Disclaimer: This is an old and informal blog post written in haste, basking in glory of placements and relief of getting back home after an intense semester. This might be relevant to only a niche of Indian engineering undergrads sitting for campus placements. Take the advice with a pinch of salt and forgive my dramatic showcase of wisdom.

First off, this post is not about cracking a specific financial job like Goldman Sachs (contact Chitrarth Srivastava, solve cseblog) or trading firm like Optiver (contact Arvind Kesavan, solve tradertest under 8 mins). This is almost certainly not about cracking a core electrical engineering firm like Texas Instruments (go ahead ask some elec nerd about this, *points at self*). This post will serve as a touch-up to your face (where face = grades && relevant internships && projects) and as goes with life, no amount of makeup can cover a messed up face. On this positive note, let’s get started, shall we?

Resume

Exaggerate, cut down, repeat.

Just like a bad haircut, resume building gets better with time. Start early, ideally summers (6 months before). People usually have 3 main sections on their resume (you may merge them later according to your need) - Internships, Projects (and research?) and PoR (Position of Responsibility). For each section, write everything you have ever been part of (exaggerate the heck out of it). Now, use active verbs and try to be concise (Cut down to one sentence). Review it yourself and make at least 5 versions of it before getting it reviewed by a senior. Important note: Don’t feel obliged to include the changes that anyone suggests. Go by your gut feel. People will suggest crap just for the sake of it. By the time you finish making your resume, you should be answering questions like “What’s going on?” on the lines of “Observed the precise movement of the minute hand of a wall clock”, which precisely means Nothing much. Here is my resume after this entire process.

Prepare

.. or Perish

If you’re planning for a consulting job then make sure to build a resume that’ll get you shortlisted in the first place. These firms assign points to each of your accomplishments and PoRs (so rack ‘em up!). Next, make your case group early! People will ditch you and make their own groups. Be quick and be part of multiple groups. Try to have the right mix of people in the group (more fundae from Harshwardhan Singh or Sambhav Jain).

For a finance job, you should start with math, probability and puzzles as early as possible.

I was more of a software guy. The standard for most of these jobs (and these are in plenty) is Aptitude, CS multiple choice and 2-4 coding questions. For aptitude, placement cell conducts pretty decent tests. These will give you an idea of where you stand among the institute crowd. For any c++, object oriented programming related question refer GeeksForGeeks. Problems are pretty standard and you might find exact questions in the exams sometime. There are usually operating system questions as well and I was lucky to be doing an OS course during the semester. You might want to do the same or go through GeeksForGeeks. For coding questions, solve Hackerrank, GeeksForGeeks as much as possible. Highly recommend to be proficient with Python and C++ both. Some companies will force you to use Cpp such as Samsung. For rest of the exams, do use python when the question is straightforward and just needs you to write long lines of codes - Python is way easier to write in the given time frame. For questions with optimization and trickier logic, stay put with c++.

Signing the Job Application Forms

Contrary to the general belief of signing JAFs carefully, I would highly recommend going in for the ultra kill. For this you might want to accumulate incentive points from the placement cell (although after a point, there won’t be any restrictions, so that’s not an issue). I vouch for signing more because the tests will only help you prepare better. I loved giving coding exams and then coming back home to realize what a nut job I was to not be able to solve that one. That said, set your standard for the JAFs according to YOUR potential not your wing-mates. If you think you deserve better, then don’t sign the JAF. There are plenty of companies coming especially for software profiles, so filling JAFs out of panic is the last thing you should do. Since there are a horde of software companies on campus, I highly recommend you to be proficient with coding (irrespective of your interests) in at least one language to land a backup job. Fun fact: I signed 100+ JAFs only to land a day 1 job. Practice helps.

Tests

Two words: Time Management

Most of the tests check your ability/time ratio. Identify your strengths on a coarse and fine grain level. For instance, I would prefer coding questions over OS or OOPS MCQs. This would be a coarse level preference. Inside coding, I would prefer string manipulation and algorithms over graph theory. If your preferences are sorted, then you would definitely not miss out on the easy ones. Also, always go through the entire paper. It is completely possible that the easiest coding problem is last on your list and you end up giving your time to the problems before. These questions are permuted for all students, hence make sure to scan everything from start to end and then decide. Some tricks(courtesy Aditya Mate): In questions which ask for the desired output of a code, you might write the entire code snippet into the coding area in the later section. Since copying is not allowed it is a tedious task to write it down on the notebook but worth it if you have time. In case a code is not working for all test cases, think for boundary cases and modify the code to suit your needs. Ask other iitian friends for the questions if they appeared for the same company before. Questions do get repeated. Fun fact: If you go by my rule of signing infy JAFs you might end up with 6-9 exams on a single day sometimes. Take refreshments and nail all of them. With each exam, you’ll only get in the mood for more.

Interview prep

Not going into a lot of detail, I would say do 2 things- Prepare well on resume based questions (including tell me about yourself, why your grades are low, do you even have hobbies?) and read about the companies investments, products etc. Please don’t search glasdoor for this. Go to the web page of the company and read Wikipedia. Quora answers can help sometimes as well. Don’t over do this to the point you start telling things even the interviewers didn’t know.

Interview

The real game changer. Make sure you are neatly dressed up and hydrated. All things aside, I would say be confident . As clichéd it sounds, it REALLY helps. You might be thinking 2 things-

  1. I am confident. But are you really confident to the point that you don’t start scribbling on a sheet of paper as soon as you get a problem. Do you smile and say things slowly? Are you really relaxed? This is tough. But if you can crack this, I bet the interviewer starts doubting his skills and at some point he is thinking that if you’re aren’t really desperate for the job, you’re the right pick. This is essentially a game where both the parties try to get the best deal. If you show them that you’re desperate af, they know they’ll get better.
  2. Easy to say, but what about my skills and expertise. I thought it’s a technical interview not an HR. First of all, don’t prepare yourself for a technical or HR interview. These guys are judging you from the moment you enter the room. For most of the cases, they have already checked your skills from tests. Obviously tanking the interview and smiling won’t help. But being confident and explaining a structured thought process will not only impress them, but will help you in coming up with the right solution.

I’ll give my example, which actually made me believe that this stuff works. On day 1, I had given Goldman and Texas in slot 1. I was pretty sure that TI had gone well since they had taken a HR round as well(which in a tech company usually means selected :p). I tanked my final interview of goldman because probability. Anyways, I had NEC Japan at a higher preference so I could appear for slot 2 (day 1 slots are merged). In slot 2, I gave PayPal and NEC. After NEC, I got to know that I did get selected in TI. So I went into PayPal knowing that I was already selected in TI. Confidence boost ++. In all my 3 interviews I gave, I started off by saying jack shit but always built upon it. I was relaxed, calm and composed. After my second interview, the interviewer actually asked me why the heck was I so happy even at 1am after busting my ass everywhere. I just gave a confident reply in Hindi saying - Tension nhi hai sir, ho hi jaega. As flamboyant as it sounds, I was selected for PayPal as well. I’d like to believe it had a lot to do with my confident state of mind.