It is supposedly the most important season in a student's life, the placement season. Today, I am writing to share one of the most unexpected and exhausting journeys of my student life. An year ago, I had no idea that I would be writing something like this, but today I would be happy to do it all over again.
It all started with Google. I gave the Asia-Pacific University Test Round A, better known as APAC. Not one of my best performances, but enough to get me through to the onsite interview round. Interviewing with Google is an experience in itself, and it undoubtedly was my best interview experience compared with numerous interviews I gave. I was invited onsite to Bangalore on my birthday, August 13. Confident and pleased me entered Google India Bangalore Office. After a good set of four interviews with four different software engineers from Googleplex, Mountain View office solely based on Algorithms, Data Structures and System Design, I was fairly confident to get through. On September 1, I was informed by my kind and considerate recruiter that I was no longer being considered for the role. Shattered but still strong, I applied to a few more companies for international positions. Got shortlisted by Bloomberg London and Baidu US for further rounds.
Being an IITian and growing up in that culture, I was not much worried about getting a job. Next, I started applying to selected companies coming for campus placement. After more than twenty online coding tests and shortlisting, the "Day-zero", November 30, came close. Having been shortlisted in all the profiles I applied to, I started to prepare for the first three companies coming to the campus, Oracle, Microsoft and Goldman.
It was the morning I had been waiting for my whole college life. I woke up, as awesome as I could be. I went for Microsoft Group Fly round in semi-formals. Having a good day until then, I easily cleared the round, which honestly was not much of news to me. I was the only student who had to interview for all the three companies coming in the first slot. Excited and confident, with exactly this line on my mind, "Yaar ek mein to ho hi jaayega!" that is "I will score at least one of the three!". I dress myself up in the best suit I had. Rush through the lunch for the personal interviews.
I filled my priority in the order Oracle, Microsoft and then, Goldman. This is important because my interviews somehow took place in the same order. Starting with Oracle, I had to give three back-to-back hour-long one-on-one interview rounds stressing on my technical achievements and expertise. My first interview was awesome, second and third were average. Without much of a break, I was rushed for interviews with Microsoft. Those two rounds were really comfortable as they asked me really simple questions based on data structures and algorithms. In the evening, I proceeded for final round with the head engineer of Microsoft Office team. He asked me two medium-difficulty technical problems and some non-technical questions. Fairly simple stuff gave me the confidence that I will get through. In this process, I had no time to interview with Goldman and in the end I gave a 5-minute useless interview with Goldman. Tired with the proceedings of the day, I anxiously slept without setting an alarm.
I woke up by myself at 5AM. It was the worst morning in my life till date. Never ever I want to have something like that again. I was not selected by any of the three. Disgusted. Broken. Miserable. I got up and dressed for next slot of interviews. Not much interested in campus placements any more, I decide to risk the slot so that I can do my best in the upcoming slot where I was more interested than the current slot. I had one more chance to go international with Works Applications Singapore, and they asked me a hard question, which I could not solve. Had it been a better day, I would have solved it. It was my strength, dynamic programming, but God had something else in mind for me. The inevitable had happened again, I had been rejected by VMWare and Samsung Research as well in the given slot. In the next slot, I was giving online test for EdgeVerve Systems. I had been offered a role on the spot and just had to go for formality the next morning. I spent the night playing cards with my friends. In the morning, I completed the formalities and in the evening gave the final online round with Bloomberg. Next day, I left for home to escape from misery to the place where I shine the most. :)
December was the month I had to catch up and get things done. I spent my first week curating the best version of my resume. On December 8, I got an onsite-interview invite to London by Bloomberg, which was my first international trip. Yayy! I could finally break the geographic boundaries again. Next morning, I got a call from Google Japan for next rounds. Not everything was going to be gloomy in my life :P. I got myself up again. I put nearly 100 more job applications to top international companies online on December 13, 14 and 15. Now, it was the time for ACM ICPC onsite. I did not give enough time to it in the process, and went with a completely fresh mind. Another bad day and an even worse performance, I literally destroyed my last shot at it. This will be the biggest regret of my student life.
I gave several interviews over my last semester. Bloomberg, DirectI, D. E. Shaw, Fortanix, Samsung, Uber, Microsoft Research, Amazon, Barclays, Visa and maybe some more. I even gave multiple interviews on the same day. I traveled a lot over the semester to different cities. It was hard to do, but regret of not doing anything was going to be harder.
I woke up for breakfast early in the morning of April 18. There it was. Offer from Google Japan. A small email from my recruiter with the subject Google Japan - Finally... I could finally call my parents and tell them that I am placed. I was ecstatic. Pure Bliss. In the end, I had offers from Google, Uber, DirectI, Samsung, Microsoft, EdgeVerve and Fortanix.
There had been days when I questioned myself and my abilities. There were days when I just did not want to get up from bed. There were days when I felt useless, unlucky, foolish and what not! In the hindsight, it is all okay. It is completely fine to have a few bad days, but it is not acceptable to stop working towards that ultimate goal. May God give the courage to work hard again after that failure.
Resilience and Grit do wonders beyond the imagination. I shared this experience to remember to pick myself up once more on my fall. It shall serve as an example for all those failures to come. My ideal life is not in the comfort zone where there are no bad days, but in those lovely dreams which can give me a sense of achievement. I hope you get to learn something for yourself from my experience and make this a useful read. It is really difficult to experience how would someone feel in the same situation without the knowledge that you have. Therefore, should you have any questions or clarification requests, please reach out to me. It will help all of us!