FORESIGHT(2022): Summer Internship at DE Shaw| Vinit Raj
Brief Introduction
I am Vinit Raj, a third year undergraduate from the department of Computer Science and Engineering and I will be interning at D.E. Shaw this summer for a period of two months.
How did you get into DE Shaw? What was the selection procedure?
I applied through the official CDC portal and after cv shortlisting there were two phases, Online coding round on Hackerrank and then interviews on Day1. The coding round had 3 questions on DSA and solving two were sufficient to move on. There were two interviews, one based on DSA and other on OOPS, SQL, ProbStat, DSA. Do note that SQL and ProbStat are questioned only after asking the student if they know it.
How to prepare for them?
Solving Interviewbit/leetcode might not be sufficient for online coding rounds and consistent practice on other platforms like codeforces is recommended. For SQL, basic queries are asked and hackerrank has a good collection on that. For OOPS our department covered it in the Software Engineering course but GFG has good articles to follow through and prob stat is basic higher secondary level.
What difficulties did you face while preparing for this Company/Profile? How did you overcome this problem?
Since I was practicing only DSA I did not give much attention to SQL/ProbStat/OOPS so I did fumble a bit in interviews but I did manage to answer enough and my strong performance in the online round probably helped.
According to you, who should ideally apply for this job?
Anyone targeting Software Roles should apply for the position also if they have interest in finance but no experience can get the chance to learn something new.
Any specific advice you want to give to the junta sitting for internships this year.
For software profiles the difficulty level of questions is increasing so I would recommend at least some practice on websites like Codeforces. Be careful while filling preferences for interviews and try to get ample sleep the day before.
What are some of the major points you think would be valid to mention in your CV while targeting this profile?(any specific suggestions you would like to make?)
Mention any project related to the software domain and explain your part clearly if it was a group project as interviewers tend to be thorough if they feel like asking about it. Also any achievements in coding competitions like kickstart can be mentioned.
