Resume, Day 1, Day 2

Finish the Resumes

They are like loans, you cannot altogether skip taking them nowadays, and you want to get rid of them as soon as possible.
Resume? Good question.
Each course has a concrete final theme you reached. You read each individual result, you see the connections, you see the soul. Keep an entry each to put up milestones of that five month process.
Published something?
Completed and submitted a project?
Gave a seminar?
Read important papers?
Noteworthy implementations?
This already fills up the page. Describe your seminar and term projects as personally as
possible. This comes on top. Say it out on paper as you have gone through it. What were you trying to answer? Where have you reached? Where are you going?
Extra curriculars? Oh well…
The rest of the process is more or less mechanical, fill in JAFs, ask seniors the core details of the companies, check if the location suits you, the work culture, prospects for growth. Ask on groups so that lazy people like me come to know stuff too. Do not mess with the attendance in PPTs and other events, that is an idiotic risk, problem practising every day, how many shortlists do we want, ten, fifteen, maybe, I don’t know, twenty two? And what is this day and slot rigamarole?
Enter the tests.
They are over sooner than you’d imagine. The day is a complete daze. You stop thinking about the results at one point, another form to fill, maybe I’ll attempt the harder question first, how about the easy ones rather? 2 in 3? 1.75/4 I don’t know, someone said they solved five more test cases…
Do not panic if you are not shortlisted in as many companies as you had hoped for. Most of those repeated appearances will get somewhere by the end of the second day, and almost all companies will open up resume submissions for every one. Prepare for what you are going to do once you land up in an interview, you are guaranteed to get more than you’ll need, eventually.
I ignored the entire CSE undergrad curriculum, because I was banking on my resume being heavily oriented towards Algorithms and Computational Complexity to drive the questions in that direction. That is perhaps the only mistake I made. Take fifteen days to revise all of your core Computer Science fundamentals. You’ll end up teaching them to those who did not. You do not want to be the one listening to rudimentary but essential facts about TCP and Virtual Memory ten minutes before your interview begins.

Day One

I walked into Microsoft after congratulating a friend who was selected within a single round, and was off to Google. (He got selected there too.)
Nerves. Sweat. Suddenly my resume feels woefully lacking.
Twenty minutes in, staring at the page with three different versions of my proposed solution, water doesn’t help. The interviewer smiles.
Round two. Smiles. Shake of hands.
Rejected.

Apple. Two technical rounds. An extra HR in this one. Smiles. Shake of hands.
Rejected.

I am not going into the questions as such. It is all about thinking algorithmically and applying techniques that you have at your disposal. One could go into a finer level of granularity : Microsoft is known to stress upon linked lists and binary trees, but then, maybe next year they’ll fancy asking Dynamic Programming, or maybe switch to Graph algorithms. The only way out is to be prepared for everything.
The essence of every tech interview is the same. They are not looking for the correct solution within a minute. In fact, they might get suspicious of you already having seen the solution if you converge on to it that fast. Unless of course if you really are a seasoned coder and can come up with every answer immediately.
If nothing, suggest the worst way that occurs to you. Now tell him where does the inefficiency creep in, and what alternative ideas you have. Ask him for hints. Do not sit silent hoping the question will change and the ordeal will get over. The ordeal is the whole point.
In one sentence, they are looking for people who can think for themselves, and come up with ideas in a high pressure situation.

Day Two

My first company was Flow Traders, and I had placed it on top of my preference list. This was the one I wanted.
The first round was a fairly straightforward one in which I was asked to write basic object oriented code in Java. A few fact checks about the language, multi-threading, access modifiers.
It got over in twenty minutes.
Then there were two HR rounds that lasted for an hour. As far as I know, this is the only company that places a serious importance on your motivation and drive to join them. Being my first choice anyway, I breezed through the discussions, which centered around my career trajectory so far, the reasons I wanted to go to Europe, and in particular the Netherlands, what information did I have about the kind of business the company was involved in, where did I see myself in the company in a few years. There were even a few questions on my projections of the culture and people of Amsterdam.
In short, they are looking for people with a passion for the job profile they are applying to. It sounds fancy, and perhaps even frivolous, but whether or not you are clear headed on why you want to work for them, and them alone, will be about eighty percent of the reason why you were selected, or not.
(For added details, watch the last scene in The Pursuit of Happiness.)
I had appeared for three more companies and was smoking away my headache when the news of the acceptance came in.
Do not lose your head. This will test you. Not merely each question. Not the individual interviews even. The process. It is a very primal experience, competition. This is how we evolved. The world is built upon the contributions of men and women who looked at problems and raised their hands up with the little ideas that popped up in their heads.
Best of luck and yes everyone will get placed but the one thing that they do not tell you is that when one half of the whole gets there on day two you do not want to be part of the other half.

Be prepared!

Research Areas

Digital VLSI, System Design, Computer Architecture, Image Processing

Pre-Placement Preparation

This is a time, one should utilize efficiently to prepare technically plus aptitude. There are various company pre-placement talks. Thus, one should attend only if you are going to sign JAF for that company else you can skip. Technical tests are organized by dpc of the respective department. Hence one should use this opportunity to test his technical skills. As, I am from Electrical department, there are couple of test in different domain like digital, analog, signal processing. So, one should be crystal clear in mind for which profile, he/she will be interested and focused more on that domain. To me, I was more interested in digital so I prepared accordingly. There is also Aptitude test organized by placement office, weekly basis. Hence you can attempt to test your timing management and aptitude skills.
I got shortlisted in following firms

1. Qualcomm
2. Intel
3. Math Works
4. Philips innovation Campus
5. Micron Semiconductor

Placement Experience

Qualcomm

Round 1 interview
In my panel there were two interviewers. They asked first to tell me something about myself. They asked me about my course projects like what is embedded system, difference between fifo and flop, pipelining, Verilog, and where do you want to see yourself in 5 years. I was selected for 2nd round
Round 2 interviews
In my panel, there were two interviewers. They asked to design PLL, clock divide by 3 circuit and waveform, FIFO depth. I was rejected from this round, but those who got selected went for HR round which was last.

Intel

The interviewer asked me to sit, then he had drawn a sequential circuit on paper to which he asked how delay can be decreased, Consequences of scaling down technology, tradeoff between speed, delay and power consumption, dynamic power of cmos, front end design flow. I got rejected in first round. The interview was not in sequence. Some got selected only after 1st round and some has to go to 2nd round of technical interview. There was no HR separately.

Math Works

There was three round GD, Technical and Managerial.
GD
There were total of eight students. The topic was given 2 minute before and then each had to conclude in 1 minute after the discussion is over. To me, the topic of discussion was open source vs. licensed software/tools.
Technical
The interviewers asked me about PLL, to write a Verilog of combinational circuit, setup and hold time, Verilog output.
Managerial
In managerial they told me about the job which was engineer in engineer development group. They ask me to explain my thesis, my strengths, some twisting questions like given a situation, how to handle/tackle such problems.

Phillips Innovation Campus

There were 3 rounds technical, managerial, HR
Technical
The interviewers asked me about the cisc and risc processors and their differences, pipelining, cpi, throughput, hazards in pipelining, vhdl, buffer circuit.
Managerial
The interviewer asked to me to pick one of my best project and asked me to explain, Interviewers explain me about the job being offered, my strengths, some more questions.
HR
The HR round was simple, the Interviewers asked questions such as where do you want to see yourself in 3 years, why do you want to join, why do you think you are the best for the profile and so on.
I was offered job in Philips, senior engineer, R&D.

Fundae

1. Make your resume very much effective, include the relevant points, you should know everything what you have written in your resume. So you should be able to explain properly to the interviewers.
2. Preparation materials are provided my DPC, there are many important concepts and previous year placement papers and company interview questions
3. Stick to your domain, if you are interested in digital, sign for digital company only.
4. Interviewers will ask basic questions which you have learnt during course projects, thesis, and theory courses.
5. Don’t panic if you don’t get placed on 1st day. Even in our batch good students remain unplaced till 4 days. At last everyone gets placed.
6. Prepare well before interview, your resume, your thesis, your projects and other technical questions.

Some Useful Tags:
Pre-Placement Preparation, PPT’s, Resume, Tests, Interview Preparation, Placement Experience, Goldman Sachs, Tower Research, IBM, Uber, JP Morgan, Microsoft

Profile at a Glance:

1) CPI : 8.83
2) Minor in Stats, Honors in CS
3) 4 internships (2 Tech, 2 Data Science) + 1 RnD project
4) Lots of Projects

Pre-Placement Preparation:

1) PPTs + Seniors Talk :

You will have to attend a fixed number of PPTs due to the placement policy. Do attend PPTs of companies that you are interested. There will be a lot of information and most of the companies will talk about their business etc. but the important information to take away is what the company does and what would be your role in the company. Apart from this, you should get feedback from people who are already present in the company, either through sites like Glassdoor or by contacting seniors who are placed there. You can get this info (seniors) from the previous years placement blogs.

2) Resume :

Your resume is a very important factor both for shortlisting for the interviews and during the interviews. From my experience, CS Tech companies are mostly interested in your internships as well as your projects. Most of my interviewers didn’t even go to the second page of PORs & Extra-currics, so try to make your resume in such a way that most of the things you want to highlight are mentioned in the first page itself. Have a look at some of your senior’s resume once before making yours. Finally complete your resume well before time and send it to as many friends/seniors as possible and get feedback and make improvements.

3) Tests :

This would be a major factor for getting shortlisted for the interviews. Most of the Tech companies tests are purely coding based having 2-3 questions in typically 1-2 hours along with some MCQs on basics of Computer Science. You should practice coding questions from sites like Hackerrank and Codeforces since most of the questions are similar in nature to them and those questions will help you get your basics clear. The more the questions you do, the better since there is a high chance that a similar question in principle might come in the exam. Apart from this, for finance companies you should practice your probability and statistics skills and do a lot of puzzles. Remember though, that the test along with the resume are used for shortlisting the candidates for the interviews by most of the companies. So don’t lose heart if your test went bad.

4) Interview Preparation :

First and foremost, go through your resume well, each and every point. You never know what might catch the interviewer’s eye and you shouldn’t be left thinking about it in the interview. For projects, prepare justifications for design choices and also revise the mathematical details of the methods used in your project. Apart from this prepare for the basic HR questions. Lastly prepare some questions you would like to ask the interviewer. Also think about questions like why this particular role?, Why this company?. A major portion of my interviews was on these questions in finance companies like GS and JP Morgan. Finance companies ask a lot of puzzles and probability and stats questions in the interviews, prepare well for those. And for CS Tech companies, coding on paper is common. Go through resources online for pointers regarding preparing for the above. One important thing is to always think aloud, even if you are stuck at some point. The interviewers are mostly interested in the way you think rather than whether or not you get to the correct answer.

Placement Experience

I was shortlisted for 8 companies on Day 1, 4 in each slot. The placement cell assigned ½ hour slots for each of the companies to conduct their first rounds of interviews. But these slots were hardly followed beyond the first hour. So it is essential that you have friends on that day who will coordinate the timings of your interview slots with the company coordinators and ensure that your time is not wasted and you are able to attend as many interviews as possible. Also be prepared to make quick decisions on where to go, which may also involve choosing between 2 companies due to time constraints. A day or two before, run through different scenarios and make up your mind about what to choose. For e.g. in my case I had to forgo going for the Google interview altogether in order to give the remaining 3 interviews well in the D1S1 and same with Apple in D1S2. There are typically 2-3 rounds of interviews for most of the CS Tech companies and also for some of the finance companies, and it gets really exhausting till the end of the day. In my case, my first interview for Tower Research (eventually this is where I was placed 🙂) took 2hrs and then I had to rush through everything else. As a general rule if a company is interested in a candidate they try to increase the length of the interview.

Tower Research

1) Resume based shortlisting for the interviews.
2) Interview :
First Round : Intro, Questions on my projects, Networks based questions, O.S. based questions, coding questions. Asked to code up on pen-paper. (50 mins)
Second Round : Similar as the first round in the initial discussions. More focus on coding question (graph based), asked to code it up on pen-paper, asked about my PORs. (50 mins)

Uber

1) Coding Test : 3 Coding Questions (1 1/2 hrs). 2/3 for getting shortlisted.
2) Interview :
a) First Round (Tech) : Asked about how to model the tetris problem and code it up on paper. (40mins)
b) Second Round (Tech) : Asked coding questions (3), Puzzles, and then asked to code up the solution for one of the coding questions. (40mins)
c) Third Round (HR – based) : Intro, Motivation, Questions on internships testing your involvement (Basic Questions like how big the data was, some of the challenges that you faced while coding it up, the systems used to handle the huge amount of data, etc.), Biggest Failure and how you have overcome that failure, Strengths. (40mins)

Microsoft (Software Developer and Data Science)

1) Test :
a) SW : Coding Test; this included 3 easy questions. The challenge here was that the environment was their own cocubes whose interface is really difficult to use and debug. So essentially they were testing how well can you code on white paper i.e. without the debugging.
The questions were testing skills with pointers, trees, etc. (1hr 15mins)
b) DS : This test included questions in details about various Machine Learning models. Some of the questions were factual but most of them were application oriented. for e.g. effects of various hyperparameters, which loss function to use, etc. (1 hr)
2) Group Fly :
a) SW : This stage included 2 questions to solve on pen paper, and then discuss with the guides there to optimize the solution if possible. One of the questions was based on binary trees and the other was on RLE. (1 ½ hrs).
b) DS : 2 Questions – The first was to explain the mathematical formulation, learning algorithm and prediction algorithm of any of the following : (Neural Networks, HMMs, MRFs, LSTMs, etc). The second question was on practical applications of ML. 4 ML tasks were provided, we had to formulate any one of the tasks as an ML problem, ask for the required data and propose a model which was able to solve the problem and discuss the nuances of the task with the guides present. (2 hrs)
3) Interview :
a) SW :
1) First Round (Tech): 2 coding question on binary trees. Then a simple tweak to the question. Then he asked me to code it up on pen-paper in C++ (1/2 hr).
2) Second Round (Tech) : Discussion about my projects, motivation, talk about why not go for MS? Then a coding question again on binary trees. Asked me to code it up on pen-paper in C++. (40 mins)
3) Third Round (Redmond) : Didn’t get shortlisted for this round.

Goldman Sachs

1) Test : The test was mostly testing your JEE Math skills and some concepts of statistics and probabilities and a few simple questions on coding algorithms, along with one coding question which involved solving a puzzle itself (not much weightage given to this).
2) Interview : There were 3 separate teams that had come for the interviews and each of them had a similar but independent process.
1) First Round : Intro, Questions about motivation (Really Grilled me here), why finance, why GS?, etc.
2) Second Round : Intro, Motivation, Stats based questions on variance and derivations for simple time series data.

IBM (Data Science Profile)

1) Test : 3 rounds of test, one on Logical Reasoning, Data Interpretation and one on English. (2 hrs total)
2) Interview : One HR based interview with questions focussed on ML projects.

JP Morgan (Quantitative Researcher)

1) Test :
a) MCQs – 3 sections : Probability and stats based questions, Maths based Questions, and CS Coding based questions (1hr 15mins)
b) Coding – 2 coding questions on binary trees(½ hr)
2) Interview :
a) First Round : ML questions, mathematical details on concepts used in projects.
b) Second Round : CS theory based questions on Compilers and OOPs in C++.
c) Third Round : Questions on OOPs in C++.