How I got a Summer Internship at Flipkart 😎
Hey there! I am Pakhi Srivastava, a 2nd-year student pursuing my B.Tech in CSE from Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology. I am a LinkedIn CoachIn 2022 mentee as well as an upcoming SDE Intern at Flipkart. I bagged the internship at Flipkart through their Runway Program.
I will be sharing my experience for the same through this blog.
Application process:
The application process started in the first week of April 2022. All the interested female candidates in their 2nd year of degree had to apply for the program through a platform called Unstop (formerly Dare2Compete). I got to know about the opportunity through LinkedIn and immediately applied.
The eligibility criteria for 2022 was as shown below.
How did I prepare?
My mentors and seniors have always stressed upon the importance of DSA. So, I made sure that I practice questions (I practiced on LeetCode) consistently and give contests regularly on various competitive programming platforms so that I would be prepared for any interviews like this one.
Resources: Leetcode | Geeksforgeeks | JavaTpoint
Interview Process:
There were a total of 3 rounds conducted. The first was an online quiz round which was followed by two technical interviews.
After the initial application, all the registered candidates were invited to the Online Quiz Challenge. The runway program witnessed around 11k registrations this year.
Round 1 (2 April 2022): Online Challenge
Platform: Unstop (Dare2Compete)
In this round, we were supposed to answer 30 MCQ questions within a span of 45 mins. There was no negative marking. The test window was open for around 6 hours and the applicants were supposed to complete the challenge in one go. The questions focused more on computer fundamentals (OOPS, DBMS, basic programming, Computer Networks, etc…)
After around a week, the results were declared on the platform and I was happy that I got selected! Soon after, a meet was conducted by Flipkart, in which we were briefed about the interview and internship process.
Along with this, we were also asked to submit an SOP that contained our aim, motivation, and how we would like to propose a solution to an existing problem in the eCommerce field.
Round 2 (10 April 2022): SOP Submission Round
To make the SOP stand out, I researched the problems the company is facing and tried to provide a simple and unique solution. I surfed the internet and went through the company website to get an idea of what kind of solution they were expecting.
They had posted a video in which a demo problem and solution were demonstrated. I framed my SOP accordingly with what I thought would help solve the problem in the eCommerce field.
Round 3: Technical Interviews
Platform: SmartMeet
>> Interview 1 (18 April 2022)
The interview was 60 minutes long. It started with introductions. After that 2 questions were presented to me one after the other. The first question was based on the application of the Stack. I first told the brute force approach after which I was told to optimize it which I did. The interviewer was satisfied with my approach and then we moved on to the second one.
The second question was a DP on 2D grid question for which I was able to explain my approach to the interviewer. The difficulty level of both questions was medium. In the end, he asked me if I had any questions for him. I asked 2 questions related to work-life balance at Flipkart. I received an email after 1 day which told me that I had passed this round and my second interview was scheduled for 20th April.
>> Interview 2 (20 April 2022)
Platform: SmartMeet
This interview was again 60 minutes long. This one also started with introductions. In this round, 2 questions were asked to me and were to be answered in the same manner. The 1st question was a Stack question. I was explained the question statement after which I explained my approach and coded it out. The 2nd question was based on Strings. The difficulty level of the 1st question was medium while the other one was hard. For this question, I was able to explain my approach using map to the interviewer correctly and she was satisfied.
Result time (27 April 2022):
I received mail after approximately 1 week that I have been selected for the SDE Intern role for Summer 2022 and my happiness knew no bounds.
Tips I would like to give to future aspirants:
- Keep practicing DSA and give contests to get a stronghold over it.
- Learning about Computer Fundamentals is equally important.
- Being composed and thinking out loud during an interview definitely helps.
In case you need any help, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. If you find this article helpful, do hit the clap button and follow Codess.Cafe for more such articles.
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