Life before the interview

It’s not yet August. The fifth semester has not even started yet. I am at home chilling over the semester break. But as the break came near it’s end, a slow, creeping anxiety started to engulf my mind…

I felt like a mess.

Nothing done over the sem break. And the next semester, was a big one. Companies were gonna come looking for interns. Everybody wanted to get into the first few good companies. I knew that the competition was going to be intense. Companies like MotorQ, D.E. Shaw, Barclays, Fidelity would be the first few to come.

I started daydreaming about getting into one of them.

Cope

In the last 3-4 days of my sem break, I quickly made a portfolio for myself and to showcase my work. (It turned out to be pretty corny instead of professional but I love it nonetheless)

Over the next few days as the college reopened, I started doing DSA on leetcode.

This was one thing I could just never get myself to do. I preferred codeforces but leetcode taught data structures in a much more systematic and straightforward way. CF was more about problem solving.

Aiming for atleast 1-2 easy/medium or 1 hard question per day. (I gave up pretty quick)
At the time I had maybe 28 solves.

I had good knowledge of CS fundamentals as my saving grace for a CS student.

Just for research purposes, I look at the profiles and working of each of these companies. And honestly, I didn’t really like most of them, except for D.E. Shaw. It seemed fun and chill.

Interstice of a hundred souls

August has arrived, and so are arriving the companies.

MotorQ

The first to come was MotorQ. Highest package offered.

I tried. Resume got shortlisted, sat for the coding round. Solved just 2/5 questions… I felt bad, ashamed even… I could not solve a basic DP question, I had kinda given up hope after this. I realized that I might not be getting an internship at this rate.

People used their phones to cheat - using chatgpt, and got through to the next round. The MotorQ hiring team, knew about this, but still gave them a chance.

I wasn’t annoyed, just disappointed in myself.

DE Shaw

The next company came soon after. This one, felt like one of the few that really cares about their employees.
They were looking for an SDET (Software developer engineer in testing) intern. Which I had not known yet.

Nearly everyone gets through the resume shortlisting round.

Next was aptitude + coding round. There were just 2 DSA questions and rest 20-25 were aptitude. I did well at aptitude questions, and managed to solve the first question and even bruteforced 2 testcases for the second question.

I wasn’t expecting to get through in this case either, because there were a few people who got quite a lot more test cases than me.

It was 12 noon when we finished the OA. We all went back to our classes and continued our day as usual. Around 1:45pm they send a mail, 10 students who were selected for interview. People in my class started discussing. My friends started shouting from the back, “You are in! Go!”. It felt too surreal, and knowing my friends, I almost knew it was a joke. But soon, others started saying the same, I check the mail. And boom. My name was there. I was nervous. Happy. But most importantly excited. My first interview!

The Process

My slot was right in the middle of the pack (Not my favourite place to be). I quickly go take a few print of my resume and sit at the CDC (Career Development Centre). I talk to one or two people right before me, they said that the panel was really chill.

Since I was one of the only hostellers they asked if it was fine for me to go last, so that other dayscholars can finish early and leave.

I agreed. I waited. Anxiously, going through my resume. Asking chatgpt about possible questions that can be asked. Clarifying any small doubts in fundamental topics. Trying to prepare a “tell me about yourself” speech…

Each panel was taking atleast 75-90 minutes per candidate.

It was 7pm. I was called upon finally. I slowly walk towards the room, enter the room, greeting the panel and taking a seat.

The first interview

And this is how it begins

Interviewer: “how long have you been here for?”
Me: (okay, classic, he’s trying to ease me in) Oh yeah, I have been here (Chennai) for nearly four years now…

Interviewer: (wtf) “uhhh- I meant how long were you waiting in the hall…?”
Me: Huh- uh- oh- yeah, since 2pm… it’s totally fine though haha

What an awkward start…

I was still confident, I have prepped for this long enough. I have gone through my resume quite a few times, I know everything that’s there in and around it.

The next question that the interviewer asked me was

Interviewer: “Okay, so tell me something that’s not there on your resume.”

I pause for a little while. I did not expect this. But I had to answer.

So I did it anyway, I talked about myself instead of the projects that I had not mentioned. I told how I liked tinkering around and making life a little easier. It was not well thought, but it was honest.

The interview proceeded, he asked me, “So what are the things that you have built that have eased your life?”.

Oh ho ho- this was my real time to shine, because what else have I done but this

I go on mentioning about

• RSM-md-gen: A site that parses our assignment pdf and generates markdown with documentation just as our professor had instructed.
• A3-recipes: An application which can tell you what dishes you can make based on the items in your fridge.
• NNinC: A simple neural network implementation in C that is a good source to learn the basic maths and code of NNs.

NNinC caught his eye.

He went on asking questions related to neural networks. I answered them honestly, and to the best of my knowledge, except for the last question, after which he said okay, let’s move on to something else.

(I was a little disappointed because I could not answer his last question)

He asked me, are you the type of person who grinds a lot of leetcode?
I answer, almost immediately, in the most blunt way possible: “Nah, I don’t do DSA at all”. (Now that I think about it probably sounded so informal and rude smh)

DSA question

Given a parking lot which is N lots long. And an array cars which has the index positions where each car is placed in ascending order. And a positive integer p. You need to tell the minimum length of roof that must be built over the parking lot to save p cars from rain.

I was given a pen and paper to write my logic down and explain it to them.

I took up the pen, re-iterated their question and tried to form a logic in my head. It seemed like a simple question, yet I seemed to struggle initially. I sat and thought for like a minute, before the interviewer asked me, “Can you explain what you are thinking?”. So I started mentioning the initial O(n^2) approach… They didn’t seem very confident in me, but asked me to write the pseudocode for this.

While I was about to write it down, another idea struck. A sliding window approach with O(n) time complexity. I explain them the idea very enthusiastically and write it down. (My handwriting was so bad because of my nervousness…)

They liked my solution and we moved on to talk about CS fundamentals.

I had mentioned quite a few relevant courses in my resume, along with computer networks. It wasn’t taught to us yet, but I had studied it on my own. I really like that subject.

Interviewer: (going through my resume) So what’s your favourite topic?
Me: I-

Interviewer: Lemme guess! It must be networks!
Me: (happy and amazed) Wow, haha yeah, it is!

He probably guessed it so because of my relevant cybersecurity background which was clearly visible on my resume.

He asked a lot of questions. Again, I answered them honestly, and to the best of my knowledge.

The last question that he had asked, again, I messed up and could not answer it.
After which he says: “Okay, I guess we are done with the interview.”

…

I look at the time, it has just been 40 minutes. I understood. I was not able to answer their questions, they understood that I lacked depth. At the end, I was just someone who was having fun…

I was sad. I felt desperate in that moment.

“I had a few questions…”, I spoke in desperation to increase the length of the interview…

Interviewer: “Sure, ask us anything.”

I ask about the work, the preparations, and talk about our seniors experience.

But alas, that only did last 5 minutes. It would’ve been futile to try to continue this…
I get up, wish them, and leave…

I had no hopes. It was nearly 8pm. I was hungry. I went to the mess for dinner and came back to my room. I walked along with one of our seniors who was being interviewed for the FTE (full-time employment) offer. He told me about his interview and his panel. It sounded all a little too hard, the DSA questions and the technical depth nearly doubled. I wondered, if I could ever develop skills required for jobs with such high stakes.

The night

I had no hopes, I told my friends at hostel. I clearly could not answer their questions when they kept digging deeper into the fundamentals. I had talked to others who gave the interview today, their overall assessment of their interviews ranged from good to great, except for a few.

I had no hopes, I lied down, on my bed with no anticipations whatsoever. Everyone had 75-90 minute interview, they must’ve been able to answer all their questions with such depth and there must have been so many interesting things to talk about.

My roommate shouts, “The message is here!”. I get up from my bed. A hopeless hope still lingering within me, I ask, “So what is it?”.

He shouted with joy and excitement, slapping my back until his hand and my back turned red from pain. “You are selected for the second round of interview.”

A few of my friends come and congratulate me, I thank them back, and right when I was thinking that maybe I should try learning a bit more about certain topics… The exhaustion hits, and I just sleep like a baby till morning.

The next day

There were 5 of us who got selected for the second technical interview. They said, that since they were short on time, they would be conducting the HR interview parallelly.

Two went for technical interview, one for HR. I sat in the same hall as yesterday. Yet, a bit more confident than yesterday.

Second technical interview

I was called for the technical interview next. The panel seemed a little more serious than yesterday. He goes through my resume, asks me about docker, and where have I used it. I answer well.

The interviewer jumps to the next big question-
“What’s your favourite project?”

(giving me the opportunity to select my strength)

I mention my oldest and most worked on project. We then dive into database design and how data flows. Where things can break and the edge cases. He tried testing how out-of-the-box can I think? Once I realized this, I tried my best to approach each question from various angles.

The general flow became:

He gives me a situation where something can break -> I try to fix it -> He gives another situation where my fix breaks -> …

And this went on, until I could no longer fix the situation.

I hit dead-ends in each of his situations. I was getting more and more anxious.

DSA question

Given an integer array arr of length n, you need to return another array of length n which is the multiplication of each integer of that array except the one at that index.

Seems pretty straight forward.

I attempt it, give a simple answer. Multiply all numbers, and create an array where you divide it the product by each arr[index] and store it then finally return the final array. I believe this is what is called as a prefix sum approach.

Interviewer: “What can go wrong here?”
Me: (thinking… it seems fine…) “Maybe negativ- no, that shouldn’t be an issue… I think this will work for every case sir.”

Interviewer: “No, it won’t. What if there’s a 0?”
Me: (Ugh, how could I forget about 0s) “Ohhh- yes, my bad.”

I fix up my logic, while explaining them my solution.

We maintain a count of 0s. If it exceeds 1, all elements in an array would be 0. If there’s just one 0, we need to avoid multiplying it in the product, and avoid dividing with it as well.

The logic was accepted.

He then asked me a lot about python and it’s technical details. He asked me about decorators, multithreading in python, and so much more. The articles and random blog posts that I had read, the weird small experimentations that I had done, it all seemed to connect in some way or the other.

He then proceeded to ask me about OS fundamentals in depth.

The interview lasted for about 90 minutes.

They asked if I had any questions, I replied with no, because all I could talk or ask about was already done yesterday… As I wished them and was leaving the room I noticed him writing in his diary, “Did not ask any questions”.
And oh how sad I was after reading that, almost wanted to ask him something, anything; before leaving… But I didn’t, it didn’t seem right.

I go out, meet up with my other fellow interviewees and discuss how it went for everyone.

HR interview

Soon after, it was my HR interview. It was a breeze. I answer professionally, even sprinkling a little bit of deep philosophy here and there. There was no pressure, just a simple conversation is what I felt.

After me, I wait for my friend to finish. It was 4pm already, and we were very hungry. At the time I didn’t care if I would’ve gotten selected or not, I went to the main canteen to treat myself for enduring these vigorous interviews.

The fated outcome

I talked with my friend who gave his interviews, I knew him, an exceptional person as well.

I went back to my room, I was lying on my bed, imagining all sorts of scenarios in my head. I was scared, but I was just as excited as well. I slept waiting for the results, a nice, long, sleep.

…

buzz

My phone rings, I wake up. Nothing from anyone, no other messages either. It was my mom calling. I picked up the call, and was talking to my mom as usual. I didn’t tell my parents that companies had started coming for internships. I didn’t want to make them worrywarts worry even more.

We were talking as usual, when all of a sudden.

I hear people shouting, lots of them, outside my room. Many people I knew, the entire “Autistic Asylum”, everyone was shouting…

My heart sank…

Did I make it?

Did I really do it?

My body bursting with emotions. My legs weak.

Tears start filling up my eyes, as I fight to not let them drop.

I add my sister and my dad on the call. My parents a little confused, my friends, excited to start shouting again once my call ends.

“I got an internship”, I said. My family, confused. “Where, which company?”, my dad asks. “D.E. Shaw”, I reply. “Congratulations”, they all say in unison. After just a little more talk, I said I’ll explain everything later and hang up.

Everyone bursts in the room, shouting and taking pics and congratulating me.

It was truly a moment to remember.