SAFAR
Hi everyone!! I am Riti Kumari, a final year C.S.E. undergrad pursuing my B.Tech from UCET, Vinoba Bhave University(Hazaribagh). I have received off-campus offers from companies like Walmart Global Tech, B.N.Y. Mellon, and Accolite Digital. I will be sharing my journey through this article.
Background:-
Being from a college with fewer on-campus opportunities, I decided to look for off-campus ones. But deciding wasn’t something that could fetch me an Online Assessment(O.A.) link or an interview opportunity. While applying to different companies, I often couldn’t find my college name 🙃.
Also, being from a not-so-good environment; I always lacked proper guidance, technical clubs, and much more.
Now the big question was, from where should I start? Completely lost for a year, I started learning web development in my second year. But that wasn’t enough for me to get into good company. Then one fine day, while watching an interview experience online, I got to know terms like Hackerrank, Codechef. These terms were very new to me, so I started exploring more and more. And this was how my coding journey started.
I started giving contests on these platforms. In the first contest, I couldn’t even solve a single question, but it gave me an idea of how much more effort I needed to put in. After putting in so much hard work, I was able to crack internships and full-time offers in my dream companies.
Walmart Global Tech:-
(Test in July 2021 and Interviews in Oct 2021)
Walmart used to hire only on-campus, but this time, they had a hiring competition named Walmart CodeHers in July. I learned about this opportunity from a telegram Channel, so I decided to apply for it. I applied on the D2C platform.
They had 2 O.A. rounds for the process: The first one had 25 MCQ questions to be solved in 30 minutes and the second one consisted of 2 D.S.A. coding questions revolving upon strings and dynamic programming.
Every round was an elimination round.
I cleared both rounds and was informed interviews would take place later this year.
I had ample time, so I started practicing more and more questions. Interview experiences on GeeksForGeeks and YouTube helped a lot to provide a clear picture of the type of questions being asked.
We were asked if we would be interested in a 6-month internship with Walmart Global Tech in September. After confirming the same, in October, I received an interview invite. It was a one-day interview process: back-to-back interviews on the same day.
Interview Process:
Mode of Interview: Zoom
Round 1 (Technical round):
The interview started with me introducing myself. In the introduction. I briefly explained myself, the domain I am interested in, the internships I did, my projects, and my hobbies. The interviewer was very friendly, and she made me very comfortable. The interview started with questions on OOPS, followed by questions based on D.S.A. (Dynamic Programming and Trees). She asked me to code a coding question in my editor. The question level was medium-hard. After that, she started asking questions from DBMS and O.S. to check my knowledge about C.S. fundamentals. The interview lasted for an hour. And after 2–3 hours, I got the interview mail for Round 2.
Round 2 (Hiring Manager Round):
It involved a few technical questions and questions from my project. She asked me to explain the whole back-end part of my project, followed by some leadership questions. She was very much impressed by my confidence and enthusiasm. This round lasted around 15 minutes only.
After 3 hours, I received the selection mail stating that they would like to offer me a 6-month internship. In times like the global pandemic when many people around the globe were losing their jobs, securing an internship from a Fortune-1 company was no less than a miracle.
BNY Mellon:-
(Test in Sept 2021 and Interviews in Oct 2021 )
BNY Mellon conducted a hiring challenge named Code Divas Diversity Challenge for female candidates who are currently in their 3rd & 4th year.
I learned about this opportunity from LinkedIn and applied for it. I applied on the HackerEarth platform.
They had 2 O.A. rounds for it: The first one had 3 Programming Questions to be solved within two-and-a-half hours using a programming language of your choice and the second one consisted of 10 MCQs,1 Programming Question in a specific language- Java 8 and above OR Python, 1 SQL Question.
Every round was eliminatory.
I cleared both the rounds and was eagerly waiting to hear back from them. Then I received a survey mail in October to choose a month in which I would be most comfortable to give my interviews.
I started reaching out to people on LinkedIn to have a clear picture of the interview process. Then started practicing questions that were asked frequently. Leetcode and GeeksForGeeks were the best helping hands during my preparation.
Interview Process:
Mode of Interview: Microsoft Teams
Round 1 (Technical round 1):
It started with a quick introduction. Then my interviewer began by asking questions on OOPS(in-depth). Then he asked me to open the code pair link, which was shared on mail, and asked me to code the question which appeared on the screen. It was a question related to anagrams. I coded it, and all the test cases passed. After that, I was asked questions on SQL queries. It lasted for 45 mins. After a week I received an invite for Round 2.
Round 2 (Technical round 2):
The round started with my introduction. Then she directly jumped to the coding part. I opened the code pair link and coded the question. It was a question on the graph data structure. I coded the question. The interviewer was helpful and kind. After I coded the question, she asked me some variations on the same question. Then some questions on SQL queries like second highest salary and some questions related to keys and indexing. It lasted for 45 mins. After a week I received an invite for Round 3.
Round 3 (Business round): It was a Technical + HR round. It involved leadership questions and general questions about the profile and culture at BNY Mellon. I was also asked questions on Python and LinkedList. It lasted around 20 mins.
After five days, I got an email stating that I’ve successfully cleared all the rounds and they would like to offer me an Intern+FTE role.
Accolite Digital:-
(Test in March 2021 and Interviews in April 2021)
Accolite Digital was the first company I applied to. They had a hiring competition on the Eduthrill platform. I learned about this opportunity from Youtube. I applied on the Eduthrill platform.
There were 2 O.A. rounds. The first one had MCQ questions based on Java, DBMS, Networks, O.S., DSA, find an error, write the missing code, etc… This test was conducted on Accolite’s own platform Eduthrill. The second round was a coding round conducted on Accolite’s own platform Codelyzer. We were asked to solve 1 Question in 60 mins. The question was based on Graph.
Again, every round was eliminatory.
I cleared both rounds and was informed that interviews would take place in the coming weeks.
I started practicing more and more questions. Since this was my first company, I was very nervous. I started with Interview experiences on GeeksForGeeks and Youtube. Then I started solving questions on basic data structures like arrays and strings. And then I switched to some standard questions on LinkedList as well as Trees.
Interview Process:
Mode of interview: Google Meet
Round 1 (Technical round 1):
It started with a quick introduction. Then my interviewer gave me two questions to code. The first question was on the Linked List. I started with the brute force approach and then the optimized one. After that, I was asked to code the same. I shared my screen and coded it in my code editor. Then my interviewer gave me a second question on Dynamic programming. I followed the same pattern, first the brute force approach, then the optimized way. The interviewer was satisfied and asked me to code the same. Then he asked if I had any questions, and the interview ended. It lasted for 1 hour and 5 mins. After a week, I got a call that I had cleared my first round and got my second round scheduled.
Round 2 (Technical round 2):
The round started with my introduction. Then he directly jumped to the coding part. I opened my code editor. It was a question on Heap data structure. First, I explained the approach, and then I coded the question. The interviewer was really helpful and was very cooperative. After I coded the question, he asked me some questions on OOPS, my project, and some resume-based questions. It lasted for an hour. After a week, I got a call that I had cleared my second round and got my last round scheduled.
Round 3 (H.R. round):
It was an H.R. round. It involved general questions like my strength, my weakness, why we should hire you. Interview bit frequently asked H.R. questions helped me a lot for this particular round. Click here to access them.
After a week, I got an email stating that I’ve successfully cleared all the rounds, and they would like to extend an FTE offer to me.
I was very happy since it was my first offer :)
Apart from all the companies mentioned above, I also appeared for companies like Google, Atlassian, Amazon, and many more but couldn’t clear the rounds.
What did I learn from this?
Rejections are a part of life. One shouldn’t be demotivated from rejections. Look at rejection as a stepping stone. You might feel you did well but still, you can get rejected. So it would be better to stop expecting and start improving. Getting a chance is always a big thing.
Scholarships:-
Recently I have also received a scholarship from the PhonePe Tech Scholar program. It was applicable only for final-year women developers.
I applied for it on the Crio.Do site. After applying, I got a link to a coding test consisting of three coding questions: easy, medium, and hard. I solved all three.
Then I received an interview invite. In the interview, I was grilled on my project-the use case of JavaScript and some questions on JavaScript. I was asked to explain my code as well.
Then after a week, I got an email stating I was selected.
That’s pretty much about my journey till now. I’ll be starting my 6-month internship at Walmart Global Tech.
Resources that helped me during my preparation:-
- C++ by Code with harry
- DSA by Abdul Bari
- Dynamic Programming, Stack & Heap by Aditya Verma
- LinkedList by Lead Coding
- Trees and Graph by takeUforward
- Web development by Code with Harry
- Segment trees and STL by CodeBuddy
- Arrays, strings by CodeNCode
Hope this helps you :)
Key Takeaways:
- Proper Guidance will always lead to great results. It would be great if you can be a part of some good community or a mentorship program if you don’t have a good environment in your college. Being a part of Codess.Cafe led by Aarnav Jindal, was one of the best communities I came across. They conduct mock interviews, one-to-one mentorship sessions, guidance, coding contests, and much more.
- Never let your college tier decide your future. You can bring a change.
- If you are from a Tier-3 or lower college, you might face many difficulties while applying, but trust me, whatever hard work you invest in now, sooner or later you will get the best results.
- Whenever you feel demotivated, talk to your parents, brothers, sisters, friends. It will boost you up.
- In a technical interview, your approach is more important than your solution. Try to explain different approaches to the interviewer and discuss the complexity and also discuss their effects on the performance of the code. Keep your code neat and clean. Using relevant names for variables could be a cherry on the cake.
- If you face difficulty in finding a peer group, make your own. Reach out to people on LinkedIn. Learn from their achievements. Start giving contests together.
- If you have multiple offers, never choose your company based on the package. Go by the quality of projects, employee work-life balance, and prospects. Go online, LinkedIn, Quora, Glassdoor, drop messages to people who work there.
- Accept the fact that you may succeed or fail. Perform your best, and the rest will follow as it should.
- And at last, I would say health is wealth, so never compromise with your mental peace. Take breaks and enjoy life.
It is to be noted that above all are my personal opinions. There is a possibility that there might be some deviations in the timeline that I have mentioned.
Recently, I have also started uploading handwritten notes, resources, and placement materials to help the community in the best possible way :)
- Resources for Placement Prep:https://github.com/riti2409/Resources-for-preparation-Of-Placements
- DP Notes: https://github.com/riti2409/Dynamic-Programming-Notes
- C and C++ Notes: https://github.com/riti2409/Programming_with_C_and_Cplus-plus
- OOPS Notes: https://github.com/riti2409/OOPS_NOTES
- Git/GitHub: https://github.com/riti2409/Git-GitHub
- DBMS Notes: https://github.com/riti2409/DBMS_SQL-Notes
I will be uploading more stuff soon! You can follow me on my GitHub and LinkedIn to stay updated.
Good Luck with your interviews!
If you liked this article, please hit the clap button, leave a comment, and do follow Codess.Cafe for more such insightful stories. In case of any doubts, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter. I would be glad to help :)
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