Summer Vacations!! Hearing this word will surely rush dopamine in your body. But at the end of the 3rd year, this was not the case with me. Having learned from the mistakes I made during the internship session, I had made up my mind to prepare with some strategy. Daily coding practice and regular mock interviews helped me in landing a job at Morgan Stanley.
Now, I am going to share with you the preparation strategy that you can use to rock your interviews.
Now, I am going to share with you the preparation strategy that you can use to rock your interviews.
Preparation Strategy
Resume building
This can take weeks too. You just have to compose the most important things. If necessary, cut short your resume to a single page. Reflect more on showcasing the technical skills in a resume such as achievements in any technical event, contests ranks, or contest-winning, if any. Display some key topics in the Interest area section. Your resume should reflect your professional know-how, as companies recruit you for your technical skills. In your resume, be clear and descriptive. Apart from that, I would suggest you to get it reviewed by your seniors or friends. You can also take inspiration from the resume of your peers.
Aptitude
Some finance companies like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citicorp, and Fidelity always ask aptitude in their online test round, and it has a significant weightage in shortlisting too. So use online websites like GeeksForGeeks, Indiabix.com for aptitude, and give online tests on them. It will refine your aptitude skills. I daily sat for half an hour to give an aptitude test of 20 questions on Indiabix. You need not make extra efforts in this. You just need practice and solving techniques which you can get by analyzing your mistakes from the test.
CS Subjects
I would suggest you to study subjects like Data Structures, Operating Systems, Database Management Systems, and Networking from your notes itself. During my preparation in summers, I collected notes from my friends, and, believe me, they helped me a lot. Apart from the notes I took the help of GFG. I must say they have compiled a lot of interview questions from various topics, and they are beneficial. Even sometimes, the interviewer himself opens GFG to ask questions😅. I would encourage you to clear every basic concept as the question presented in the interview could be modified from a simple concept.
Coding
Try to practice from websites like GFG, InterviewBit, and Leetcode. Practice medium level questions and try to solve it on your own. Try to use the concepts of CC class too. Because they are essential for coding round problems. You must work hard on your coding to get selected in a premium slot company. To improve my accuracy and speed, I regularly gave mock tests on Leetcode. There were 3 questions to be solved in 1 hour. This boosted up my confidence in coding test which I was lacking during the internship session.
HR
There are some standard questions of HR. Try to find the answer on your own and communicate in English with your friends so that you can make yourself fluent in English.
Apart from the above things, one thing that I did after coming to the college was practicing mock interviews. I used to sit with my friend Amit Jain (cool coder) daily and we used to take interviews of each other. I learned a lot of things from him which helped me a lot in my interviews and online tests. I would suggest you to do so. Taking mock interviews gives you a reality check and tells your weak and strong points.
Now I will share with you my interview experience of Morgan Stanley. With the help of that, you will get some real idea of company questions and their interview processes.
My Interview Experience
Round 1: Online Test
The pattern was quite standard. The platform was AMCAT. Three sub rounds with there own timer and no switching allowed between the sub rounds.
- Debugging round - 7 basic coding questions like gcd, clock time implementation, power function with mistakes in them, and we have to correct codes in 20 minutes only.
- Aptitude Round - 10 good aptitude problems like P&C, Graph analysis, Algebra in 20 minutes.
- Coding Round - 3 coding problems in 60 minutes.
- Easy problem. Deque standard problem.
- DP Problem, don't remember.
- DP problem Connect Bridges type problem.
I performed decently in all the sub rounds and hence got shortlisted for the interview rounds.
Round 2: Interview
This round was based on coding, cs subjects, and languages in detail. The first thing, after entering the interview room, the interviewer asked me to tell every topic that I knew. I told him about the languages I knew. From the Data Structures, I knew about Linked Lists, Trees, Stacks, Queues, and Graphs. For theory purposes, I chose OS, DBMS. Whenever you get a situation like this, do not make the mistake of telling him that you know everything, just to create an impression in front of him. This sometimes rolls back to you and hit so hard.
Since the time limit of the interview was 45 minutes, the interview was more of a rapid-fire round to me. The interviewer shooted questions back to back. I just have to tell the answer, if I knew, otherwise skip that.
The questions asked to me were as follows:
- Difference between C++ and Java (8 differences).
- Virtual Functions in C++.
- Garbage Collector in Java.
- Linklist problems like find a loop, y link list problem.
- Prove of loop finding algorithm.
- Print all boundaries of a tree from left to right.
- I have to write a code of all the above coding problems.
- SQL queries like WHERE and HAVING clauses.
- Normalization disadvantages.
- Difference between process and thread.
- Practically how we can see a thread running on windows OS.
Round 3: System Design
The interviewer asked me to design a portal for placement session so that it can do all the work which TPO does. This was a challenging problem. I was given only 50 minutes to design it. He didn't want any HTML Page or something. He just needed a logical diagram of how tables are connected with each other efficiently, as we do in database designing.
First, I made a basic prototype, He asked me to refine it. The main challenge was to convince him. He was cross-questioning my prototype and according to his requirements. In response, I was improving it. He was pointing out the minute details, like how to find the students list from the tables which are shortlisted for the next round, how to get a list of students selected in a particular company, how you will store the data all that things that matter and lots more.
In the end, after all his cross-questions, I was able to refine my design to meet his expectations. I wondered how I created such a great design.😛
After that round, only 8 were shortlisted for the last round.
Round 4 - HR Round
In my opinion, this round was quite tough. My interviewer already had the report of my previous rounds. The interviewer was quite strict. He asked me about my general stuff, like what you do in college in your spare time, your strengths and weakness. What you do to overcome your weakness. He asked about my friend circle. What motivates you to get into the technology.
After that, he gave me a situation based question. He asked if you are out of the station, and your friend needs your help in his code (he is also using the same tech), so how can you help him? The main motto of the interviewer behind this question is to check the candidate's honesty and his strong work ethics. I was aware of that. I answered, "I will definitely help him with his work." He cross-questioned, "Will you share your code?". Understanding the situation, I declined and suggested another way of helping him. Since this company is finance based, so they make sure their data is secured. That's why he asked such type of question. With my answer, he was quite impressed.
I will give you a tip here that, in HR rounds, be honest with the interviewer. They somehow get to know what's running in your mind at that time. Hence they cross-question your answers. So, defend your answers with proper reasoning.
Finally, he ended the interview by asking me if I have questions for him. I showed interest by asking about the work culture, office-hours, work-life balance.
After this, we were asked to leave. After four rounds of interviews, I was exhausted. I was in no mood of giving another test of another company. It was getting very worried that I was not selected in this, I had to again compete from the start.
It was late in the night around, 10:30 pm, I was giving the test of another company, I was called by a TPR, and he finally announced me the GOOD NEWS.
I was thrilled. I had achieved what I desired. All the tiredness went off, and I was filled with energy and happiness. After all, it was my first job.
TIP: I was not good at coding during the intern session. Knowing that fact, I prepared well for interview rounds. But due to a lack of practice in coding, I was unable to get shortlisted for the interview rounds. This was my biggest mistake. So it's a request from you not to take coding rounds casually. Please work hard daily on coding. Then only you will get a chance to sit in the interviews, for which you prepared a lot in your summers.
If you want to share your experience with us, mail us at utkarshgarg@mnnit.ac.in
Very well written 👍👍
ReplyDeleteThanks very much.
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