Graduated from ECE & Wana Work at Top Companies?

 

This story preety well sums up about me. I am 2017 passed out from ECE stream. Though I passed out from NIT, due to lack of my communication and HR skills I couldn't fetch a good job in campus placement and ended up in IBM with mere 3.2LPA + 50K(bonus). Obviously I was not happy with my placement and at the time may be bit luck factor also didn't work for me(got rejected in almost 6–7 companies in HR round due to poor speaking skills and may be almost 30 companies in in between rounds).

I left college with heavy heart but I earned one thing, a bunch of good frnds that's it. I joined my first company in sept 2017 and there also was hoped for getting a good set of skills so that I can switch easily to other companies later on but ended up with mainframe technology (we all know how outdated this tech is!!). I was devastated with my life that why the hell all the wrong is happening with me. That was even okay, few of my college friends also joined IBM and I thought at the end of my training atleast I will be in Bangalore and will get good job opportunities there and friends are also there, but god had some other plans for me. I ended up getting my project in Chennai. There I didn't had a single friend to even talk to, on weekends as well(Can imagine have gone to Chennai beaches alone few a times initially). Though I have a good skill, I make myself comfortable with people. I made few friends there and was enjoying life with what I had, and hoping to switch job whenever possible. Fast forward to Oct 2018 I got a call from Qualcomm for an engineer role in Hyderabad. Since I am from ECE and knew from college days Qualcomm is google for ECE engineers. I didn't hope to clear even the first round, frankly speaking I still couldn't forget the college scene so couldn't hoped that I can ended up in such a good companies. I came to Hyderabad and went through the interview, the interviewers were quite good there(they are my colleagues now ;) ) at the end of the day after 4 rounds of technical interview I got a feedback that I can leave for the day as I had flight to Chennai around 8:00 PM. I thought it's a complete rejection as few of the interviewer don't say directly that you are rejected. I was sad it's not because I couldn't crack the job but because I didn't thought to clear a single round and manage till 4th round and ultimately got rejected.

Then the next week I was continuing with the same normal routine in office and suddenly I got a call from Qualcomm HR that the feedback is quite good for me and they want to take one more round of technical interview and the interview would be that week itself and would be skype/telephonic. I went through the interview and this time I couldn't guess how the interview went for me, I would say kind of 50:50 it was as there were few deep java concepts which I couldn't properly explain other than that I was able to handle the interview and gave the answers aptly, still not sure if would get selected or not. After one week or so I got a call from the HR that I was selected and they sent me the offer letter. Most surprising thing you know what, in college I got rejected for a 6–7 LPA CTC numerous times and here I couldn't believe the salary package they offered for 1.5 years experience guy was 18–23LPA(can't disclose the exact CTC due to disclosure tnc) and the very next moment my last 1.5 years of professional journey and last 1 year of college placement hustle was flashing into my mind and I was literally crying that how many bad days I had went through to get something good for me but was happy that my hardwork paid off at last. I learnt from it that God always have a better plan and you just have to keep patience and faith on yourself and your abilities and be truthful to yourself. Now I am working in Qualcomm from last 1.8 years and I am happy with the work.

Now coming to the ques:

1. Try to always learn something which generally companies ask like DS and algo, Design pattern (generally good product based companies focus in this) , any one of the programming language java, Python etc. (Your knowledge is something and cracking the interview needs something else of you)
2. Be strong with your thought process and always see where you want to go(may be kind of technology)
3. Practice good amount of competitive coding questions to crack the coding rounds.
4. Before going for interview for a particular company research about the kind of ques they ask(will be easily available in internet)

All the best 🙂

New points added:

5. Make a good connection over linkedin irrespective of you know someone or not just make the relevant connection. Many of the recuritors are out there and you just need to see your LinkedIn feed, you will get good amount of opportunities there (this is really really helpful, for me now I am getting calls from the best companies in hardware and software sector in LinkedIn but I am not looking for a change now).

 

-Swarn Singh,Software Engineer at Qualcomm (2019–present)