decide what to put on your resume?

The internships and the projects help you a lot in placements. I have done several internships in android development. Zoudiy private limited is a company providing service for various clients. I need to develop apps according to the clients’ requirements, so while working in a small company, you need to work on each aspect of the app. So lots of areas right from scratch will get covered while developing the app. Instead, in big companies, you will be dealing with a small fragment of the app. Internships are a great way to apply knowledge to real-world experience. It gives you an understanding of the working environment.

Regarding the resume, you need to make a separate resume for every profile. For Android development, web development, game development, the resume should not be identical. Your resume should be company-specific. You should mention the technologies used and unique things from your projects. Never mention the unfamiliar technologies in the resume because if they ask tricky questions, you will be in trouble. Mention only relevant things in the resume.

Can you tell us what your strategy was for the preparation of the interview? Like there are ample amounts of online resources available, how did you sort out best among them? Can you tell us some hand-picked resources you followed?

Honestly speaking, I didn’t prepare for the interview because I was hoping to apply for the placements in January or February, which came in November itself. Still, I had an idea about android development because I had been doing it for two or two and a half years. Keeping android aside, the best approach is to solve the interview questions on LeetCode. At that time, I was also preparing for GATE, so all subjects like OS, DBMS, and OOPS were covered. In short, the gate preparation helped me with the internship preparation. There is also a youtube channel of Ravindrababu Ravula, which is very famous among gate aspirants. Apart from the coding perspective, you should pick any one development domain and do at least 10–15 projects to know how the field works. If you want to learn any type of development, just go to the FreeCodeCamp Youtube channel. They have 1-hour crash courses for almost everything.

If you want to learn any type of development, just go to the FreeCodeCamp Youtube channel. They have 1-hour crash courses for almost everything.

And the other thing is how you can study OS, DBMS and other basic subjects. GfG has excellent articles like whole categories made for each subject. For first-year students, I would advise that Leetcode has 1000 or 1200 questions on the entire website, and if you do only five questions a day, you can like complete them in 4–5 months. If you haven’t started coding yet, you can begin with HackerEarth’s Codemonk and Hackerrank’s 30 days coding challenge.

Did you have any checklist for last-minute preparation?

For subjects, GeeksforGeeks have last-minute notes(LMNs), consisting of one page summary for each chapter. You can revise them. For coding, I had written my own notes for basic algorithms. I went through them once before the interview. For development, GeeksforGeeks have excellent articles, you can refer to them, but there are many articles, so going through them at the last minute may not be possible. Googling top questions related to development will indeed have the upper hand.

The future of game development is very promising. Games serve as a proving ground for most of the future technologies and trends. What do you think is the future of game development in India?

The gaming industry has a promising future ahead. India is the next playground for game development. There is a lot of scope and an ample amount of opportunities available. As all the gaming companies moving from China are going to be reestablished in India. Rockstar Games, UBISOFT, Epic games, Tensent, EA games, all five major gaming companies have started their offices in India. Even games are developed in our country. Its quality may not be up to mark. Still, it’s a start, and in the coming 4–5 years, the animation and gaming industry will evolve unquestionably. Yet, at the same time, the gaming industry is far more demanding and challenging than the software development industry. So hiring will be the best of best from the pool; working in the gaming industry is not everyone’s cup of tea.

Virtual reality (VR) and Augmented reality(AR) are considered essential technologies, giving scope for an extraordinary jump for adverse fields. In your view, What sets VR and AR development apart from each other?

The terms virtual reality and augmented reality get thrown around a lot these days. They are two very different concepts. In simple words, a digital world is created while developing a game. Augmented reality is a perfect combination of the digital world and the physical elements to create an artificial environment. In AR, the user always has a sense of presence in the real world. You cannot just code a game in AR because it involves Deep Learning along with several factors to keep in mind. In VR, that is, virtual reality is a computer-generated effect of an alternate world. It is used in 3D movies and video games. It helps to create an effect similar to the real world and immerse the user using sensory devices like headsets. VR needs a powerful computer system, so making VR accessible is another different headache altogether.

Coding is fun for many but not for all. As you are more into android and game development, how did you find you have more interest in them?

When you open CodeChef and see a question in competitive coding, there are two possibilities. First, you don’t get anything about the problem and second, it is easy, and you can write code for it. When you write the code and run the program, all the test cases were not cleared, so it takes a lot of time on a single question. After thinking about the right approach for a question, you have to code it and have to handle the test cases. I didn’t like it and felt it was cumbersome. On the other hand, in android and game development, even if you do a small thing like in a game, you press ‘W’, and your character starts moving forward. These things used to make me happy, and also you could show and share them with your friends while you couldn’t do the same for your code. In development, you could see the result instantaneously, and instant gratification was also there.

What are the fields that one should explore who is not interested in competitive coding?

It depends on one’s interests. Deep Learning and machine learning is significantly trending these days. Everybody is doing it. VR, AR or blockchain, three are also common nowadays. You can try game development, generic .net and C# based software development. Development for smart tv’s, watches, fitness wears, and android auto is also coming into the picture. You can explore how interactive devices, e.g. Bluetooth, actually works, how to write codes for them. You can learn about CUDA, which’s a technology from Nvidia. Aim for unconventional technologies, new but not mainstream. You might have an edge among all of your batchmates. Going off with the mainstream crowd can set you apart. If Samsung is hiring and finds one guy who can make an app for their smart tv, that bracket is so small that your hiring chances increase exponentially.

As you mentioned, Development always has been a great driving force for you. What advice would you like to give to students who are stepping into this area?

When you make any app, don’t stop working on it. When the app’s primary purpose is fulfilled, you should keep one thing in mind. It should be unique from the market. There should be an element of your own, and when you end any project on web, android or game development, it should be like a startup, a finished product. You should add like, share, feedback about us, FAQs, every subtle feature should be there. It should be a deployable product. When you have finished your project and uploaded it to GitHub, you should also make a proper Readme for that project. If someone visits your repository on GitHub, he should know how to install and run that app. You should also upload some screenshots of your app. People leave the projects midway, and they do not complete them to the fullest extent. You should also work on a single project at a time because if you are working on some projects simultaneously, your apps’ quality can suffer.

We all know that you have been a very active member of SAC and managed various cultural events in our college. In your opinion, what impact do extra-curricular experiences and managing skills have on the interview?

Active participation in clubs and extracurricular activities gives you a strong foundation of stable leadership, constructive teamwork and confident communication, which are effective life skills. If your resume comprises your soft skills, then you will have the upper hand in HR rounds. The interviewers or hiring managers will understand that you are capable of standing up and taking responsibilities, and not the one who is just sitting in a room in front of a laptop doing the coding. These activities indirectly train your subconscious mind to create backup plans on the spot for the obstacle and give you the ability to withstand stress. To be honest, if some company is hiring a student for android development, participation in clubs and extracurricular activities is not at all crucial for them. I have been a very active member of many clubs, including the music club, because of my self-interest. I used to manage the time for club events and android development.

Lastly, college life is not only about jobs and placements.

You need to enjoy it to the fullest. You need to develop good bonds with your seniors, batchmates, juniors which will last forever.

Like one and a beautiful phase of your life, ‘the college life’ is over now, and you are stepping into a new phase of your life, so, how do you compare to yourself five years ago?

It is very disheartening that college life is coming to an end. 2–3 months are still left though. Before coming to college, there was only one thing going on in my life, JEE. After coming to college, I decided not to carry my past with me. As there were no friends from my school, it was a new beginning for me. I was an introvert and a very reserved person, did not like to speak that much, not into any sports. I used to play the guitar, but only at home, so I thought I have to develop my personality. College is the only place for it, the office does not provide you with this opportunity. I thought I would catch up with everyone, explore everything. In this, I learned so much, witnessed 2 Infotsav, 2 Aurora , did something in every fest, managed clubs, and got involved in everything. I learned so much by interacting with others, taking responsibilities. The things that bother you in the first-year don’t bother you in the fifth year. You understand what is essential and what is not.

What advice do you want to give to your juniors?

Don’t leave anything for the future. Nobody knows when another pandemic comes. It is not that if you don’t do coding from now, then the world would be over. If you do coding from now, then you would have an edge. You should focus equally on enjoying college life, should take part in everything, and explore yourself. You all are at home now, so organise video calls with friends, play games, and if any of your friends live nearby, plan meet up with them, have fun as much as you can at this moment, no one knows what the future brings you.

Interviewed by Aniket Gautam and Shivrani Jadhav

Coordinated by Shambhavi Shandilya

PlaceKode with Shubham Bhattacharya placed at Goibibo was originally published in Uthaan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Congratulations sir for being placed at The Urban company. What’s it like being placed at one of the finest companies?

It feels great being part of one of the finest startups in the country. Recently it has been included among the top 10 startups across India and that helped it gain more recognition. After being placed in it, it felt great to me that my hard work paid off and that I was working among the top 10 startups.

Could you tell us about your job profile?

My job profile is Software development engineer I. So this is basically the entry-level position in majorly all companies. One later gets promoted on the basis of their experience and their performance to Software development engineer II and Software development engineer III.

What are you currently working on as an SDE I?

Basically, I was working in the Backend team and more specifically the platform teams in the backend team. So what platform teams do is like there are a lot of developers who develop products and all. So for those developers to develop the product with very much efficiency and ease there needs to be some internal developer tools. The platform team works on those developing their productivity tools. These tools that we build increase the productivity of the developer.

It feels great that my codes have gone live and people are using them and giving feedback.

Please share your work from home experience like how did you adjust to the current working environment.

I was a bit worried because of the news of offers being revoked, internships being revoked during the nationwide lockdown and so I panicked about it. I was having 2 to 3 internship offers but at the same time, I was worried like what if all of them got revoked. Hopefully, at the end, I got a call from Urban Company and everything went well and they said you will be joining us as an intern. I was relieved after that update.

I was excited to be working from the office but it didn’t happen. I remotely got onboarded. So the excitement got a little faded but overall it felt great. I received all the work from home equipment for my work.

Can you please tell us about your interview experience?

It was around February. I was contacting people like there was no formal opening for the startups. Usually, they hire them as per their needs and the reference that they get. So I started getting in touch with people of that company. I was lucky enough to get a referral from an employee of that company. He liked my profile and referred me for an intern position. After that three rounds were scheduled.

So could you brief us about the interview process round wise?

The first round was a design and a computer science fundamental round. In that round, the questions were around concepts like the OOPs, DBMS and some questions around design. It went pretty well as I was having an idea that the interviewer was satisfied.

After a week, I got a call for the second round of interview. It was a DSA (Data Structures and Algorithms) round. Two questions were asked which were of moderate difficulty level. I could solve these and managed to reach round three. The third round was basically a Hiring Manager round. It was a purely technical round and the questions were again DSA based. The first question was easy and the second question was a bit tricky. I couldn’t solve the question completely. Like my solution was not the answer that he was looking for so he dropped me some hints. I was not very sure how this round went but after a week I got the call. This was the whole process.

What was the mindset of the interviewer, was he strict throughout or was he dropping some hints. Also what to do if we get stuck at a point?

The key point here is that, whenever you are given a question during an interview, take your time, absorb the question, think aloud and then express your ideas clearly to the interviewer. This will help you because let’s say that you are thinking in a different direction then the interviewer will correct you by dropping some hints and if you are going correct then the interviewer will let you continue. With this, the interviewer will get to know about your thinking process. Sometimes we take the question in an altogether different direction, so firstly understand the question, ask for clarification and once you are clear with the question, then proceed forward. So if you’re stuck somewhere and you know you won’t be able to proceed further so don’t waste time instead ask for help there is no problem in doing that.

Sir, also you have vast experience at internships at various companies. So please tell us about your experience that you gained at these tech giants like Directi and Urban Company. How did your internship at Urban Company got converted to a pre-placement offer?

Directi

It wasn’t a software engineering internship. What I gained from that internship was that it added a big name to my resume in the second year itself and it helped me a lot. I leant how the corporate world works.

Urban Company

In the initial days, you will struggle with things because whatever project you worked upon, they were the local projects like development code, suddenly you have been put into an environment where you have to write the production level code. So they are altogether different things and you will doubt yourself over small things. In that case, ask doubts from your mentor as they have been in your shoes a few years back so they can understand at what position the interns are. The second thing is to interact as much as possible with your team members. Get an idea about their problems and what they are trying to solve. Align with their long term visions. When considering you for hiring they would look if you meet their long term vision and goals. If you don’t meet their goals they won’t hire you. They want their interns to be aligned with their long term goals.

Also, the plus point is that the deadlines in internships are flexible but whenever you are given a deadline try work within the deadline. It would give a good impression on the manager and your mentor and so I followed all those things. I had a chat with my mentor and he said that I picked up things in a very mature way which is not usually expected from an intern. That compliment really felt great. After some days I got a call that I got the pre-placement offer.

Did you have a checklist for your last-minute preparation? Do last-minute preparations help or the ones which you practice for a period of time have a good impact?

Last-minute preparations obviously help but only if you have built up the concepts beforehand. Try to be consistent from your third year. Solve at least 2–3 questions daily.
Last-minute checklists are always company oriented. Let’s say you have an interview for a certain company the next day, so at the last minute, you should go with all the previous interview questions of that company. The preparation should be long term and you should rely on them. Sometimes last minute things work but these are rare. So you should work hard from the beginning.

Consistency is the key.

How did you manage the stress/pressure in that period?

The nervousness before the interview is natural but if you are nervous during the interview then there is some problem. You need to work on this else your performance will be affected. So just be confident during the interview and give you best.

We do many projects in web development. But how to finalise what to put up on our profile? As a web developer, what should we do to stand apart from the crowd?

I personally didn’t do many projects in web development and the B.Tech Project (BTP) which I did was not very much related to software engineering. It was related to the human-computer interface and even though it was quite complex nobody took an interest, as this topic is not in trend in India as of now.

According to me, two to three projects are enough to help you in your interview. You should put them in your resume.

So do two to three projects which you will do there will help you in your resume.

Could you please brief us on how to prepare for interviews? Please enlist the online resources also.

Start exploring things from the very beginning (first and second year). Placements oriented preparation can be done in the third year. Interview preparation is a straight path. It isn’t like you have to do a lot of diverse things. There are a lot of questions available on GeeksforGeeks and LeetCode. So practice a lot of questions and brush up on your basic computer science skills i.e., OS, OOPs DBMS. The preparation can be done within a span of 6–12 months. You have to follow a specific path while preparing for the placement. But in the first and second year don’t think of placement instead your focus should be on exploring new paths and learning new skills and concepts.

GeeksforGeeks can be considered if you are preparing for MCQs. But it is quite vast with more than 700+ questions per company so for practice purpose LeetCode is an optimum choice. Also, one more problem with GeeksforGeeks is that its IDE is weak. Even non optimal code also passes all the test cases and if you write that code in an interview it won’t give a good impression. This is where LeetCode has an upper edge.

If you are preparing for any MNC (company-specific) then you are indirectly also preparing for startups which ask DSA. For the companies which follow the design round instead of DSA round, you can refer to “Gaurav Sen”. There is a full playlist on system design. So for ‘Gojek’ type companies which ask system design-related questions, this playlist can be of great help.

What extra skills did you learn/pursued during this journey?

The experiences that you’ll gain throughout college life will directly affect your personality, like the clubs you are a part of. You’ll be meeting a lot of people. The major point is you must develop your networking skills (not the computer thing), if you aren’t able to make networking skills among your peers then you’ll not be able to make networks in the corporate world. In my case, being a part of a club helped me improve my personality and communication skills. The most important thing in the corporate world is networking. Even if you lose a job yet you can easily switch on to the next job using your networks.

Personality also helps a lot. While doing all the technical things, don’t forget that you have a personality to develop. I had an interest in photography and I was in the photography department of Uthaan. So even now whenever I get time I grab my camera and click pictures.

Your words represent you.

Your communication skill is a thing which everyone notices. Like if you are very knowledgeable but if you are not able to convey it to the interviewer then it won’t help.

We all know that you’ve been a very active member of many clubs and also the Director of Rotaract Club and you were always involved in other curricular activities. So please tell us about your experience and what are the things which you learned or gained from these?

Everything which I have gained in college like friends, memories, connections, Rotaract has been a major part of it. If I were not a part of those clubs then I would not be able to make such good bonds with my batchmates, seniors and juniors. It will give you a network or it will be better to say that you will find a family in it and it will also affect your personality in a great way. Like for instance, I text my juniors for any help and they also do the same. I have been part of many clubs but for the longest period, I have been part of Rotaract. I always keep on thanking the club for playing such an important role in my life.

What is competitive coding and why people do competitive coding? Also, how should the freshers start with competitive coding and why it’s important?

There are various platforms like HackerEarth, HackerRank, Codechef which conducts contests where a huge number of students compete. In that, there are algorithmic problems related to DSA. DSA questions though not trivial questions. There is a certain time frame for each question. You have to write the code optimally so that it passes the test cases. In short, competitive coding means competing in coding challenges. A good ranking on these platforms helps you get recognition in the coding community. Firstly, you should get yourself started with a coding language and build your fundamentals. Then for practice, move to HackerRank or HackerEarth followed by Codechef. After solving questions (topic wise), start appearing for contests. You need not be a pro for sitting in contests. Even if you are able to solve only one question during the contest then try to solve the rest of them after the contest.

It must be a great feeling for you that you have been included among 100 meritorious students across India by MHRD! Also, you were invited to attend “Republic Day event” which is indeed a feeling of pride for you and the IIITM family. So please tell us about your experience at that event?

I count it as one of the best experiences so far. Like it felt really good to be on the front page of the newspaper of my own city. I was in Bangalore doing some internships and then a letter for the invitation arrived at my house in Kanpur. It had an invitation for the republic day parade signed by The Deputy Secretary, The Government of India. It came all as a surprise. It felt great and it was my first experience living in a 7-star hotel and being treated as the guest of the Prime Minister.

When I added this to my resume, whatever interview I gave, they definitely asked me about this and this gave me a lot of edge over others.

In my opinion a success story is not only about the right things that were done. It’s about the mistakes that we commit. Mistakes teach us bigger lessons in life. What would be the advice you’d share with your juniors who are in their pre-final year regarding internship or placement interview. Like what mistakes you committed which you would like to share so that we all don’t repeat those?

Very rightly said, I made a lot of mistakes. When I was coming from 3rd to 4th year a lot of dream companies visited our campus but I thought how can I prepare for it too soon. I just finished my B.Tech. Project and I thought I needed two to three months preparing for it. So the biggest mistake was, I started giving excuses to myself instead of utilizing those 10 days. Those who utilized those 10 days managed to crack the interview. There will be no good time like you are fully prepared and sitting for an interview. It can be anytime that you receive a call from a very big company for an interview. Instead of thinking that I can’t do, work hard in that period. Whatever time you have, utilize it properly and don’t give excuses. At the same time don’t be too harsh on yourself.

It’s only a matter of time

Learn from your mistakes

Try everything with a chilled out mind. Everything changes in a day, like one day you are unplaced and another day you are placed in a very big company, in your dream company. There is no good time for anything. What you have, is the instant you are living in.

Interviewed by Arushi Agrawal and Sahil Mittal

Co-ordinated by Shambhavi Shandilya

PlaceKode with Saurabh Gupta placed at Urban Company was originally published in Uthaan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Machine Learning is still an expanding domain. Many students get confused about interview preparation for an exclusive Machine Learning based opening. To solve your queries, Uthaan, the official journalism and recreational club of ABV- Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Gwalior, is back with another episode of PlaceKode. In this interview, we have with us, Raahat Gupta, a true enthusiast in machine learning and data science. He has a full-time offer from Quantiphi and was an intern with RedHat. On this episode, we bring to you excerpts of a conversation with him.

Firstly, congratulations on being placed in such a reputed company. How did you feel after getting the offer letter?

In short, it feels fantastic. Initially, when we do not get an offer, there is a desire to prove ourselves, which was fulfilled. Overall, it was a feeling beyond words.

Could you walk us through the machine learning interview process? Moreover, how were the interviewers? Were they helping you to come up with the solution?

The key to excelling in such an interview would be to make it more like a discussion.

Red Hat was an off-campus opportunity. We had an online round, and after that, we had three rounds of interviews. They were scheduled as one interview per week. So, it was a simple process.

Quantiphi was an on-campus drive. We had an online round on day one and two rounds the next day. The results got published at the end of the second day itself.

Overall, the general thing which I realized is that most machine learning interviews start with the resume. They give you the first few minutes to explain the projects you mentioned in your resume. It is your place to shine, and it’s better to start with the higher-level overview of your projects, and then go deeper into the technical details if the interviewer cross-questions. For my first few interviews, I had four projects mentioned in the resume, which I believe is the sufficient amount one can go forward with.

If you’ve mentioned deep learning in your resume, generally the interviewers will go deeper into the basics of neural networks. Apart from the details of the model itself, they’ll also ask questions about what kind of loss function you’ve used, activation functions, optimizers, vanishing/exploding gradients, regularizes, etc. Thus, one should have a good grasp of these concepts.

Another area which is asked frequently, especially if you’ve done any kind of classification task, includes questions on confusion matrix, precision, recall, ROC, strategies for imbalanced data, etc. These concepts can get pretty confusing, so make sure not to neglect them while preparing for interviews.

Most interviewers that I’ve faced are supportive. If you are stuck at a problem, you get a local hint there. So your confidence gets boosted. Just grab those hints, and you are good to go!

How would you rate your confidence and preparation on the day of the interview? What was the week before the interview? Did you have a checklist for your last-minute preparation?

My confidence fluctuates generally. As any interview begins, I get pretty nervous. It’s only after a few minutes into the interview that I start to feel more relaxed. The more the interview takes the shape of a discussion, rather than an interrogation, the more comfortable I feel.

Generally, I don’t make any last-minute checklist. I don’t even do last-minute study for the semester exams! I feel it does more harm to you than good. Moreover, when you’re preparing for an interview, you don’t want to cram everything. Instead, your goal should be to retain everything in your mind for longer.

With that said, I do prefer going through my resume an hour or so before the interview; it gives you a good starting point for the interview.

Do you have any other prior internship experience Which you’d like to share with us?

Yes, I did one internship in the summer of 2020 for a startup named ‘Fynd’. It’s an e-commerce platform based in Mumbai. I found it an excellent place to start my career mainly because it has a fantastic machine learning department. Furthermore, they were primarily working with cutting edge technology. The most important thing about working in any startup is that they gave you the freedom to implement new things. I was given complete ownership of my project and was actively involved in decision making.

Moreover, I also gained experience in engineering as real-world machine learning projects are being deployed there. The kind of tools used and challenges faced were different from anything I’ve done before. Some of them include deploying a machine learning model, making it more scalable, using docker and Kubernetes, etc.

Another internship that you mentioned is at Red Hat, which is a multinational company. What, in your experience, is the primary working difference between a startup and an MNC?

In my opinion, a startup is less-structured. Yes, you get a lot of freedom and ownership of your projects, but sometimes you hit roadblocks, and you have to figure it out themselves. Generally, startups do not have rigid hierarchies, which can be especially beneficial to you as an intern.

Then MNC is a big company, everything is laid out for you, and sometimes it is helpful that someone has figured out things for you. Moreover, you get to meet people from different geographical locales which is an experience that most startups cannot provide.

Since your interest lies in the machine learning domain, can you share your journey as a machine learning enthusiast? How did you start with it, and what all did you aim for?

I started machine learning in my second year of college. It was something that I always wanted to do something different. I started with Kaggle, where I came across various competitions, and one of them was this titanic competition.

https://www.kaggle.com/c/titanic

It is the best first challenge for you to dive into Machine Learning.

And when you talk about my journey, it wasn’t smooth in any way. There were times when I started with a course or a book, and gave up half-way, either because I wasn’t able to understand things or I had hit a roadblock. But in hindsight, these challenges helped me be the kind of person I am today.

Honestly, when I was learning all this in my second or third year, I didn’t have many aims for it regarding placements. I just went with the flow. And that’s what made me develop an interest in this field.

Could you please tell us about the online resource you used and how To gain maximum leverage out of it?

So that depends from person to person, some people like university courses, while others go for blog posts. Personally, I prefer books, and I can recommend some from where you can start :

1. Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow, by Aurélien Géron

This book covers almost all machine learning concepts in the most beginner-friendly and hands-on way. Personally, I started reading this only during my interview preparation when I had some knowledge of these underlying concepts, but you can read this as a beginner also. The concepts are explained beautifully well, with ample illustrations and code snippets. The only thing is you need to be patient, as it’s quite long. If I had to point to a good book, then this would be the one as it helped me a lot.

2. Deep Learning with Python, by François Chollet

It’s an excellent book that covers deep learning. It explains concepts using a deep learning library called Keras so that anyone can understand, even if they have no prior knowledge of machine learning. It is brief but goes into great details whenever required. Some of the projects I mention in my resume are from this book itself.

3. The 100 Page Machine Learning Book, by Andriy Burkov

Actually, it’s more than 100 pages long. It’s a concise book, and it mentions lots of concepts in brief. I wouldn’t say this book is beginner-friendly, but definitely an excellent resource for revision.

Students can also refer to:

Andrew ng deep learning specialization

Deep Learning by deeplearning.ai

3blue1brown’s series on neural networks

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNU6R1_67000Dx_ZCJB-3pi

Stanford courses for deep learning.

Deep Learning | Stanford Online

Full-Stack Deep Learning Boot Camp.

https://fullstackdeeplearning.com/

There’s a common belief that to ace in machine learning, one has to be good in mathematics. What’s your opinion on it?

Machine learning is a perfect example of applied mathematics. Like, in school or college, you learn this mathematical concept of Linear Algebra and Calculus. All these concepts help you at some point in machine learning. More critical are the intuitions, what intuitions you’ve gathered from all these concepts.

Also, the more research-oriented your role is, the more critical the mathematical concept. Suppose you’re applying for a research internship at an institution or foreign university. In that case, mathematics plays a more significant part, but as your role shifts away from researching and engineering aspects, the mathematical aspects downturn.

Also I would say different statistical concepts are sometimes used in machine learning also, so don’t shy away from learning those!

Do we have to be specialized in one field like vision or NLP? What are some other areas that one might look into?

An interviewer once told me that the knowledge has to be T-shaped, which means you should have the breadth of expertise in various topics, and there should be one particular topic where you know things in-depth. Keeping this in mind, I recommend that one should learn the basics of both computer vision and NLP, and at least one project is to be done in both. After that, it’s your choice which branch you want to pick and go deeper. I did the same for computer vision. You can be flexible and knowledgeable about both fields, and if given time, you can learn the one area you don’t have depth knowledge about.

Apart from that, most people think that you work only in these two fields in machine learning. It’s nothing like that. Some other areas are underrated, and people don’t talk about much. One of them is tabular data, time-series data and telemetry.

How would you describe the importance given to coding questions in machine learning interviews?

When you apply for a company, there’s always a coding test which acts as a first screening point. Apart from that, interviews depend on person to person, what they ask. The most important thing is when you’re asked a coding question, they see your potential and thought process. You should be able to understand the problem and explain the solution.

Here, you can start with a brute force solution and then move towards a more optimized approach. If your understanding and thought process are clear, then even if you get stuck, the interviewers may help you out and give you hints. Coding questions are not as essential in machine learning as in other aspects of software engineering, but it’s not that you can be utterly devoid of it.

Machine learning engineering and research are two terms often interchanged by the masses. So can you please tell us, what is the difference between them?

Many people who are starting machine learning don’t know that this is divided into two aspects: research and engineering. The main difference lies in your goals, how obstinate are you towards your projects, the basic algorithms are the same. Still, when you go for machine learning research, your principal aim is to extend the previous study, which is already done, you have to make the results even better than the previous ones while publishing. And the significant aspects of engineering are adapting the products mentioned above. These are different worlds: machine learning research and engineering. But sometimes, it gets overlapped.

So when you start, you begin with basic algorithms that are common for all of these. for example, if you for machine learning projects focus on research. Essentially you have to generate novelty learning by reading the previous research papers or some literature survey, or some documents which you think might acknowledge and include novelty.

In the engineering aspect, you go for an internship, and it depends upon the company. Some of the companies do a model-building part, which is a subpart of the entire process. Others are also concerned about deploying and building applications and scalable applications.

Do you believe that there is a disparity in the number of opportunities for students interested in software development and those in data science and machine learning?

I don’t think there is any disparity in the number of opportunities. It’s only that machine learning is a new and evolving field (for instance, neural networks were shown to have a great advantage over classical approaches only in early 2010s) and various companies are in different stages of trying to incorporate machine learning into their workflows, that students may believe there is a dearth of opportunities. But I can tell that it’s not, it is a new and challenging field but that’s what makes it exciting. If you’re willing to go the extra mile, then it’s a very rewarding career choice.

If someone aims for a data scientist role, what are the things they should highlight in their resume? Moreover, what kind of relevant side projects would look good when added to the CV?

So one project I did was called “Neural Style Transfer”. You might have used the Prisma app, which uses this algorithm to generate its unique stylized images. Here, we are given two images: one content image, usually an image depicting a clear object (eg: a portrait or a selfie), and a style image, which depicts a clear artistic or photographic style (eg: Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh). The task is to create a third image which is a combination of these two images, i.e., it should clearly depict the object in the content image, but it should feel like Van Gogh himself drew it! This is a great project as it goes beyond the traditional image classification and object detection fields, and involves the definition of a custom loss function.

The second project which I did was the one-shot verification of offline signatures. Another project was on a content-based movie recommender system. Put only those projects on your resume for which you can hold a conversation describing the details with the interviewer.

What role do communication skills play in the interview, and how can one improve them?

Communication skills are fundamental. They are not subjective. The interviewer focuses more on your knowledge about how much in-depth knowledge you have and how much you explored. It will leave an impact only when you explain it well.

It’s not only for an interview but also when you will be presenting results for the company. Good communication skills help a lot. To improve these presentation skills, one needs to practice them.

I recommend using the “Rubber Duck Debugging” method. It is based on the concept that “the best way to learn something is by teaching it” by doing this, you will know where exactly you are lagging.

Any any tips you would like to give to the budding data scientist of our college?

One thing which I will highly recommend is Study Groups. Even if you are stuck on a problem, there will be someone to teach. Alternatively, if the other person needs your help, you will teach and understand that concept better.

The second thing is to prepare your notes and keep revising it again and again. If you are reading a blog post, bookmark it like it to use it when needed.

Data Science is advancing day by day. It becomes essential to keep yourself updated with the latest technologies. You can follow some subreddits (r/datascience, r/learnmachinelearning, r/cscareerquestions) and some AI researchers on Twitter to keep yourself in the loop.

Interviewed by Aaditya Pratap Singh and Anamika Mallick

Coordinated by Shambhavi Shandilya

PlaceKode with Raahat Gupta placed at Quantiphi was originally published in Uthaan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

First of all, congratulations on being placed in such a well-established company. What was your instant reaction or feeling after you secured a job in Reliance-Jio and Capgemini?

It feels great to be associated with one of the biggest Indian companies, Jio. I was initially placed in Capgemini, i.e., a service-based Grade B company, but I always wanted to work at a product-based Grade A company. Soon after Capgemini, Reliance Jio came into our campus, and I was lucky enough to get placed there. I am the kind of person who prefers a well-established company over a start-up because we get a sense of security and stability there. And since Jio is a reputed company with a fair amount of funding and collaborations, so I was happy with the thought that I had secured a spot in Jio.

Can you please brief us about your job profiles?

At Capgemini, I was offered a position of a senior analyst. At Jio, I’ll be an SDE-1. I will be joining one of their development teams [like Jio apps, Jio Tv, Jio payment services, etc.] in Mumbai or Bangalore.

What was your state of mind before the interview? Were you a bit nervous or somewhat optimistic?

Initially, we didn’t know which companies were going to visit our campus, so I was prepared with my resume, and my skills brushed up. On the day of the interview, I was a bit nervous at the start since I had faced many interviews and some rejections in the PPO’s. So I just believed in myself and prepared myself mentally to crack the next company, whatever be the circumstances.

Can you please walk us through your interview process. How many rounds were present in the selection process and the questions asked by the interviewer?

For Capgemini

The first round was an assessment round in which I was asked four questions back to back, and these were all elimination rounds. The first was a technical pseudo-code test, which was MCQ based on outputs and few questions on code debugging. Even some questions on the basics of data structures and algorithms were present. Then the second round was an English communication skills test. The third round was a behavioral test. And the final round was a game based aptitude test, which was a completely new round for all of us.

After clearing all these rounds, we had a technical interview followed by an HR interview. In the technical interview, I was asked to explain my B. Tech. Project briefly and a few cross-questions on it. Then some basic questions on the blockchain, cryptocurrency, and object-oriented programming.

In my HR interview, I was asked to tell my strengths and weaknesses; then they asked me to describe that phase of my life where I felt low and my expectations from the company.

For Reliance-Jio

I first had an online coding test in which there were two mediocre coding questions which we were supposed to complete in one hour.

After two days, I was informed that I had been shortlisted for the further interview round. Further, we had two technical interviews and one HR interview.

In my first technical interview, the interviewer gave me two coding questions to be solved in one hour. They had a code-sharing feature through which I was supposed to share my code, and I was given 30 minutes for each question. I gave an optimal approach for both the problems, and the interviewer was satisfied.

But after my first technical round, I thought I was rejected because I didn’t receive any further mail or text from the company. But the next day, I got a mail from the HR team regarding my second technical round.

For my second technical round, I didn’t have any time to revise the concepts. Luckily, the pattern for me was the same as the first technical round, which wasn’t the case for the rest of my colleagues. Again, in the second round, I was given two coding questions to be solved in one hour. But the twist there was, I didn’t have to write the code simply but also compile and run the codes. So firstly I gave the brute force approach and then the optimal approach. Since I also had to execute the code, it was a bit challenging for me. But I was lucky enough to solve both the questions in the allotted time.

Just after one hour of this round, I got a mail for the final HR round. The HR first asked me to explain my internship project, which I did in Innovaccer. She was very impressed with that since I was an SDE intern there, but I did a project on something which a site reliability engineer should know. Then she asked me to think and pitch a start-up idea and few cross-questions. Then some average questions like, why do you want to join Jio, a decision that changed your life. In the end, we had a long discussion on another start-up idea. It was a fun interactive session it wasn’t much like an HR interview. The interview, which was supposed to be of 20 minutes, extended to more than one hour.

A few coding questions in the rounds were:

Online Coding test:

1)Find the frequency for the occurrence of a substring in a given string.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/frequency-substring-string/

2)Count of a minimum number of lines that will cover or travel all the N points in a 2-D space.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/minimum-lines-cover-points/

Technical round 1:

1)Find the first negative number in every window of size K.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/first-negative-integer-every-window-size-k/

2)Find a non-repeating character in the stream of strings.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-first-non-repeating-character-stream-characters/

Technical round 2:

I was given a list of players’ names, and if they have the same first name and surname had to cluster them together. Furthermore, they asked me to find the number of clusters present and which set had the maximum number of players.

How did you keep your calm between successive interview rounds? Were you nervous or relieved after clearing consecutive interview rounds?

In the Reliance Jio interview, I was stuck in the very first question, and it was a silly mistake; even the interviewer couldn’t find it for minutes, so I felt a bit pressured in that situation. But you see, there is no turning back at such times, and you need to be patient. So I composed myself as I tried to remain calm and gave the rest of the interview confidently. This attitude was developed due to the experience I had from my previous interviews and internships. Even facing rejections from some good companies provided me with motivation, which helped me remain calm. One can know how to stay calm in such hectic situations only after he has given a minimum of 6 to 7 interviews. Also, one must believe in themselves while sitting for interviews.

What, according to you, is the right balance between coding and development? Which part should one highlight in their resume?

You have to equally good in coding and development; you can’t fill your resume with your coding skills or your rank in CodeChef only. You need to have some projects and internships by your side. So in your pre-final year and final year, when you have to do your summer internships, you also realize the importance of development, as there is much need for one’s development skills. So it’s not compulsory to dive deep into competitive programming; the basics of data structures and algorithms are enough. Above that, you need to be good at development. But the main thing is, one should focus on his/her general problem-solving skills to crack the interviews.

When a candidate is appearing for off-campus interviews his or her resume matters a lot. They focus on the person’s dev skills as they require people who are comfortable with the stack prevalent in the company’s work culture. But when a company arrives for on-campus hiring, they understand that not all students are good in the same thing. so they retort to assessing program solving skills, CP skills and knowledge of the core subjects.

What resources should one follow to crack these interviews? Did you specifically solve questions keeping Reliance-Jio or Capgemini in your mind?

I prepared for the interviews of startups and well-established companies, Capgemini was a backup for me. The most efficient way is to prepare your own notes. In my case, I prepared my notebook, which had some basic text tags, some questions related to the library, fundamentals concepts, and interview questions on DBMS, OS, SQL, etc. these notes help a lot to quickly revise for the interview.

For text tag — www.mongodb.com

For node JS— www.Nodejs.org, www.mongodb.com

For basics — www.tutorialspoint.com

DBMS — Database system concepts by Henry F. Korth; other relevant articles can be found on medium and GeeksForGeeks

OS from — Object Oriented Programming in C++ by E Balagurusamy and Ravindra Babu videos on YT (uncode- GATE computer science)

A must prepare 100 liked interview question list on www.leetcode.com,

For last-minute interview preparation, there is a must-do interview preparation course on www.geeksforgeeks.org, which everyone should definitely checkout.

What role did your various internship experiences played in your interview process? Were there some new qualities that you acquired as an intern? Was the interviewer curious about it at all?

The first thing that I learned many things from internships that helped me in my full-time interviews. You know, from the internships in the pre-final year, you get exposure to the corporate world. Also, I worked as a Site Reliability Engineer, which was completely a new field for me. The second thing was, all this boosted my confidence. In my resume, I had various projects like game development in my first year, web development in my second, and blockchain and stuff in the following years. The most beneficial thing from my internships was working as an SRE(Site Reliability Engineer), which fascinated most of the interviewers I faced during my placements. The third thing that I learned from my internship experience was managing panic situations a little bit. Also, from the mentor and intern relationship, I was able to explain my things freely and nicely, which was really helpful at the time of the interviews.

In your resume, you had mentioned development, machine learning, and also you told us about blockchain right now. How can one be a jack of all trades excelling in every field? How can one be this multi-talented?

See, there is nothing like the jack of all trades or multi-talented. I did game development in my first year because I liked it and did an internship on it the same year, then I wanted to explore the web development field, so I did that for a while. The crucial thing is one has to be confident enough on a skill before putting it on his/her resume. My projects on SRE and blockchain worked like a cherry on the cake for me as most interviewers had very less knowledge of it. So one must be curious enough about the offbeat projects as it interests the interviewers, and it lowers the chances for a difficult question to be asked on the particular project.

What role do a person’s managerial and co-curricular experiences play during the placement interviews?

Actually, In my first three years of college life, I have organized a lot of events. Starting from the first year, I was sponsorship and events head. In the second year, I was an EMT head in the cultural event and coordinator in the technical and cultural fest MOM. In my third year, I was the overall coordinator (OC) of Infotsav, a technical event.

Many people would give you advice not to waste time in these co-curricular activities instead do competitive coding. But I would clearly like to tell you that you are only investing your time by participating in these activities. These activities help to groom your overall personality. It develops your communication skills, boosts your confidence, enhances your managerial and team managerial l skills, and a lot. All these skills will help you in the future in your corporate life.

Our position of responsibilities doesn’t help us in our technical interview but it surely helps in our HR interview. As if they ask me several questions on time management or questions regarding how will you manage if there is a clash between your teammates, and in these cases, if we give them a real-life example, so we can have a good discussion about all these things with our HR.

This indeed makes a positive impact on the HR.

How’d you compare to a five-year-old version of yourself?

You know, you can’t compare yourself with your five-year-old version. If you would have met me five years ago, I was completely different, a bit shy, lacking in confidence, and also nervous. But these five years of college life has transformed me completely. Now I am a bit sincere, and I choose my words carefully now. You see, the learning curve would increase exponentially. This is not just the case for me but for every student.

Would you like to give any particular advice to your juniors as we wrap up this conversation?

I have straightforward advice for my juniors, You need to do hard work for learning, but you need to do smart work for interview preparations. From this, I mean that, whenever you are learning something new, there are many new things you need to learn that doesn’t have any pre-defined path, So one need to put in a lot of hard work. But there is a pre-defined path for cracking an interview; one knows what all things they have to cover based on their resume. The topics they have to cover, essential questions we know these things beforehand. So if one has a good plan and they work smartly, it becomes easy to crack an interview. But in the long run, only hard work will benefit you.

For interview purposes, one must read recent interview articles on geeks for geeks of the companies they are going to sit. These are really beneficial. Also, I would suggest everyone to write a paragraph for their introduction, as it is the first thing everyone would be asked to tell, and even it would be the first impression of yours to the interviewer. Similarly, frame 2–3 paragraphs for their projects as during the interview, there will be many thoughts running in your mind so you won’t be able to explain your project properly.

Some advice for an internship would be don’t panic, as no one would judge you there because even your mentors know that you are in your life’s learning phase. So just give in your 100 percent in every project you receive as an intern.

At last, I would just like to quote the phrase that, everything doesn’t go the way as planned, but at the end, everything comes into place. So don’t panic, be patient. Even if you fail, don’t feel demotivated there are a lot of companies and start-ups.

Interviewed by Aryan Sharma and Paridhi Singhal

Coordinated by Shivam Yadav

PlaceKode with Pratyush Ranjan placed at Reliance Jio and Capgemini was originally published in Uthaan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Starting off the interview, Good evening ma’am, thank you for sparing some time and joining us today. Getting straight into the questions, what’s it like being placed at PwC?

It feels great to be associated with the Big Four. The culture within the organization is unlike any other. When I got to know that PwC would be visiting the campus, I thought of it as a great opportunity. The interview process was hassle-free, it was a bit different from the others as they majorly observe how you approach and start solving a problem, whether you are business oriented or are a problem solver, they judge you heavily based on that.

Could you tell us about your job profile?

Currently, I’m placed as a Salesforce Developer at PwC. Most of us heard of Salesforce only as a company until now, but when companies have to deal with other companies, they have to maintain dashboards of their clients, potential leads and many other things. Salesforce is a great platform to do that.

As a Salesforce developer, I work with a team that develops components that can be useful in a particular business scenario. Currently, they organize workshops where they train us, and since it’s a growing field, so I’m optimistic and excited about future opportunities.

How would you rate your confidence and preparation on the day of the interview?

I had appeared for several interviews before PwC, and I hadn’t exactly aced through them. After multiple last round rejections, I was kind of disheartened. But I was hopeful about PwC as the interview format, and questions in this interview were a little unorthodox.

What was the week before the interview like? Did you have a checklist for your last-minute preparation? What topics need more attention?

Okay, so step one in the interview process was an assessment test consisting of aptitude, SQL and Java questions, so I prepared for all that. I hadn’t practised Java much, so I dedicated time to that. Notes for last-minute preparation of core subjects are available on Geeksforgeeks, and I went through those as well. They’ve sorted out important questions and topics so I’d say that should be on everyone’s checklist.

For brushing up my programming skills, I majorly relied upon practising LeetCode questions. It is advisable to make short notes of core concepts because they make the revision process fast and effective during the placement season.

Could you walk us through the interview process in brief?

After the pre-placement talk, we had an assessment [a one-hour long MCQ test on Aptitude, SQL and Java]. For such MCQ tests, it is necessary to have the knowledge of a broader range of topics since multiple-choice questions do not tend to go deep into any topic. You should know what you are targeting and what you’d be asked and align your time and effort accordingly.

Next, we had an hour-long group discussion round. I hadn’t heard of a GD round in online placement rounds before this, so I didn’t know what to expect. A business problem was assigned to some 5 or 6 candidates. They judged you by your contributions say, whether this candidate understands real-life implementation, whether this candidate considers a wider set of parameters in his suggestions, whether the candidate is impressionable, whether he understands marketing restraints, whether he can work well in a team and such.

Next, we had the coding round. They started off slow with basic coding questions but went hard on the core subjects. Paging segmentation was a topic they inquired heavily upon, then backed it up with some DBMS and OS questions.

In the final round, they had a plethora of behavioural questions lined up for the candidates, which do not have a universally correct answer. These questions were open to interpretation. No two people could have the same answer. Try and answer honestly in such rounds.

Would you please share some tips on how on tackling a GD round for the pre-final year students preparing for their placements?

1. Keep your anxiety under check. And for that do whatever works for you — have a little pep talk for yourself, watch boxing movie scenes, listen to upbeat Punjabi songs.
2. Keep a bottle of water at hand. There are moments where you’d need that.
3. Leave the judging to the interviewer, that’s not your job. It may seem like people are outshining you during the GD, and you wouldn’t have any counter-arguments, but it’s okay. Nobody is better than you. Take a pause and understand that you only need one moment in the GD to make your mark.

Could you please tell us about the online resources you used?

Questions based on the core subjects [OS, CN, DBMS etc.] are quite prevalent in placement interviews, so it’s important to have command over the primary topics. Revising from self-made hand-written notes would help a lot. The theory would take time to settle in your mind, so start preparing early and put in the hard work.

Jitna bhi padho, solid padho!

And if you are asked something that you don’t know the answer to, communicate. Let them know you don’t know the answer and the interviewer would move on. If you provide a half-baked answer, he’d grill you deep and that you wouldn’t want that. I primarily relied upon Google search results and YouTube videos. See, nobody cares whether you paid 4k for courses to learn something. What matters is your understanding of the concepts. There is so much to learn from on the Internet that you need not follow some specific tutorials, lectures or books. Just find whatever works for you and stick with it.

What would be some advice you’d share with your juniors who are in their pre-final year regarding internship experiences?

• Communicate. When you’ve been on the earth for 20+ years, your introduction has to be more than your name, college and hometown wrapped up in one sentence. There is nothing to be intimidated by. Your peers went through the same application process as you did and pretty much have the skill set as yours. So, when presented with the opportunity to speak, make good use of it.
• It is very important to have clarity in your work. Have a clear understanding of the task you wish for your code to execute. Maintain a doc to note down random ideas so that you can focus on your work better and then cater to improvements later.
• Do not shy away from experimenting. Try all possible scenarios and then choose whichever works best for as per the requirements.
• Take the learning curve seriously. There is a reason why you are subjected to all the workshops and assignments.
• Cater to the mentor’s instructions with precision. If there are some doubts, talk to them and get it sorted. Do not pile up. Be clear of what he expects and what you can deliver.
• Be open for growth. There is always scope for improvement. Be humble enough to accept that, and you’ll find opportunities to improve every day.
• The last would be not to make the same mistake twice. Internships are our first foray into corporate life. Mistakes are a part of the learning process. Don’t take everything for granted.

What role do co curricular experiences play in an interview?

I was the kind of student who’d participate in all the fest and club activities. I’ve been an EMT, I’ve been a coordinator. And people always ask why not invest all this time and effort into say CP or open-source or projects and studies. But getting out of the room and talking to all those people made me happy and, in my opinion, it is essential for a person’s comprehensive growth.

This is no way means disregarding your academics and learning process for club activities is fine. It’s about the balance, which varies for each individual. For some people, it’s a reason to step out of their hostel rooms, and if they are personally content with it, then I don’t see any reason for someone else to understate its significance.

How’d you compare to a 5-year-old version of yourself? What’s the one thing you would tell yourself if you could?

The obvious difference would be in my tech skills. Throughout the entirety of our college life, we try and experiment with all sorts of technologies, and that’s fun in its own way. I’m better at networking now, be it on LinkedIn or in person.

You know, stepping foot into the college I was very clear with one thing, “12th ho gayi hai, ab thoda chill karna hai”. So I spent most of my time in my initial months of college life making friends, talking to seniors, participating in club activities etc. which I have dialed down now. I’d say I was a bit naïve in the beginning, but when you are thrown into sudden and unexpected situations, you learn a lot.

A piece of advice to my younger self would have to be, “do not hesitate in making mistakes”. It’s all a part of the learning curve. The opinions you stress about won’t matter in the near future so just, take it easy.

Interviewed by Shivam Yadav

Coordinated by Himanshu Ruhela

Placekode with Ayushi Rastogi placed at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was originally published in Uthaan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.