Women Who Code Mentorship Program 4.0 - Week 2

Another week of the mentorship program, another chance to be amazing!

This week was all about Internships and Placements. All the aspects were discussed to upscale off-campus or on-campus placement preparation. 🚀

My mentor Shradha Sehgal gifted me with perspective and direction I would not have otherwise had.

I was growing stale at heart with my career and interview preparation until this mentorship program rekindled the fire and excitement that I had earlier on while pursuing computer science. 👩‍💻❤

Let’s have a look at Tips and Tricks provided by her for cracking the Coding Interview:

The technical interview process can seem overwhelming. Interviewers throw questions at you, expect you to whip up brilliant algorithms on the spot. Hence having a strong foundation of data structures and algorithms is crucial and unskippable!

Let’s reflect on my learnings in week 2 of the mentorship program.

We can divide the complete process into three major stages:

1. Practice, Practice, Practice!
2. Finding opportunities, and
3. Apply until you get your dream job.

Practice, Practice, Practice! :

Practice makes a programmer job ready! Yes, being constant is the key to crack the coding interview. Let’s take a deep dive into it!

Online Assessment/Aptitude Round:

It is the primary and generally the first qualification round. It is time bound and the questions are generally based on Data Structures & algorithms, aptitude, basic mathematics.

Choose a platform you are comfortable to begin with. Avoid using multiple platforms. Once you master one platform say GeeksforGeeks or Hackerrank as a beginner.

Then you can switch to Leetcode or even Codeforces for time bound questions. As once your basics are clear you can work on your speed and providing a more optimized solution!

If you are still confused on how to proceed, don’t worry:

You can follow:

1. DSA By Kunal Kushwaha (For Java)
2. DSA in C++ (By Coding Ninjas/ Geeks for Geeks)

Note- They are recommendations to help you kickstart your interview preparation, you can also follow other helpful resources/courses available.

If you are stuck at a problem, try solving it for half an hour and then watch the solution. Try writing the solution down on pen and paper and repeat.

Interview Round:

Number of interview rounds may vary from company to company.

Golden Tip: Always approach the interview round as a discussion between you and the recruiter, they are on your side and want to find good talent to join their company, not to reject you.

Ble confident, they don’t always look out for a completely solved problem but also how you approach the problem, so be loud and clear and tell your approach to the recruiter while solving or later as per your comfort.

Always start with the brute force/naive approach, which data structure you’ll be using and then try providing an optimized solution for the same.

Try doing a dry run of your code for clarity!

Go for mock interviews, you can refer to sites likes interview bit, approach seniors, undergo a mentorship program. Keep going until successful!

Finding opportunities:

Your Network is your Networth!

Stay active on sites like LinkedIn and Twitter. Optimize your profile accordingly to the role you are looking for. And maintain a personal brand to make your profile standout from others.

You can have a look at my Linkedin and Twitter handles for reference!

Apply until you get your dream job:

If you reject yourself before the world rejects you, you’ll fail even before trying!

Always remember this, believe in yourself.

1. Research over the company
2. The Job profiles
3. Curate a resume accordingly
4. Try maintaining separate resumes for research/internship/scholarship opportunities
5. Contact a current employee/alumnus to the company you are applying for to have a better understanding of the work culture and pay scale
6. Try asking for referrals especially for off campus opportunities, draft a personalized, polite note for the same
7. Always get your resume reviewed beforehand and add projects relevant to the role you are applying for!

This is a tough process; you will face many rejections but keep going on. You will learn something new with every round you participate in.

Move on if you face failure, but never forget to introspect what went wrong or how can you improve?

That’s how you get better everyday,everytime!

Last but not least, you can refer to geeksforgeeks interview questions for company specific questions.

And with that I wish you all the best for your coding interview, may you get your dream job. Eat, Sleep ,Code, Repeat!

You Got This!!