In this article, Rishabh Srivastava, Dept. of EEE, recounts his experience interning at Adobe in the summer of 2020, and at Hanyang University in the summer of 2019.
Sitting with my friends in the lecture hall for the intern talk at the starting of the 4th semester was the first time when I felt the looming terror of internship season, in spite of the seniors asking us to chill out!
I still hadn’t made the decision of whether I wanted to apply for core or non-core profile. The only thing I had made up my mind about was that I would apply for a research internship in the summer of second year. My rationale was that I’ll be able to bag an internship in the third year in the corporate sector, and if that failed, at least the research internship then would have made a good profile for applying for a research intern after third year too, thus keeping quite a lot options open for me (hopefully).
Considering I was still confused between core and non-core, I started e-mailing professors, asking for research avenues they had in the field of machine learning, computer vision or signal processing and communications. Almost the whole of the 4th semester passed in preparing a CV and sending out mails. Sadly, by April, I had received either rejections or no replies at all in most of the cases.
Fortunately, IITG has an MoU with Hanyang University in Korea. The mail for applications for interning there came just before our end semesters. With no other option at the time, I jumped at the opportunity. My hope was that I would obtain exposure and a good research experience. I was fortunate enough to be selected, and cut to a month later, I started my internship in the Computational Vision and Fuzzy Systems lab at Hanyang. The work there was concerned with developing a new clustering algorithm using fuzzy logic and shadowed sets.
I got lucky with my second-year internship because it relied more on our college’s connections rather than my preparation. But this was not going to be the case for third year internship. By the beginning of July, reminders to prepare our resumes already started flowing in. Having spent 2 months just focusing on the intern work there in Hanyang, I had yet to start improving my coding skills.
I spent the whole month of July finishing up my project and revising data structures and algorithms in my free time. Time management was essential in that period. What helped me most during this time was the company of my friends preparing for the same. Group discussions among us helped in clearing our doubts and discovering new ways to approach a problem. InterviewBit is a very good platform that covers all the topics required for qualifying the coding tests during internship. Since InterviewBit has a scoring system, what also kept me going was the competition we had among ourselves! Just remember that such competitions should be healthy and focused towards developing your skills, and not just based on scoring more, which leads to copy pasting solutions and not understanding the concepts.
Coming to the campus directly from Korea, there was no time to relax. Within a week of the start of the 5 th semester, we had our first tests for companies in slot 1. An essential aspect that I realised quite late (so late that I didn’t get shortlisted for any company in slot 1 ) was that practicing on InterviewBit made you accustomed to that environment only, and most companies use other platforms and formats for conducting the tests. It took me some time to break out from that comfort zone. One must-to-do task is to go through the past questions asked by the company you are applying for, as there are high chances that similar questions might be repeated, or same concepts be covered in the test.
Getting shortlisted for interviews makes you happy for 5 minutes, and then nervous till the interview gets over. Interviews require you to be thorough with your CV. If you don’t know anything, do not write it on the CV! Be prepared with the answers for some of the most common questions asked. Write the answers beforehand in points that you would need to cover. I bagged an internship in Adobe as a Media and Data Science Research Intern. The coding test for Adobe was simple, but since they offer research internships, the test also had MCQs on linear algebra and probability. The extra topics mentioned could be easily covered from the notes for the courses taught in college.
The profile for which I got selected for was offered for the first time at IITG, and thus I had no idea what to expect in the interviews. Luckily, the interview was heavily focussed on my CV and past internship experience, which I had prepared well. Along with that, some questions mixing the concepts of
probability distribution and dynamic programming were asked. One tip for interviews that I strongly recommend is to THINK ALOUD. The interviewers are more concerned with how you approach the problem rather than giving the correct answer directly. Finally, I got selected, and I could relax till the next summer.
But God just doesn’t want to give us a break, does He? COVID-19 washed away all our plans for the summer.
Luckily, Adobe decided to have a virtual internship rather than cancelling it completely, unlike some other companies. The virtual experience had some pros and cons. Not being able to explore the Adobe campus and lack of physical interactions with mentors and fellow interns were some of the major
downsides. Flexible working hours, comfort of home, and not needing to brave the traffic every morning were the advantages. My work at Adobe involved developing a novel algorithm to find useful patterns from data, put very simply. Cannot go into too much detail, else Adobe people won’t be happy ( ). The mentors were very helpful, and the work culture was very comfortable for us interns. I learnt a lot in the 12 weeks that I interned there.
So, wrapping it up, some key points to note are:
1. Practice coding. It will be needed for almost all profiles.
2. Prepare your CV well, and only put in it what you are sure of.
3. Check out the archives about companies before the tests and interviews.
4. Try not to take tension! (keyword being ‘try’, because tension is inevitable!)
