Placement Preperation Tips
DO's
- Research the company’s background, values, and recent projects before the interview.
- Practice common interview questions and prepare concise, confident answers.
- Dress professionally and maintain good personal hygiene.
- Be punctual — arrive at least 10–15 minutes before the scheduled time.
- Maintain good posture, eye contact, and a friendly smile during the interview.
- Prepare and bring multiple copies of your updated resume.
- Highlight your strengths with specific examples from past experiences.
- Ask insightful questions about the role or company at the end of the interview.
DON'Ts
- Don’t arrive late or unprepared for the interview.
- Don’t speak negatively about past employers, teachers, or teammates.
- Don’t interrupt the interviewer while they are speaking.
- Don’t use slang or overly casual language during the interview.
- Don’t lie or exaggerate your skills and experience.
- Don’t appear distracted — keep your phone on silent and out of sight.
- Don’t forget to maintain polite body language and a professional tone.
- Don’t panic if you don’t know an answer — stay calm and try to reason it out.
- Don’t ignore company instructions for tests, documents, or dress code.
- Don’t ignore company instructions for tests, documents, or dress code.
Skill Gap Analysis
- What skills does the company require? → Read the job description carefully.
- What technical skills do I already have? → List your existing tools, languages, and technologies.
- Do I have the soft skills required? → Check communication, teamwork, leadership, etc.
- Where am I falling short? → Identify missing or weak skills.
- How important is each missing skill? → Prioritize high-impact ones first.
- Can I learn these skills quickly? → Choose skills you can build in weeks or months.
- Do I understand the company’s work culture? → Research online or talk to employees.
- Do I know the tools the company uses? → Check if they require specific software or platforms.
- Have I matched my resume to the job description? → Highlight relevant skills only.
- Can I prove my skills with real examples? → Projects, internships, certificates.
- Am I up-to-date with industry trends? → Follow blogs, news, and updates in your field.
- Have I built a strong portfolio? → Showcase your best work online.
- Do I have certifications to validate my skills? → Take online exams or courses.
- Can I explain my skills clearly in an interview? → Practice simple, confident answers.
- Am I ready for technical tests? → Solve practice problems and mock tests.
- Do I need to improve my problem-solving skills? → Work on logic, puzzles, coding challenges.
- Do I have good time management? → Balance learning with other commitments.
- Am I confident in public speaking? → Practice presentations and group discussions.
- Do I understand the role’s daily responsibilities? → Research through LinkedIn/job portals.
- Can I work in a team effectively? → Join group projects or student clubs.
- Am I adaptable to new tools/tech? → Keep learning new software or methods.
- Do I know my unique strengths? → Use them to stand out in interviews.
- Do I know my weaknesses? → Make a plan to improve them.
Coding Test Trends
- Real-World, Role-Specific Simulations: Companies now prefer job-task simulations over theoretical puzzles, testing problem-solving, debugging, and production-like skills.
- AI-Enhanced and Adaptive Assessments: AI adjusts difficulty dynamically, provides smarter feedback, and evaluates efficiency and scalability in real time.
- Emphasis on Soft Skills & Collaboration: Tests now measure teamwork, communication, and adaptability—sometimes through coding behavior and workflow patterns.
- Mobile-Friendly & Candidate-Centric Design: Shorter, modular, and mobile-compatible tests improve engagement and completion rates.
- Hackathons & Project-Based Evaluations: Popular for assessing creativity, speed, teamwork, and real-world problem-solving under pressure.
- Anti-Cheating Measures & Integrity Tools: Plagiarism detection, screen monitoring, and randomized questions combat cheating with AI tools.
- AI Assistance in Interviews: Some companies use AI assistants during interviews to evaluate candidates' ability to collaborate with AI.
- Gaming the System & Ethical Concerns: AI misuse to cheat raises fairness issues, prompting changes in test formats.
- Vibe Coding & AI Fluency: Employers value intuitive AI-augmented coding over traditional syntax memorization.
- Holistic, Data-Driven Insights: Dashboards track speed, creativity, and patterns, enabling predictive hiring decisions.
- Short, Iterative Challenge Rounds: Instead of one long test, companies use multiple short challenges to assess consistency and adaptability.
- Personalized Learning Feedback: Candidates receive targeted improvement suggestions after the test, enhancing the hiring experience.
- Open-Source Contribution Assessment: Some recruiters evaluate GitHub or open-source work as part of the coding assessment process.
- Continuous Skill Monitoring: Long-term contracts include ongoing coding evaluations to ensure skill growth after hiring.
Company Wise Interview Experience
Amazon Interview Experiences
Amazon SDE-1 Interview — Bengaluru
Application & Timeline: Applied through campus placement, received OA link within a week. Entire process took 3 weeks.
Preparation: Solved 200+ LeetCode problems (arrays, strings, dynamic programming). Read Amazon Leadership Principles daily and prepared STAR-format stories.
- OA: Longest subarray sum K, minimum swaps to make string palindrome, work-style questionnaire.
- Round 1: Rotate linked list, BFS shortest path in grid.
- Round 2: System design for notification service.
- Behavioral: Ownership example from college project.
Challenges Faced: Time management in OA — first question took longer than expected, had to rush second.
Outcome: Offer received after 2 weeks.
Tips: Practice DSA daily, especially arrays, strings, graphs. Be ready with 2-3 strong LP stories for each principle.
Amazon SDE-1 Interview — Hyderabad
Application & Timeline: Applied via LinkedIn, recruiter reached out within 10 days. Process lasted 4 weeks.
Preparation: Focused on system design basics, heaps, tries, and graph problems. Mock interviews with friends helped confidence.
- OA: Largest rectangle of 1’s, distinct substrings count.
- Round 1: Trie implementation.
- Round 2: Merge k sorted linked lists.
- Round 3: Design a ride-sharing backend.
- Behavioral: Resolving conflict in a team project.
Challenges Faced: Explaining design decisions under time pressure.
Outcome: Offer for Hyderabad SDE-1 team.
Tips: Explain your thought process clearly. Don’t jump straight to coding — discuss approach first.
Amazon SDE-1 Interview — Chennai
Application & Timeline: Referral from ex-colleague. Process took 5 weeks due to scheduling delays.
Preparation: Read “Cracking the Coding Interview,” practiced concurrency problems, reviewed Java OOP concepts.
- OA: Rope connection cost, string scramble check.
- Round 1: Thread-safe singleton.
- Round 2: Median from data stream.
- Behavioral: Inventing a solution to cut processing time by 40%.
Challenges Faced: Keeping answers concise for LP questions while still giving enough detail.
Outcome: Selected for Chennai office, Cloud Services team.
Tips: Practice STAR method for LPs. For coding, aim for O(log n) or O(n) solutions whenever possible.
Amazon SDE-1 Interview — Delhi
Application & Timeline: Off-campus application via Amazon Jobs portal, OA within 2 weeks. Process took 1 month.
Preparation: Brushed up on binary trees, DP, and API design. Reviewed common e-commerce system design patterns.
- OA: Longest palindromic substring, minimum jumps problem.
- Round 1: Serialize/deserialize binary tree.
- Round 2: E-commerce recommendation engine.
- Behavioral: Handling ambiguity in requirements.
Challenges Faced: Adjusting design for scalability questions from interviewer.
Outcome: Selected but preferred another city location.
Tips: For system design, always talk about scaling horizontally and using caching effectively.
Amazon SDE-1 Interview — Pune
Application & Timeline: Applied through Hackerrank hiring challenge, results in 5 days. Completed interviews in 2 weeks.
Preparation: Focused on linked lists, caching mechanisms, and cloud basics. Practiced behavioral questions daily.
- Round 1: Reverse nodes in k-group linked list.
- Round 2: In-memory cache design.
- Round 3: Failure recovery story from a past internship.
Challenges Faced: Debugging edge cases during live coding without IDE auto-complete.
Outcome: Offer for SDE-1, AWS team in Pune.
Tips: Stay calm during debugging, talk aloud about what you’re trying. Amazon values communication as much as coding skills.
Google Interview Experiences
Google SWE — Bangalore
Application & Timeline: Applied via careers site, recruiter contacted in 2 weeks. Total process: 6 weeks.
Preparation: Practiced LeetCode hard problems (graphs, DP, recursion). Reviewed Google-specific system design resources.
- Round 1: Word ladder shortest path.
- Round 2: Implement LRU cache.
- Round 3: Design Google Docs real-time collaboration.
- Behavioral: Leading a cross-team project with changing requirements.
Challenges Faced: Explaining trade-offs in system design with limited time.
Outcome: Offer for Bangalore office.
Tips: Think out loud. Google values clarity and structured problem-solving over rushed answers.
Google SWE — Hyderabad
Application & Timeline: Referral from ex-Google engineer. Took 8 weeks due to scheduling delays.
Preparation: Practiced dynamic programming, bit manipulation, and concurrency patterns.
- Round 1: Median of two sorted arrays.
- Round 2: Parallel web crawler design.
- Round 3: Behavior-focused: "Tell me about a time you failed and recovered."
Challenges Faced: Avoiding over-optimization early in coding rounds.
Outcome: Shortlisted for Hyderabad Ads team.
Tips: Don’t jump to code — confirm understanding with the interviewer.
Google SWE — Mountain View
Application & Timeline: Applied through internship conversion. Completed process in 3 weeks.
Preparation: Focused on algorithms, large-scale design, and leadership principles.
- Round 1: Kth smallest element in BST.
- Round 2: Design YouTube recommendation system.
- Behavioral: Handling production outage as an intern.
Challenges Faced: Keeping solutions within O(log n) or O(n) complexity.
Outcome: Offer for YouTube infra team.
Tips: Use whiteboard space effectively to explain your approach visually.
Google SWE — Zurich
Application & Timeline: Applied via careers site, interview loop in 5 weeks.
Preparation: Focused on graph algorithms, caching strategies, and distributed systems.
- Round 1: Detect cycle in a directed graph.
- Round 2: Design Google Maps real-time traffic updates.
- Behavioral: Decision-making under incomplete data.
Challenges Faced: Explaining how to handle global scale latency issues.
Outcome: Offer received after 2 weeks.
Tips: Use examples of distributed scale in answers — Google values scale-thinking.
Google SWE — Singapore
Application & Timeline: Reached through LinkedIn recruiter. 4-week process.
Preparation: Practiced advanced DP, segment trees, and API design.
- Round 1: Range sum query with updates.
- Round 2: Design Google Calendar backend.
- Behavioral: Delivering on a tight deadline with dependencies.
Challenges Faced: Handling timezone conversions in system design.
Outcome: Offer for Google Calendar team.
Tips: Always check for corner cases before finalizing the code.
Microsoft Interview Experiences
Application & Timeline: Applied through careers portal, OA after 1 week, onsite in 3 weeks.
Preparation: Focused on arrays, linked lists, system design basics.
Rounds:
1. OA: Find kth largest element, SQL joins.
2. DSA: Implement trie, merge k sorted lists.
3. LLD: Design an elevator system.
4. System Design: News feed service.
5. Behavioral: Conflict resolution experience.
Outcome: Offer for Redmond team.
Tips: Focus on data structures + Microsoft values.
Application & Timeline: Campus drive, OA in 4 days, completed in 3 weeks.
Preparation: 180+ LeetCode problems, SQL, Microsoft culture.
Rounds:
1. OA: Missing number, train platforms, SQL top salaries.
2. DSA: LCA in binary tree, detect cycle.
3. LLD: LRU Cache.
4. System Design: URL shortener.
5. Behavioral: Disagreement with manager.
Outcome: Offer for Bengaluru.
Tips: Practice SQL + design patterns.
Application & Timeline: LinkedIn referral, process in 5 weeks.
Preparation: Graphs, heaps, concurrency basics.
Rounds:
1. OA: Number of islands, min window substring, debug array function.
2. DSA: Merge intervals, bipartite check.
3. LLD: Parking lot system.
4. System Design: Collaborative document editor.
5. Behavioral: Handling conflicting deadlines.
Outcome: Offer for Azure team.
Tips: Be clear on time complexity.
Application & Timeline: Off-campus application, 3 weeks total.
Preparation: CTCI, concurrency, OS concepts.
Rounds:
1. OA: Word ladder, stock transactions, SQL joins.
2. DSA: Reverse linked list in groups, min stack.
3. LLD: Rate limiter API.
4. System Design: Microsoft Teams chat service.
5. Behavioral: Growth mindset example.
Outcome: Offer for Office 365 team.
Tips: Clarify requirements before coding.
Application & Timeline: Recruiter outreach, 2 weeks prep time, final in 1 month.
Preparation: Emphasis on scalable systems, cloud basics (Azure), LeetCode mediums.
Rounds:
1. OA: Median of two sorted arrays, string compression.
2. DSA: Implement autocomplete, max path sum in tree.
3. LLD: Online code editor.
4. System Design: Real-time multiplayer game lobby.
5. Behavioral: Leading without authority.
Outcome: Remote SDE role.
Tips: Learn Azure services basics.
Meta (Facebook) Interview Experiences
Application & Timeline: Applied via referral, 1 month total process.
Preparation: Focused on recursion, dynamic programming, graph theory.
Rounds:
1. OA: Word break problem, largest rectangle in histogram.
2. DSA: Clone graph, LFU cache.
3. LLD: News feed ranking system.
4. System Design: Facebook Live streaming architecture.
5. Behavioral: Impact-focused project discussion.
Outcome: Offer for Menlo Park.
Tips: Emphasize scalability in design.
Application & Timeline: Recruiter reach out, OA in 3 days, offer in 5 weeks.
Preparation: 200+ LeetCode problems, GraphQL basics, concurrency.
Rounds:
1. OA: Course schedule, meeting rooms II.
2. DSA: Serialize/deserialize binary tree, word ladder II.
3. LLD: Facebook Messenger system.
4. System Design: Marketplace recommendation engine.
5. Behavioral: Handling high-pressure launches.
Outcome: Offer for London office.
Tips: Learn Facebook’s “Move Fast” culture.
Application & Timeline: Campus placement, completed in 3 weeks.
Preparation: Linked list problems, heap operations, OS fundamentals.
Rounds:
1. OA: Subarray sum equals k, minimum spanning tree.
2. DSA: Kth smallest element in BST, sliding window maximum.
3. LLD: Facebook groups feature.
4. System Design: Event subscription & notifications.
5. Behavioral: Mentorship experience.
Outcome: Offer for NY team.
Tips: Communicate trade-offs clearly.
Application & Timeline: Applied online, OA in 2 weeks, final in 6 weeks.
Preparation: Binary search variations, REST API design, cloud basics.
Rounds:
1. OA: Median of two sorted arrays, min cost to connect cities.
2. DSA: Flatten nested list iterator, max profit in job scheduling.
3. LLD: Stories feature design.
4. System Design: Content delivery optimization for reels.
5. Behavioral: Working with diverse teams.
Outcome: Offer for Singapore.
Tips: Focus on user engagement metrics in design.
Application & Timeline: Internal referral, 5-week process.
Preparation: Advanced graph problems, caching strategies, React fundamentals.
Rounds:
1. OA: All paths from source to target, job scheduling with deadlines.
2. DSA: Merge k sorted lists, design autocomplete system.
3. LLD: Events & reminders in Facebook Calendar.
4. System Design: Distributed caching layer for Messenger.
5. Behavioral: Stakeholder conflict resolution.
Outcome: Offer for Hyderabad office.
Tips: Show deep understanding of distributed systems trade-offs.