How I got job offers from 2 big companies : Arcesium & Microsoft | GeeksforGeeks

so from beginner you can uh opt for any beginner friendly platform i would suggest either hacker rank or geeksforgeeks you just follow a particular sheet nowadays many dsa sheets are available beat from love bubba 450 dsa sheets driver dsa sheet and i think now ashwell has also launched a sheet so you can follow any sheet and do the questions of data structures topic wise and you can submit it on a tactic practice section of the geeks4geeks and see where your test case which test case fails so like this you just have to uh go from easy medium and then hard questions of the data structures and algorithms of each and every topic [Music] hi everyone good evening how are you all i hope you all are doing very well i am dhwani from geeksforgeeks and i will be the host for today's session for today's session i am really pleased to welcome miss tanya gupta who is an upcoming sde at microsoft and she has also worked as a technology analyst in turn at morgan stanley hi tanya hello dhwani thanks for having me on stage how are you yeah i'm good what about you i'm good too i have to say when i read your profile i was so i was feeling so privileged to be able to talk to you personally i mean i your your profile is worth noting i mean it's great to have you here so before getting into the actual talking of the session let's just have a brief introduction kind of introduce yourself okay so my name is tanya gupta i'm a computer engineering student from harper institute of engineering and technology in my eighth semester so i'm currently doing my of software engineering internship at morgan stanley and i am going uh soon going to be joined joining microsoft as a full-time software engineer so yeah this is about me so is this your first job like is this your first software engineering job uh no i have other offers as well for full-time software engineers like uh from united health group and our cesium as well okay so it's your first full-time working job like after an internship yeah yeah that's great i mean getting a first job at microsoft that's amazing so how i would just like to you know like i and personally and all the people in the audience would like to know about your personal experience like how is it transitioning from a college to you know like a full-time working professional okay so my experience has been really good i started coding from my like in the middle of my second year not very too early so uh i had to put a lot of time and efforts to uh hold the rope in my hand eventually so the coding journey was a little bit tough but geeks for geeks and some other platforms really helped me to get that grip and soon i when i felt comfortable in coding so the journey became really easy from transitioning to a student to an actual uh developer in some really cool corporate companies right so i often hear people asking about what are the important tech stacks that a person should focus on like when they are preparing for interviews or for cracking the exams so which text tag do you think is the most important one first of all your data structures and algorithms are the most important one when you are targeting any tech interview apart from it you must have some development experience either in terms of your android development or web development or you can also opt for machine learning as well like you must have some exp real life a real hands-on experience uh of development which is actually implemented in the industry because data structures is not something you will actually be using in the company your web webd your android development will will actually be used when you join a company but for targeting any tech interview data structures and algorithms are the most important apart from it i would say cs fundamentals are equally important as well right so which development stack did you work on when you were preparing okay so i worked on web development like i learned html css javascript and then some react frameworks so node.js so i was more into web development kind of thing so how did you transition from a web developer to a software engineering intern uh so uh to transition into a software engineer in turn you have to crack the interview which basically involves data structures and algorithms the most so you have to be very good in data structures like arrays strings the basic data structures uh so you can use any platform geeks for geeks you can use your practice sections uh to do your data structures so mainly data structures and algorithms is the most important one apart from it uh your computer science fundamentals are the important so yeah right so when you were applying for various opportunities i'm sure you must have applied a lot of places and you have got a lot of offers so what are the entry-level jobs at your current company and the company you have offers with okay so the entry-level jobs are for software engineer you can also work as analyst in some company that that is also a kind of software engineer role but for in financial companies the software engineer term is usually uh coined as analyst so uh i think in the tech field analyst job software engineer jobs your qa jobs your development uh engineer jobs are i think the entry level jobs for any fresher right so with your internship at morgan stanley like which year did you apply for it and what was the road map to applying for it okay so in 2021 i applied for morgan stanley off campus so without any reference so i got the uh test link for it uh and then after test when i got shortlisted for interviews the process went on ahead so test was mostly dsa right yeah it included debugging questions some mcq some aptitude and data structures and algorithms coding questions okay i mean i i myself am a college student so that's why i have a lot of questions as a follow-up i mean i myself am looking for internships and you know like being able to talk to you right now is like an eye-opening session because i actually get to know the basic routes right so that's why i'm asking i mean a lot of the code a lot of the tests and the you know like company tests are like this only first they take the aptitude then they take the psychometrics and then they move on to dsa right so i know you have explained it a lot but in clear crisp words if you have to explain your route for cracking the exams and interviews how would you explain it okay so first of all uh i'm assuming anyone uh who is listening this webinar he's a beginner so from beginner you can uh opt for any beginner friendly platform i would suggest even either hacker rank or geeksforgeeks you just follow a particular sheet nowadays many dsa sheets are available beat from love bubba 450 dsa sheets driver dsa sheet and i think now ashford has also launched a sheet so you can follow any sheet and do the questions of data structures topic wise and you can submit it on a tactic practice section of the geeks4geeks and uh see where your test case which test case fails so like this you just have to uh go from easy medium and then hard questions of the data structures and algorithms of each and every topic uh i think uh uh when you are targeting any tech interview uh the advanced data structures are not necessary uh when you are a fresher like tries or avl trees red black trees you can just go for basic data structures up till graphs trees graphs and then you also have to prepare for your computer science fundamentals there is a section of computer science fundamentals on geeksforgeeks portal it has all the most important questions that have been asked in various companies so you can uh refer that and also in some companies puzzles are also asked like in american express goldman sachs puzzles are also the important thing that you have to take into consideration and then come your projects uh you must have two three good projects on your resume which depicts your actual development skill which you will be implementing uh in real life like in the real corporate tech world so i think all these would help you in targeting any or cracking any tech interview of any good company right i mean that explains a lot i mean in simple words you have explained a lot of things so uh what was the most overwhelming and the difficult part of your preparation journey and how did you overcome it uh the most difficult part was whenever i had to submit a question uh on any coding question uh initially there were a lot of difficulties in submitting that question because some of the other test cases fails on some areas so it takes time sometimes i have spent even five to six hours on one question so initially you have to be patient you have to be consistent so uh that is one overcoming uh thing that you need to take into consideration apart from it uh also you have to manage your time you have to balance between your data structures your cs fundamentals and your development skills because all the three parts constitute your interview almost equally so yeah balancing your time and just keep on applying for off-campus opportunities as well uh make some good connections on linkedin ask for reference and build a good linkedin profile because sometimes recruiters reach you uh via linkedin so make a good linkedin profile that has helped me a lot in my career personally right so how does a reference system work i mean you get some referral from a person who is working at the company that's how it works yes uh for uh any role you can reach out to any person in that company not importantly uh only the software engineers you can reach out to anyone but uh reference do not guarantee interview they would just uh queue up your application at front but it is only your resume or your profile uh that would actually matter that would help you uh in getting the actual interview opportunities so reference do not always guarantee interview right so which websites or blogs did you refer to while you were finding job uh so linkedin is the most important and the most famous one uh apart from it there is nocre.com there is insta shire uh so a lot many websites but personally i have only referred linkedin and a lot of recruiters reach me on linkedin only right so as he stated linkedin profile is very important what are some tips to you know make your linkedin profile worth you know like worth noticing okay so first of all uh make some really good connections like whichever company you are dreaming to work for uh make connections of with people in that company and uh always get uh aware like what is going on this uh in this tech industry secondly uh put your achievements whatever development you have uh learned or any certificate of yours or any achievement in terms of scholarship of some company just uh brag it on your linkedin because recruiter will judge you based on that so uh i think uh this sums up all for any good linkedin profile right so what are the sources that you used for studying and preparing like some books that you really referred or the websites okay so uh one book that i would like to refer is uh that i would like to suggest to the audience is tracking the coding interview it is a really good book which will uh make you clear about how an actual interview goes on uh and then i would suggest geeksforgeeks you can read blogs on geeksforgeeks solutions on geeksforgeeks and then you can use their practice section you can use their puzzle section for preparing the puzzles and also the cs fundamentals uh then you can refer to love bubba's 450 dsa sheet i did my coding questions from there only it's uh it has almost all the important coding questions that are asked in all almost every company the top-notch companies as well so these were the resources right so from a college student to an actual full-time uh working professional i'm sure you face a lot of a lot of you know like problems that might have caused you to think like this might not be the field for me so like how did you overcome that what kept you motivated through it all uh so transitioning from a college student to full-time software engineering in turn uh i was more into coding questions in my college like i used to do competitive programming more than the development but when you enter a company you only have to do development and you have to make softwares so uh that switch uh was really a little bit hard for me because i was not into development that much and uh so but uh i knew that uh this is the actual thing that makes you a software engineer only the development and making software's making some really good scalable softwares so that uh idea in my mind motivated me to learn more so i i learn i think each and every day uh some new thing from my team from my manager uh how to be a good software engineer and i think this learning curve goes on and on and it's never ending right so what is the most interesting part of your current job uh the most uh interesting part i would say is uh interacting with the real la the real software engineers and your seniors like in your team you have so much uh new things to learn and apart from the work we discuss really uh cool things like what is going on and we have some uh good talks uh and you get to see the office their coffee uh making machine the foosball the thing so i think these are some really cool things apart from your work right so what kind of questions were you asked during your technical round like what was your hiring procedure like uh okay uh so you are talking about our cesium or any software microsoft and system words so uh talking about microsoft it was through engage program so it the path was completely different uh in microsoft i firstly had to give a coding test to be selected in microsoft engage and then after that a three weeks program a mentorship program was there in which you have to make a project on the given problem statement and based on that you got shortlisted for the interviews and then there were three interviews uh which needs which need to be cracked for getting microsoft ultimately so but for art cesium there was a recruiter reached me via mail off campus so uh she sent me the test link and then after the test i got shortlisted for the interviews and then there were two interviews no hr in specific uh in that company so what kind of text tag did you like get most questions out of which the essay did you feel like was the most prominent in your interviews uh alice for our cesium arrays strings uh a little bit of trees and then some pattern making questions were there uh so yeah but uh in microsoft questions go up to the level of trees graphs and stacks so you have to be uh really good in data structures when you are targeting microsoft i would say right i mean the i have worked on some these pattern based questions and they are really you know like once you get one star wrong it's really annoying but once you get them all right it's amazing yeah so uh did you take part in any of your campus placements and how was the experience yeah i took part in campus placement so uh i got a internship offered from american express and full-time offer from united health group from on campus placements uh i think when you uh we talk about on-campus placements i would feel the process is quite easier as compared to the off-campus because in off-campus you are competing with lots of students but if if not lacks at least thousands of students but uh in on campus it's just thousand or some 500 students so the competition gets really uh cooled down when you are uh sitting on campus right i mean yes it's just your peers you have worked with them for four years so you know how much they know and how much you know so yeah so you were mentioning that a resume is what stands out in front of a committee of people who are like taking your interviews so how do how important do you think a resume is and how is your resume different from that of others and also could they give us some tips as to how to make our resumes good resumes are really important first of all your resume has to be ats friendly because nowadays what companies do is they just pass through the ats and they just pass your resume accordingly but if it is not getting passed correctly your selection won't be there so make an 80s friendly resume and then include your uh two three good projects on your resume some really good coding code coding ratings like on whatever competitive programming you do like on code forces code chef you just put those ratings and then uh you mentioned some text tags that you know or that you have learnt in your college uh that really stands out but apart from this one last tip that i would like to give is that uh whenever you are uh applying for any company read the job description and according to that job description mention those keywords in your resume specific to that company's job description that would really help you in getting the selection for further application process right so since i am also you know like in this phase of finding internships so how important do you think is in college internship like during the course of our fourth year we don't usually do a lot of big internships it's just a two to three month internship before the fourth year starts so how important do you think that internship is like if in terms of getting work experience uh personally i didn't do two months internship i directly did six months internship as my first work experience so uh i would suggest two months internship or any prior internship experience before your six months internship is not necessary no no company has ever asked me that why you don't uh why didn't you do an internship but if you do a months internship it's always a plus point because if you do in a good company you can get a ppo from there only and you don't have to worry about placements as such so but it's not necessary if you haven't uh grabbed any two months internship don't worry just prepare for six months internship it's not going to matter any how right so that's it for the questions that i have would you like to you know like give a footnote to the audience who are watching this who are preparing for the interviews and you know like are in the middle of all that hustle yeah the final words i would like to give is uh start as early as possible if you are in your first year don't think you have enough time because you never know that when second year third year and then fourth year comes and then it's really difficult to hold the rope uh start as early as possible uh manage your time well balance between the things do your development and then uh along with that data structures and algorithms because uh nowadays i see there are a lot of opportunities for first and second year students as well like google step intern we sprint scholarship so for that you have to start working from your first year itself and then yeah i think balance between the things make a good resume be active on linkedin so yeah it would i think these things would really help and eventually get you a good company right so uh i have a question in the chat uh did you require anything related to finance when you were working as an analyst at morgan stanley no no if you're applying for a technology analyst role then it only deals with your tech skills nothing related to finance when you join the company they themselves teach you about finance a little bit according to their requirement but uh beforehand you don't need to know anything in specific right so i guess that's it for all the questions it was great talking to you tanya i mean i have learned a lot from you and i will keep in constant touch with you for all these you know like opportunities because i am the kind of person who once makes a connection just follows up with that person in every possible condition so thank you so much thank you for this informative session and for answering all of my questions and i'm really sure everyone in the chat everyone in the audience also learned something so thank you so much thank you everyone for watching have a great day ahead thanks funny bye bye bye