PlaceKode with Prashant Rawat interned at Flock
Uthaan, the Journalism and Recreational Club of ABV-Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management Gwalior, is here with a new edition of PlaceKode. With us, we have Prashant Rawat, who has interned at Flock and HackerEarth. He will be sharing his working experience and advice on coding and academics.
First and foremost, congratulations on your internship with such prestigious firms. Could you tell us about your present position at Flock?
Currently, I am working as an Software Developer Engineer Intern at Flock. Basically I am working for the React Architecture team which is all about changing the design and architecture of the front-end.
Can you tell us about the interview process in Flock, and the questions asked in it?
The first round was a coding round. In the coding round, there were 2 questions — both being medium to hard in difficulty level. The interview process was pretty straightforward. In the first interview, they gave me a question and it was pretty difficult. It was based on Dynamic Programming. It took me about 1 hour to solve the question.
The second interview was conducted on the same day itself. They gave a question in which I had to mutate a string into something else and I had to tell the minimum number of steps to do so.
The final round had questions about everything — from coding questions to core subjects. This round was of 1.5 hours, and after a few days, I got an email that I have been selected as an intern there.
You have also been an intern at HackerEarth as a back end developer. Can you please brief us about your job profile there?
This was also a six month internship. The majority of my work was on Python Django itself. They hire interns on the basis of their knowledge in that domain, so people who have a hold of Django slightly get an edge.
Most of my work there was based on the candidate interview platform where my team would ease the hiring assessment or interview assessment, which involves the whole hiring process for the company, and I had to fix some bugs as an intern.
Can you share with us about the HackerEarth interview process?
It was similar to that of Flock. The first round was a coding round. After you clear that, you need to sit for 3 interviews for assessment.
In the first 2 interviews, there were little to no DSA questions. All questions were for testing your coding skills, and of medium difficulty level.
The third interview was taken by the hiring manager. He asked about everything — from core subjects to my open source projects. He also asked questions about SQL and some basic DSA questions. My profile was coding-oriented, so most of the questions were coding related.
Can you tell us about your preparation approach for the interview? Also, can you tell us about some of the materials you used?
There are mainly two things which I had focused on — coding and core subjects .
For coding, I would suggest not to wait for the last day because coding requires a lot of practice, and therefore I have been active on many coding platforms like Codechef, Codeforces for coding practice , and Leetcode mainly for interview-based problems.
For the core subjects, I started looking at them a week before the interview or so. Also, preparing for these questions does not require much time.
In the final weeks prior to the interview, I looked for the particular questions asked in the interviews before, to get an idea for the difficulty level of the questions which eventually adds up your confidence for the interview.
On the day of the interview, how would you rank your confidence and preparation? Did you use a checklist to help you with your last-minute preparation?
I got pretty nervous at the time of the interview. To keep myself calm, I didn’t study anything on the day of the interview. This kept me relaxed. I didn’t have any particular checklist but before the interview, I used to go to sites like Geeks-for-Geeks and see past interview experiences.
Can you tell us about your experience as a programming enthusiast? How did you get started, and what were your goals?
In my opinion, instead of straightaway giving the contest, it is better to build some basic knowledge of the concept, because the results can be intimidating at the start. So, it is better to build up a base, and for that a good DSA course can be considered, which is not required to be paid. Some courses are present on Coursera. Even YouTube videos can be used to get the basic concept of DSA, and once you are confident enough regarding the topic or you develop the basic understanding of the topic, you can go for the contest which will tell you where you stand among your peers .
Another approach, which I personally used, is coding with a partner which helps in time management and also gives you the motivation to continue coding with him/her. You can create a group of two or three people who are consistent enough. It will be the best idea for coding and contest .
You have also been an ACM ICPC Regionalist, and also aced a lot of competitive programming contests like KickStart by Google, and HackerCup by Facebook. What has been your strategy in these contests? And, how did you tackle the pressure?
These contests are not very different from contests in Codeforces, Codechef etc. The only difference is that it is a team contest, which is actually better because it kind of unburdens you. Also for preparing for these types of contests, you cannot prepare from just 1 or 2 months before. You need to give time for them, because these are very good level coding contests.
I would suggest to focus on coding only if you are really passionate about it, but if you are preparing for just an interview then it is better to go on with Codeforces and Geeks-for-Geeks questions.
What, according to you, is the right balance between coding and development? Which part should one highlight in their resume?
As per my experience, it doesn’t matter in which field you want to pursue, because there are ample examples of people who cracked good companies in their respective fields. But one should have an idea of DSA in both the fields. In my opinion, at least 1–2 projects should be done for development, and when it comes to coding, the basic ideas and concepts should be cleared and well known .
You have experience as the Head of Event Management Team and as an event organizer (Infotsav 2019). What according to you are advantages a person has from those who are not involved in co-curricular events? Also, did they help in your interview process?
Yeah sure, they help a lot. Not only it helps in the interview, but also it contributes to overall personality development. Going to these events and connecting to a lot of people improves your communication skills and also gives you management skills.
“These things not only help in the interview but also throughout your life”
How would you rate yourself if you were a 5-year-old version of yourself? If you could go back in time and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?
There are some things which have improved a lot, like in the case of technical development. I have grown a lot , but at the same time my involvement in physical activities have taken a step back .
One thing I would tell myself would be that there should be a balance between all the aspects of growth.
What role do communication skills and personality advancement play in the interviews , and how may they be improved ?
I think all these soft skills are very important at the time of the interview because even if you have all the knowledge, it totally depends on your communication skills that how you present them. So, these skills play a great role in the interview.
I think any person who is preparing for an interview should prepare for these skills as well. For developing these skills, there are clubs, management activities in events. They helped me a lot.
Since you have been part of interviews, what are key points the interviewer looks at in an interview? Also, what should we do if we get stuck somewhere?
One thing to keep in mind in an interview is that the interviewer is there to hire someone. So, despite your disadvantages, they will look for the qualities required for that job .
When stuck at any point in an interview, it might not be difficult, even at that time the interviewer will build up an approach which you will be able to grasp to figure out the answer .
They might also give hints which will give you relief from stress during the interview because during an interview our mind is filled up with nervous thoughts, and the interviewer has gone through your situations and will come up to help you .
What recommendations would you provide to your juniors? What are some of the mistakes you’ve made that you’d like to discuss so that we don’t make the same mistakes?
We are bound to make mistakes and it’s not a bad thing. I too had made a lot of mistakes in my earlier days of college. I had taken my CGPA so lightly and it had given me some bad experiences because sometimes you are shortlisted according to your CGPA. And it’s not so difficult to improve your CGPA, you can easily score a decent CGPA. You should basically keep a balance between CGPA and learning other skills.
One more mistake is that a lot of people fear starting a new thing like machine learning, development etc. You should always start once and if you feel interested in that particular topic, you can continue or you can switch to some other things. And it’s not that big of a deal.
So there is no problem in making some mistakes, you should learn from them.
What is the main difference between online and offline mode? Which is better according to you?
I think everyone should experience offline mode because it is a great experience and you learn a lot of things just being around people because there are seniors, teachers, you keep learning a lot of things and at the same time you have a lot of fun.
On the other hand, in online mode you get a lot of free time so you can improve your skills and explore other domains.
So both have pros and cons but in my opinion, offline is way better.
We are concluding our interview here. Thank you for sharing your precious time and experience with us .You are a source of motivation and inspiration for many and we wish you a bright future ahead.
Interviewed by Mrigank Shukla and Akshat Jain
Co-ordinated by Aniket Gautam
