Sharing Experiences | Coding | SDE | JPMC
SDE at JP Morgan Chase & Co. (Off-campus)
My journey & experience of getting an offer from JPMC
In 2021, I received offers from Tekion Corp, Freecharge, JPMC, and few startups for the role of Software Engineer, I thought I had just gotten lucky and the confidence inside me started building that in some of the rounds of interviews where I was not prepared though I cracked it. My preparation process was honed through hundreds of hours of being interview at actual companies.
Journey
It all started in February 2020 after my first rejection with SAP Labs, then the hunger of not quitting started, I really had no idea how actually people clear the interview rounds, how clean code they write, how are they able to build logic and the thought process. I faced rejection at multiple companies and this actually helped me to know where I was failing at. I was all alone in my journey with no guidance, also had to work for my current organization so it was a really hard time for me to get time for all the things, but yes “Consistency, Determination, Hope, and Patience” kept me all around.
One thing that I learned through this journey is that we should be true to ourselves. If we aren't familiar with any sort of topic that’s completely fine, it's better to address the problem and work on it. I did the same I wrote all the topics where I was weak at and started rectifying them. I went through different articles every day, started talking to myself to mitigate the communication gap, gone through a lot of videos that taught me from introducing myself to what I am and what not to mention in an interview. I remember I used to apply to almost 15–20 companies every day where hardly I used to receive a response.
During the Interview
At JPMC, I had a total of 5 rounds of Interviews, out of which 4 were Tech rounds, 1 was Tech including Managerial(ED rounds). In all of the 4 rounds, it was a mixed bag what I mean by this is that questions were related to DS Algo(Array, String, Trees, DFS/BFS, Recursions, Linked List, Math's based coding too), OOP’s Concepts, Puzzles, System Designs, Probability, Database related and yes discussion on projects mentioned in the resume. In the last round, the interviewer asked me (Medium Level Leetcode question on recursion, some behavior, and managerial questions related to my achievements). In all of the rounds of the interviews, I enjoyed solving problems and what I felt was the interviewer was more interested in knowing how I think, what my thought process is, and how do I approach the problems, instead of hunting for the actual result.
Preparing and being interviewed for Software Engineers jobs is grueling because your progress follows an exponential results curve — you won't see results for a while, you’ll face lots of rejection and it’s demoralizing. But your knowledge and experience compound, and as you push forward you will reach an inflection point where you rapidly improve and start nailing interviews consistently.
Thanking my Family and my friends who supported me :) Well! The learning journey doesn't end here, there’s a lot to learn and explore.
Happy Coding! | Keep Learning and exploring
Go through my previous article(here) where I have shared important questions, articles, links, videos, road maps, etc that will really be helpful for the folks who are hunting for SWE jobs.
