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based company
I started to apply for big dream
Do you know?
companies. I started dropping my
resume into their job portal. Three
months later I realized, they don’t
work, for freshers and especially if
you are not from a premium college.
Despite failing to get into the IITs and NITs,
Chandan Kumar was set on one goal – to find his
dream job in a product based company. After
refusing an offer from a small-time company during
his campus placements, he applied to several
companies, asked friends to refer him internally,
and reached out to HRs on LinkedIn. But, none of
that worked.
3 months later
He pursued his dream relentlessly and, he finally achieved it.
Either
Most of us would love to work in a product based company for various reasons.
The pay, perks, and the prestige that come with these companies are inviting. You get to
work with cutting edge technologies, and be surrounded by product-minded people.
Overall, it can lead to a satisfying career in the longer run.
Let us break down the complete interview process, round by round, what interviewers look
for in candidates, and how you can prepare for each of these rounds.
They want to know if your skills and strengths match what you have shared in your
resume. The projects you have previously worked on come into the picture. They ask
questions to get a general idea about your involvement, functionality and usefulness of the
The next thing interviewers want to understand is about your career goals. They need to
know if the company can offer you the opportunities to achieve your goals and provide
If you can, talk to current employees of the company to understand what the company
does at a much deeper level.
Further, prepare a few questions you can ask the interviewer that will help you
understand more about the company and the role.
Be ready to answer about your career goals. Think in terms of what you want from your
career, say, three to five years in the future.
If things go well, you might even proceed for a quick technical evaluation – a coding round
or a technical quiz.
You will be expected to solve a finite set of problems in a time-bound manner. Speed will
play a deciding factor in evaluating your performance in this round.
Make sure you add comments in your code and document your thought process to make
it easier for the reviewer to understand your approach.
Not just that, the questions you ask in this round reflect clarity in thought, a quality
assessed in product-minded engineers.
They also want to see your testing approach, how you debug your code, and overall
correctness and completeness of your solution.
How to prepare for this round?
Quite often, you get to pick the language of your choice, unless the requirement is for a
specific language. If you are given the option, pick the one that you are adept at even if
you are familiar with multiple languages. And most importantly, stick to it until the end of
the interview process. Being a time-bounded assessment, work on improving your speed
while practicing for this round.
Interviewers are going to test your problem solving skills during this round. The data
structures and algorithms you choose to demonstrate your problem-solving abilities
leave a lasting impression on the interviewer.
Since data structures are fundamental and common to all programming languages, a
variety of scenarios can be tested using the same problem asked in multiple interviews.
Coding in front of an interviewer can be quite stressful, especially when you are not used
to it. As for the interviewer, it gives a glimpse into your approach and logic, how you think,
and your ability to code under pressure.
Interviewers are also interested to see what you do when you are stuck; they want to see
if you ask the right questions before rushing to figure out a solution.
The aim of this round is not to see if you write flawless code but to understand your
approach.
However, you will be expected to write a piece of code without compiling errors. You might
also be asked to test your code for “interesting” cases manually.
Interviewers also pay attention to your analytical thinking skills, i.e. the kind of trade-offs
you make when you write and optimize your code.
These kinds of questions also help assess your critical-thinking abilities and how you
think through problems to arrive at solutions.
Coding skills
The tasks given during this round often include writing code from scratch as well as
editing existing code. While it is not possible to fully assess your coding skills, they can
evaluate your coding style and your ability to code well.
Another decisive factor is the readability of your code. They see if the variables are
named clearly and are self-explanatory. So that if anyone reads your code, they can
understand them.
Communication skills
You are going to build tools that are most likely going to be used by non-tech-savvy
people. So, another key trait interviewers look for is your ability to communicate complex
ideas in a simple manner.
Most product based companies come up with difficult, algorithm-intensive problems. After
practicing thousands of problems, if you are still stuck when faced with an unseen
problem, have you really learned how to apply data structures?
While practicing, break down the problem and write the pseudocode for it. The more you
do this, the easier it is going to get for you to simplify your problem and recognize patterns
in unseen questions. Once you have got a hang of it, time yourself, and practice multiple
problems to improve your speed.
To improve coding style and readability, treat every line of code you write as if it were
production-ready. Have a programmer friend read your code and ask for feedback. If they
can understand it without much hassle, your coding skills are in top shape.
• Your experience in technologies in demand (that are relevant to the company’s product).
• Your knowledge of OOP principles and how you can apply them in real-world scenarios.
J ust like the coding round, you get to pick the language of your choice during this round. It
is important to showcase your knowledge in this language as interviewers use it as a
framework to test how well you code.
Theoretical know-how is great, but you also need to be prepared to have meaningful
discussions about your project work.
t is crucial that you have a solid answer to back the purpose of your project. Interviewers
I
are keen to understand your thought process behind selecting and working on the
project(s) shown in your resume.
With regard to OOPs (Object Oriented Programming), interviewers check how you:
• Segmented the problem into well-organized classes.
While picking these projects, go for the ones that will highlight in-demand skills and
technologies like web development, android/iOS app development, ReactJS, NodeJs,
Django, MYSQL, Redis, etc.
Along with this, prepare clear and specific answers to talk about:
• Goals of your project(s).
Another tip a lot of engineers fail to use is capitalizing GitHub. Add your GitHub profile to
your resume as employers are likely to scan your profile to check your contributions to
open source projects.
While being a good programmer is important to land a job at
culture and evaluate whether you are the right fit based on
The cultural fit round ensures that you are a great person to
Culture fit round
Interviewers like to gauge your interest by assessing what you know about the company
and your expectations of it. They see if you have put in the time and effort to understand
The next thing the company wants to assess is your inclination to work both individually
and as a team. Your ability to take feedback and criticism also play an important factor
here.
Apart from these, interviewers want to understand your interests outside of work, your
Research the company’s background beforehand. Check their website, social media,
read reviews, and get in touch with people who already work there. Ask them about the
Understand their mission and vision and use it as a foundation for analyzing the
Rehearse your answers in front of a mirror or with a friend. The more you practice, the
• Is there anything you would change about our office/website/hiring process/business model?
• Which are the top 5 startups/blogs that you follow? What do you like about them?
• If you do not get this position, what will be your next career move?
In addition to rehearsing answers, prepare questions to ask the interviewer. This shows
QUICK TIPS
• Use your answers to steer the interview in your favor.
• Required skills
the company.
• Sprints
As a rule of thumb, avoid asking questions about working hours, holidays, the interviewer’s
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