The Internship Hunt for Summers 2018

Starting the clinical procedure of looking for Internship as a student of one of the highly reputed Institutes in the country, I thought that it would be a cake walk. And you guessed it right - I was SO naive and wrong. Read through a story of multiple rejections, followed by an all-is-well-that-ends-well ending. Also, I really hope that this blog post can instill people going through a similar phase with motivation.

• Strengths

I'm a 4th year undergrad from IIT Kharagpur. I've been into programming right from my first year, when I started with web development. Then came the exposure to the realm of open-source and the steep learning curve along with it. You can have a look at my Resume for the long story. But in short, I'm really passionate about software development and have a knack for the same.

• Weakness

I'm from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. What that means, is that I won't be allowed to even sit for most of the software companies that come to campus. That includes companies like Google, Microsoft, Intuit, Amazon, etc.

Also, I've observed that companies tend to recruit safely. So, any company on any given day would prefer recruiting a CS student over a Mechie for a Software Development profile. Who would take risk and make an unorthodox decision, right?

• Opportunity

In-campus and off-campus positions.

• Threat

As much as you want to get a good Internship, so are the others applying for the position. So, everyone is going to give their very best and let natural selection to do the rest. And as I've stated above, I'm from IIT Kharagpur - need I explain more about how talented the competition pool is?

(Aug 2017)

Goldman Sachs was one of the companies that came to IIT Kharagpur on day 1 of the Internship process. Being one of the very few "prestigious" companies with a software-related profile that opened for Mechanical Engineering students, I definitely applied.

• Online Test

All students who applied through the CDC-IITKGP website had to take an online test on HackerRank. This test included 3 parts - Coding, Machine Learning & Aptitude. There were about 15-20 MCQ questions across these 3 genres, and also 2 questions to write code.

• Round 1 (30mins)

After being shortlisted by the online test results, we had continous rounds on the same day. This first round was pretty easy - it involved me explaining the projects I had worked on, what were the difficulties I faced, how I overcame them and what were the takeaways I gathered for further projects.

Next, the interviewer asked me to solve this sum problem and another simple string manipulation question. I solved them both, and we discussed about what the interviewer's team (Security) does at Goldman Sachs. Oh, we were also able to discuss about the recent GoT episode that had aired.

• Round 2 (30 mins)

With Round 1 being very satisfactory, I was passed on to Round 2. I was again asked to talk about some of my projects, though - not in such detail as the previous round. He then asked me to solve a question based on intervals. I was able to solve this, and went ahead explaining a test case. Later, he told me about the Tech stack being used in GS. We also discussed about how it becomes frustrating to manage Python codebases with teams that have different Space-Tab configurations.

• Round 3 (30 mins)

After the 2nd results were out, the remaining shortlisted students were told to have lunch and come back in an hour for the final round of interview. Again, the interviewer asked me about some of the projects I had worked on. Then, he told me to solve this sum-tree question.

I made a mistake of missing out the termination criteria of the recursive algorithm, and the interviewer pointed out the same. After correcting it, we discussed more about the possible roles at GS.

• Aftermath

I was really confident about getting the Internship, given how my interviews went. However, it came as a shock when I saw the CDC notice board later that evening and found out that my name wasn't included in the list. I pinged Hardik Sheth (one of my seniors at GS), but he wasn't able to find any feedback either. One of his messages that I'd like to quote is,

"Don't be disheartened, dedicated desperation will take you anywhere you want."
- Hardik Sheth

And yes, I maybe did cry a little. But this rejection also got me immidiately hooked on to book reading. That's a win, right?

(Sep 2017)

This was definitely an off-campus opportunity. GitHub had just posted their openings for Summer Internships of 2018. One of the roles that seemed pretty interesting to me was that of Rails Developer, and I applied on their website. A week later, one of GitHub's Talent Acquisition staff got in touch with me and we scheduled the first interview. However, as the interviewers were supposedly busy for the next 2 weeks, I had my interview scheduled after 15 days of getting in touch.

In the meantime, I also went though GitHub Classroom - the project for this role, and started contributing. However, on THE day of the interview, I received a mail saying that they've already found another Hubber who'll be working on the same project, and hence the Internship profile is not open anymore. That was literally an hour before my scheduled interview.

Apologizing for the inconvinience, GitHub sent me a few goodies - Tee & Hoodie. No one can remain upset after receiving goodies, right?

(Dec 2017)

During the winter vacations, I received a message from a DE Shaw executive on LinkedIn, informing me about a vacancy in the team and how I could be a possible fit. Being in my pre-final year, I politely rejected it and rather asked them about whether I could be considered for a Summer Internship instead. But I'm yet to get any interview scheduled.

I'm good enough to be considered for a job, but not for an internship? Sed lyf.

(Feb 2018)

• Online Test

Morgan Stanley came to campus in mid-Febraury 2018. The online test was quite generic, 15-20 MCQs of both coding and aptitude questions with 2 coding problems. I don't remember the questions exactly, but one of them was quite easy and the other was of intermediate difficulty.

• Round 1

After being shortlisted by the online test results, nearly 20 students gave this round. This round took place almost 2 weeks after the online test, and there were 3 interviewers who had come on campus.

I was called at around 10PM. The interviewer was really interesting to interact with. We discussed about some of my open-source projects, and later I was given to solve this question. I was also asked a few questions on different data structures, and it was pretty good overall.

• Round 2

After the 1st round, 9 students were shortlisted for this final round of interview. The interview started with me explaining my project, and the interviewer asked a question on system design. I wasn't able to explain much about the scalability, but I was able to put together the different pieces required for the question.

I was also asked to solve this dialpad problem, which I was able to do with recursion and 10 mins. Finally, we discussed about how Morgan Stanley handles scalability and what are the expectations of an Intern.

• Aftermath

I stayed back at the Main Building to have a look at the results first-hand. The PlaceComm member (who had become my friend by the previous round) came running to me with a sad face and told me that I didn't make it. Quite frankly, I wasn't as sad. Maybe, it was just that the past rejections had trained me to cope up with upcoming rejections. Or maybe it was the free Morgan Stanley Tee that I had received in the last round. Anyways, I remember walking out of the Main Building with a grin, proud of how I took this rejection.

(Feb 2018 - Mar 2018)

• The Karate workshop

Peter Thomas from Intuit, came to IIT Kharagpur to give a hands-on workshop on his open-source project (Karate) that has recently received a lot of traction. All the attendees were sponsored a free Subway snack, as well as an Intuit bag (goodie).

The interaction was really fun, with Peter giving a couple of examples of how Karate is pretty useful and also throwing a couple of life advices every now and then. At the end of the workshop, we were told that students contributing to this project would be considered for Internship opportunities at Intuit.

Being a huge open-source fan looking for internship, I couldn't think of a better opportunity. So, I started setting up the repository and contributed a few Pull Requests within the weekend.

After the Pull Requests got merged, I communicated with Zubin and Naina from Intuit about the contributions and my intent to do a Summer Internship at Intuit. At the same time, one of my seniors (Naresh) also referred me for this internship. Hence, I was scheduled an interview in a week.

• Round 1

The 1st round was taken by Prateek Mandloi. The interview started with my introduction, and discussion about some of my open-source contributions (including Karate).

Then, I was asked to solve a 2D-matrix related coding problem wherein there were blank spaces, and given sequence of numbers had to be inserted into appropriate positions (increasing order) in the matrix (taking the blanks into account). I was able to come up with a solution involving binary search to find out the index of insertion and also handle blank spaces. But, I made a very silly mistake in the binary search method - which Prateek pointed out later.

Further, we discussed about a few of the projects that Intuit works on, and what'll be the scope of an intern.

• Round 2

The 2nd round took place nearly a week after the first one, and was taken by Roshni Neogy. Overall, it was a really friendly interview - something I hadn't experienced for some time now.

I was first asked a system design question on designing an online treasure hunt for the campus. I was able to discuss the different models that would be required to build such an application. While discussing about campus-related applications, I was also able to briefly talk about the projects among other interactive sessions held by Metakgp.

Further, I was asked the difference between Queue and Stack data structure, and how to implement Queue from Stack. I was able to come up with the idea of using 2 stacks on-the-spot (thankfully!).

• Round 3

The final round took place a week after the second one, and was taken by Bala Dutt. First things first, I was excited because the interviewer is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur. It was another one of those GOOD interviews that were more of a discussion, rather than a Question-Answer session.

I was asked a few theoretical questions such as virtual classes, deadlocks in parallel computation, etc. After that, we had a discussion on how to implement a data structure that would have constant time for insertion, deletion, look-ups and returning random members. The moment I heard "look-up", I was pretty sure it had to be a hashmap. I was able to implement this data structure using both Array and Hashmap, just like this.

Finally, we discussed about kind of projects I'd like to work on during the Internship (if I got one, ofcourse) and how to switch to coding when coming from a non-CS background.

• Aftermath

On the same day as the 3rd round, I got a call from Zubin informing me that my interviews went well and Intuit will be offering me with an Internship. It was really relieving to hear this. Thanks for making an unorthodox decision by giving chance to a non-CS guy, Intuit!

• Rejections are not personal.
• Rejections may happen even if you're talented enough for the role.
• Laugh at your own rejections.
• Getting selected is not just about being talented, it's also about being a "fit".
• Third time is the charm.

"Don't be disheartened, dedicated desperation will take you anywhere you want."
- Hardik Sheth

"Things work out at the end. They always do!"
- Naresh Ramesh