How I bounced back : My summer in Amherst with Research, Technical Interview prep and more!
Hello everyone! My name is Shreya Sawant and I’m currently a junior pursuing Computer Science and Mathematics at UMass Amherst. As I grew up in Mumbai, India, I understood the importance of living in a multicultural society and the colorful environment it creates. Moreover, I have always been enthusiastic about the power of technology and hence I chose to become a part of HackHer413’s organizing team, which is also a firm believer of promoting diversity in technology.
Hope it’s pumpkin spice and everything nice this fall for you all! As we transition into the chilly winter through this vibrant warm-leafy autumn I’d like to share with you all how I leveraged online resources to make my summer productive without landing a formal internship!
Spring 2019
Throughout my sophomore year, I had been trying hard to land a software engineering internship for the upcoming summer but unfortunately kept on being rejected after the final technical rounds. After seven months of putting constant efforts in applying to various positions and not getting anything for the summer I realised that it’s okay to take a “pause” and “restart” when ready. It was during April I decided to not be disheartened and utilize the summer productively to re-evaluate myself and build on the necessary skills so as to achieve an internship for next year!
The PLAN
Around mid-April I started applying to on-campus summer jobs because I believed that it could give me the experience of independently handling my expenses, managing my apartment, learning to cook, and most important of all : have enough time to prepare myself for technical interviews! I was lucky to secure an Office Assistant position at the Center for Research on Families, an institution which supports research methods. The job started as soon as the academic year ended and I organized a schedule and list of tasks for the entire summer.
The Office Assistant position
Working at Center for Research on families was an amazing experience for me as I was the only student and all my co-workers were senior full-time employees who mentored me throughout. I learnt the responsibilities that came with event management and handling the formal office conferences. After spending my day at the office’s supportive and positive environment, I used to come back home even more energized to get started on coding problems.
Research Assistant Job! The spotlight of my Summer 2019
It was always my wish to do something technical/research related so as to gain good experience which would add to my profile. My search for it had begun in April as well but I couldn’t find one. But around mid-May Dr.Nilanjana Dasgupta(a psychology professor at UMass Amherst) reached out to my supervisor at Center for Research on Families notifying that she was looking for a student with strong technical skills to assist with her research. My boss instantly referred me and I was in! What interested me most for this job was it’s topic of investigation — factors promoting the success of underrepresented students in STEM.
By closely working with phD students of psychology major, I learnt how implicit bias, social vaccines, and many other factors play a role in shaping one’s personality and decision making skills. This job for me was like an exchange of learning experiences : I learnt about the different terms of social psychology and how they relate to our research topic while I suggested the applications of various statistical methods and tools to assist with research’s data analysis. Even today in most of my interviews I’m asked to tell more about this job experience. The interviewers find it very interesting and different than other candidates as I applied my technical skills for research outside my major and hence I call it the spotlight of my Summer 2019!
Technical Interview prep?
Now coming to the most important part. Alongside managing two jobs on-campus I had a very important goal in my mind : to work on my weaknesses with technical interviewing and significantly improve for the next hiring season. Here I would like to share with you some of my strategies and resources of interview prep and how to get an edge over other students.
First of all, let’s just accept that most of us at some point have had these thoughts — “Technical interviewing is so intimidating…”, “I’m good at coding but I just can’t code under pressure!”, “Timed interviews make me nervous, how can I even effectively come up with a solution or explain my code?” If you did, it’s alright! These thoughts came in my mind too, but I did overcome it and you can too!
Step 1 : Start with a lot of mock-interviews : This has to be with different people — peers, career advisors, software engineers — in order to have a diverse feedback to identify your weaknesses. Some of the most common challenges students face is not having holistic knowledge about data structures and algorithms, inability of coding through thought process, and not engaging in conversation with the interviewer while coding.
Step 2 : Identify your setbacks and start working towards it. For me it was mainly about not knowing some complex data structures and algorithms and I realized I had to first gain a clear understanding of that. similarly, everyone can speculate where they going wrong through feedback and then take the necessary steps for improvement.
Step 3 : Practice! Practice! Practice! From May to June I assigned every 1–2 weeks for studying a specific data structure and solve as many problems as I can on that topic. I used to refer to the book ‘Cracking the Coding Interview’ to have an in-depth knowledge about data structures and started interconnecting their applications/functionalities in order to proceed with the questions.The most useful resource I found for questions was LeetCode, from which I solved 2 easy questions and 3 medium questions per day and 3 hard questions per week. For company specific questions I used to refer to InterviewBit. Starting July, I was confident with the functionalities of data structures and began enhancing my algorithms and Big O skills by learning Dynamic Programming on HackerRank and GeeksforGeeks. Around the beginning of August I started reading blogs about students who had excelled in coding interviews and even subscribed to Interview Cake’s free 7 day trial for knowing smart approaches to solve questions.
Step 4 : Never settle.(Yes I like OnePlus) It doesn’t matter if you solve 1000 questions, 500 questions, or 200 questions, what matters the most is what you learnt from it and if you’d be able to reapply it in different scenarios. By mid August I had gotten a lot of practice, and decided it was time for me to test my preparation. I started doing mock interviews with the same people I did in May and compared their feedback. I was glad that I had significantly improved from past! It helped me gain confidence but I was never satisfied. I wanted to keep improving until I actually achieved my goal!
Fall 2019
The most important thing I understood this summer is the significance of taking a breather when things do not go according to your expectations. In this situation, we try to rush ourselves and forget to realize that recharging ourselves can help us to better shape perspective towards our priorities. I feel it’s alright to sometimes not perform up to the mark or even fail. What’s essential is accepting the situation, giving ourselves time and moving forward with double the enthusiasm as before in order to achieve our ultimate goals. Hope this was a great Monday motivation for you all and have a happy fall!
