Students’ Speak: Learn Competitive Programming and build strong foundations in DSA to ace top Internship Opportunities

Internship is a good opportunity to gain exposure and learn new skills at the same time. It is an important part of any engineering course. All the large firms want that their employees are best in their respective field of expertise. Therefore, it is important that you do internships of minimum 2-4 months duration, wherein you get to work with your mentors/ managers on different projects and learn working in a real-life operational environment.

Tips to Secure Good Internship Opportunities

An internship from an esteemed firm might lead you to a job opportunity there after your graduation. It also helps build a good resume, very important for placements. For a course like IT or CS, grabbing an internship might be easier than getting placement. This is primarily because while hiring an intern, the interviewer doesn’t ask very tough questions and just checks your thinking ability. They may not even focus on the number of projects you have done, but will surely examine you based on DSA (Data Structure and Algorithms) and other core CS subjects. Preparation for internships involve following:

1. Build an impressive resume

A resume is your first impression on the interviewer. This might not be very essential for internships but definitely for final placements. The length of a good resume at most should be two pages. All your skills and interests should be clearly mentioned along with your achievements. Relevant projects should be also listed along with one line explanation. We were provided with a standard format for building our resume to maintain uniformity (not the case for every college). You should make your resume with due credibility and if asked anything from it, you should be able to explain it to the interviewer.

2. Competitive coding and DSA

This is of immense importance from the perspective of clearing interviews. If your coding skills are not very good then please start before it’s too late. Pick a language and practice as many DSA problems as you can, difficulty ranging from simple to hard. There are many resources available online as well as offline. If you are running short on the time then do company-specific preparation. In the online coding test, partial marks are awarded for most of the problems. So, even if you cannot find the optimal solution, just applying proper coding logic would clear some test cases and fetch you partial points. Generally, students are shortlisted based on a leader board. There can be a separate leader board for female students. The most important resources are:

• • Codeforces (advanced competitive) - A good rating can be included in the resume as well.
  • Hackerrank and/or Hackerearth - A good rating in a particular contest/ hackathon can be included in the resume.
  • Geeks for Geeks
  • Interview bit (Highly recommended)

3. Theory about any one language

Objective question could be asked in online tests. Descriptive questions may be asked during technical interview rounds. It is necessary that you focus on one language to code and learn theoretical topics of that language. C++ and Java are preferable.

4. Know your company

Know everything you can about the firm for which you are applying. This will help you in clearing technical rounds as well as pre-placement talks where you can be more interactive and show them that you are interested in the company.

5. Read past interviews from Geeks for Geeks (GFG) for every company. They have a bunch of both competitive as well HR questions.
6. Solve puzzles

Many companies such as Microsoft, Sprinklr and Goldman Sachs ask puzzles in their technical rounds to test your ability to think. Basic 11^th-12^th pcm formulas can be put to use for solving puzzles. Again, gfg and Interview Bit are good sources for practice.

7. Practice coding with a pen and paper

During technical rounds, few coding questions are asked and the logic has to be explained along with the code (with proper syntax) on a piece of paper. Thus, writing a code on paper should be practiced every time you solve a question.

All the above points except the second one are last minute preparations that can be generally done 3-4 days before the company visit. However, the skill of competitive coding develops eventually with continuous practice. This requires patience and determination, not stop when you fail because trust me this is nothing like JEE where you can memorize and pass.

You’ll fail several times and you’ll have to practice a lot in order to gain perfection. Codeforces is a website which hosts online tests regularly wherein you have to solve 7 - 8 problems in two hours. The level is easy, medium and difficult (from A to G). To gain confidence for crack coding rounds, solve at least two mock tests. This helps to increase your speed. For those who find Codeforces difficult, try solving problems on Interview bit. The level of questions is good there and the solutions can be viewed as well. Geeks for geeks is the best platform only if you follow it strategically, otherwise it may become overwhelming leading you question your ability which we surely do not want at this point of time. Interview Bit is the best source in the sense that problems are classified into categories and solving one problem can clear your concept to the core.

To be honest, the preparation for placement or internships require 4-6 months of focussed hard work.

Top companies offering Internships

The topics you cover while preparing for internships or placements, also help you during college exams. At daiict, internship drive takes place after 4^th semester starting from May and goes on almost for the whole semester. Major companies usually come in the beginning but the order of their visit is not fixed. Some major firms who visited the campus in the past include:

• Microsoft
• Amazon
• Sprinklr
• Morgan Stanley
• Goldman Sachs
• LinkedIn
• Deutsche Bank

All these companies offer a stipend of more than Rs 45,000 per month. The procedure of internship drive is quite strict. The following stages took place in almost every company:

• Registration on placement website
• Pre-placement talk - 45 minutes
• Online coding test - 60 to 120 minutes
• Announcement of shortlist
• Group fly round (Took place only in Microsoft) - 45 to 60 minutes
• Face to face interview-
• 1st technical round (15-25 minutes)
• 2nd technical round (15-25 minutes)
• 3rd technical round and/or HR round (20-30 minutes)
• Announcement of results

Many companies keep a cutoff CPI of 7 or less and only the students meeting the cutoff are allowed to register. It is advised to keep your CPI about 7.5 or above.

Generally, pre-placement talks take place in the morning. During the talks, the company gives a brief introduction to its operations. Students can question them about anything. You should be interactive in this session. Online coding test varies from company to company. Generally, there are objective questions and 3-6 coding problems to solve.

Group fly round is a written-round that also contains coding problems and you will have to write code and/or algorithm on paper. Selection takes place based on neatness, clarity, the correctness of your code and explanation. Technical rounds are based your resume, knowledge of DSA and coding while HR rounds are general interaction about your interests, strengths, weaknesses, etc.

Throughout two years of college, you can get many projects as a part of your curriculum. Try to include only relevant software-related projects in the resume. You can also do individual projects when you learn any technology from an online course to boost your resume. For internships, companies do not expect too much expertise in technologies such as Android, Blockchain or AI. Thus, if the number of projects are less, do not worry.

When you go for internships, you are required to work with more than one language according to the needs of your project. You would be trained well, and you must be a fast learner to grasp knowledge. Most projects will be assigned to teams rather than one individual. Therefore, you should be a good team player and should be able to coordinate with your peers. The projects done during the internship can be mentioned in your resume. If you perform well in the two months during internship, you might receive a pre-placement offer (ppo). This means that you need not sit for placements because you already have secured an offer letter.

Faculty-based and Off-campus Internship Opportunities

At daiict, we are also required to do volunteer work as a part of rural internship. This takes place in the month of December after the completion of the 3^rd semester. This can be also mentioned in the resume.

Number of people applying for the internship drive is around 300 and those who actually get one at the end of the day are just 50-60. That is not even 20 per cent. Considering the difficulty and amount of hard work required many focus directly on placements. Students who do not get internships in companies are required to do research internship under a professor. You may fell stressed out due to pressure if you fail to secure any internship but you will have to get over it fast and accept the situation. This will help you to concentrate on research internships and placements.

However, there are many opportunities for off-campus placements as well. Many companies such as Amazon host a hiring contest on Hackerearth. Google has various opportunities such as kickstart, gsoc, etc. which can lead you to a job opportunity. There was a seminar held by Googlers on Kickstart wherein they gave a dp (dynamic programming) problem and guided the students to reach the solution. Microsoft also hosts hackathons and women coding program, Codess.

How to prepare for off-campus:

• Phase1
  • Learn a language
  • DS algorithms
  • Competitive coding
  • Learn new Skills
• Phase 2
  • Referrals
  • Apply in contests
  • Sign up to LinkedIn
• Phase 3
  • Build impressive resume
  • Apply in bulk