Some Practical Guidelines to Ace the Placement Phobia

Hola Amigos!! I Hope you all are enjoying your lives fully in a productive manner. I recommend you to go through My previous blog before coming to this blog, as my second blog will be more about the practical steps for acing and overcoming the placement phase. I will be more into discussing the sources, suggestions, and steps I got from the varied sources and seniors during my time.

My recommendation to read the first blog is only because you will get an overall idea of all the situations which you may also face similarly during your time. The second blog may help you out in facing those situations and finding the solutions for all your problems. So, before knowing the solution it's always advisable to know the question beforehand (which is elaborated in my My previous blog)

So, all set to dive into the sources, ideas and the cool insights to ace it. Though, there ain't any concrete process to overcome the complete process. Everyone does mistakes despite of knowing the whole agenda and chunk of tricks also. Placements are a complete experience in itself. It isn't just about cracking any company but to come out as a complete package and take a hell lot of experiences out of it.

The companies approaching the students in these 12-day long process generally comprises of data sciences and coding profile (of about 80-82% of total companies), core firms (of about 10-12% of total companies), consulting firms ( 6-7%) and finance firms (2-3% only). I was more of a data science guy throughout my bachelors mainly focussed on these profile in my interns and placements from the start of my 2nd year. So I could be able to tell you about my field elaborately and in a precise manner. 

Some of the sources which I personally followed for some good insights on pretty much everything are listed:

1. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0QVDjel2KhjsSnTVr4dS_g/videos?sort=dd&view=0&shelf_id=0
2. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w9-k8LZFc_U7iEu1MEvfVN8fi_oR5b7uKIl8WGrY240/preview#
3. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/you-ready-boom-hemendra-varma?trk=hp-feed-article-title-ppl-follow
4. https://wiki.metakgp.org/w/Placement_Interview_Experiences
5. http://iim-cat-questions-answers.2iim.com/
6. http://caseinterviewscracked.com/
7. http://puzzles.nigelcoldwell.co.uk/
8. http://thescholarsavenue.github.io/suitup15/#part2
9. https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-top-10-pieces-of-career-advice-Gayle-Laakmann-McDowell-would-give-to-future-software-engineers

And Friends, You could also refer to my very personal database which I collected from my sophomore time until the final placements. Here is the link is given below. This will be useful for both off-campus internships and placement if needed.

Placement database and lists

The written tests can be aced by using some selective preparations and sources only:

1) For aptitude: A lot and lot of practice for QUANT, ENGLISH and LIDR from varied sources. Some popular sources are Arun Sharma, Nishit Sinha, K Verma and a lot many Cat Strategic Preparations. If you are confused at the start, just google the CAT syllabus, pick out some interesting topics at the start and prepare individual topics accordingly. You will get a lot of sources and questions for practice but remember, practice is the key in all the written tests.

Attaching here a link which will guide you in case you get fussed up anywhere in the middle...

Books and Sources for aptitude

2) For Coding: Coding could be of the level of PDS which we have read in 1st-year curriculum and along with it, you can add a little bit part from the algorithms that mainly includes data structures and trees, graphs etc. Dynamic Programming could be avoided in most of the cases except for the written tests of GS and JPMC.

Important sources are Interview Bit, Geeksforgeeks and obviously the PDS 1st year course for sketching out the plans for beginners.

Though I am not a coding guy and I didn't prepare for coding at all. You could refer other CS seniors and batchmates for a better perspective on it.

3) For Statistics/Probability/Regression/Time Series: Though not many companies ask these questions in the written tests, the bucket contains some of the very important companies whose questions can't be ignored.

Hines, 50 Challenging Problems in probability, Probability by Sheldon Ross, Montgomery for Regression and time series are the very important and building blocks for good hands on for this part. This will help a lot for both test and interviews. So, it would be a mistake to ignore this part. For more sources, you can always ask multiple people. In my opinion, this would suffice for most of the interviews

4) NLP and DataScience: Though this part would not come in written test, still a very few companies ask stuffs from this part also to test the theoretical and mathematical knowledge before interviews, and this would actually be purely for the data science profiles.

Analytics Vidhya, edX Analytics Edge course, Udemy, Udacity and Coursera are some awesome courses

Machine Learning by Kevin Murphy is by far the best books I have come across till now in terms of vast knowledge it provides for machine learning and its applications. You can always give it a read if you are beginning your preparation much before the actual D-Day.

For NLP, Google is the best source... Because I didn't focus much on it because I already had an intern in NLP and as far as I remember I googled most of the stuffs for a basic prerequisite knowledge on it

This was all about the written test sections which by far comprises all the companies from my knowledge and no company will go beyond this. But having expertise in all these sections is also a huge mountain to climb in itself. 

Now coming to the company-specific knowledge on the written test which you can do during 3 weeks before your actual written test dates for every company

Main recognizable companies are listed below:

1. GS : Algorithms ( MCQs) + 2 coding ques ( PDS+ Algorithms + DP Too) + Machine Learning (10 ques) + Probability
2. JPMC : Aptitude ( 12th Maths/Jee Maths) + Coding
3. American Express: 20 ques on aptitude
4. EXL: Only Cat aptitude ques ( English + quant + LIDR)
5. Deloitte: Aptitude + Stats ( point 4 above)
6. Gartner: Refer to Only point 4 above
7. Oracle: Quite tuff paper (Includes mostly DBMS ques + Software + Coding + Algorithms)
8. Ola: Only Aptitude ques
9. Blackrock: 20 ques from 50 challenging problems of probability
10. ZS Associates DA Profile: Conducts a competition on data analytics, gives a problem statements, will ask you to present an algorithm and bring a good score and feature yourself in the leaderboard for further interview shortlisting
11. ZS Associates BA profile: Aptitude only
12. Futures First: Aptitude ques (about 40) in about 8-10 minutes
13. Flipkart: No test, rather conducts GD for BA and corporate finance roles and a PS on business problems for APM role
14. HSBC: Aptitude + PDS standard coding questions
15. Citi: Aptitude + basic coding questions
16. Capital One: Only CAT standard aptitude questions
17. Walmart: Refer to point 3 and point 4 above for this
18. Mercari: A good level of coding knowledge required
19. Barclays: Aptitude + basic coding questions (similar to hsbc and citi)
20. Axis Bank: Aptitude questions + personality questions (situational ques basically)
21. Quantiphi: A competition beforehand for shortlisting the candidates for interview

This is more or less some 20 odd companies whose written tests are held beforehand in the month of October before your end-semester exams and mostly for the day 1 and day 2 companies. Another piece of information I would like to mention is that these companies are only the open to all companies opened up for all the departments. Since I was a civil department guy, so I wasn't able to sit for CS/EC/EE specific companies. The above-mentioned firms are open to all having non-core analyst/coding/data profiles requiring a written test and some other criteria for shortlisting. Again, I haven't mentioned core, finance and consulting companies due to my lack of expertise in that domain. So, You can refer the concerned placed seniors in those sectors for better elaborate suggestions.

After shortlisting, you will have your interviews from December 1 as I mentioned in my first blog. I have already explained my interview experience in my first blog for Flipkart and Ola including the questions also. I will brief some of the additional points and sources which will be helpful for interviews for mostly all the companies

1) Digest your CV completely: You must be able to defend your CV at any cost whatever you have written in it. The basic aspect of the interview is CV and you can't fuck up in that aspect. The company will judge not only on your CV but more on how you are able to defend it against various cross questions put you and it will put a good first impression on the interviewer for further questions and further rounds too.

2) For puzzles: Go through Heard on the streets. All the important interview puzzles come from this book only. Practice these 68-70 odd puzzles in this book thoroughly to able to sail through the initial rounds of interview comfortably.

3) For Probability: Go through 50 challenging problems in probability. This should suffice. Look for other books too after completing this book for additional practice on it.

4) For guesstimates and cases: IIT Bombay's "Case interview cracked". That's enough for this part.

5) Coding: Again, refer the deliberated point No - 2 given above for coding which I already mentioned.

6) DataScience (Maths + Theory): CV Preparation + refer the Point No- 3 & 4 given above which I mentioned

This should cover majority of interview rounds in most of the companies and the rest will also depend on your presence of mind, your prerequisite knowledge you had till now from your engineering background, the knowledge you gained from written rounds and yeah, most importantly your luck on that day (luck in terms of interviewer, questions and the slot in which you are going for the interview)

The Dont's for this process

1) Avoid cheating in the tests
2) Never eye any shortcuts in this process
3) Try not getting overexcited or over depressed. Just remember, This is just an experience phase and This shall also pass reaping good results
4) Try not remaining alone/individual preparations. Consult your friends, family, seniors and well-wishers for any kind of help.
5) Try having a good amount of sleep before interviews. Though it gets really difficult but believe me, a good amount of sleep makes you feel afresh before the D-Day
6) Never go empty stomach to the interviews
7) Always be in proper formal attire and greet the panel before entering the interview room
8) Always have your already placed batchmates around you in case of an emergency and instant help.
9) Cut down from social media for few days of the those few days till you get placed.
10) Lastly, never panic or get disheartened for the process. Remember, everyone gets placed and if you don't believe me pick up the stats of any year's placement of IIT Kgp and you will know the truth. It's just your patience that will bear you fruits at any day. Just be confident and positive and don't get in any peer pressure.

Friends, if at all you don't get shortlisted in companies and results are not in your favour or if at all you think the company in which you get placed doesn't fall for what

Cheers to all, who have taken their time out for reading my blogs
Regards !!

Good luck to all the people, who will be having an experience of the ages.
This is AMIT SAHOO, signing off !!