The Beginning

Hi Everyone! Welcome to my first blog. Recently I posted about getting into Microsoft and i got a lot of messages to share my journey and how i prepared. So, I have decided to write a blog to share my experience so that it reaches a wider audience and help everyone to get better and achieve their goal.

I would like it to be short and crisp. It would help you in getting started but I would share my experience in detail in some other post. It doesn’t matter where you are working currently or whether you are from a good college or not, if you work hard and build your skills over time, you will find success.

Below are the resources and techniques, I referred during my preparation and which will get you started:

1. Decide what you want. Write your goal and be very clear. You have to be consistent. Consistency is the key. I struggled a lot in this.
2. Build/Update your resume. It should be one page. Be very concise, mention your skills, projects and your achievements. How to create a good resume is itself a skill and i will write another post about it but for now, just create an one page resume.
3. Practice. Practice. Practice. I can’t stress enough how much solving coding problems is necessary. You should have problem solving skills. You should cover all the topics in BFS way i.e cover all the different topics and build the skill to solve medium level questions. Don’t go too deep in any topic. You can refer GeeksforGeeks, InterviewBit, Leetcode and hackerrank to solve problems.
4. If you are going for Senior role(SDE 2 and above), then prepare for design round also. Prepare both High level design and Low level design. There are various design questions that are commonly asked in big tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook etc. You can refer them to start your preparation. You can also refer the book Cracking the coding interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell for coding questions and design problems.
5. Along with your preparation, update your Linkedin profile, increase your activity, connect with recruiters and getting a referral is the best bet to land an interview. Having a good profile also catches the eyes of the recruiters. Also apply on the careers page of the companies you are targeting.
6. Have a good mindset, you will face rejections in the way but keep hustling. Don’t get disappointed if you are rejected, learn from your rejections and correct the mistakes. Keep going.

Little bit of everything is necessary. These are some high level points to keep in mind while preparing. Focus on having the skills, learn as much as you can. Don’t think of these points as some sort of only thing you should follow. Do what suits you, work hard.

The important part is to build your skills and get that dream job whatever it takes.

I’m planning on writing about each and every point in detail and anything that you want to know. I will also write about how to deal with failures and rejections that will come your way and how to use them to achieve success.

I want to help as many people as I can, because I have been through all of this and I know the feeling when you don’t see the end of the tunnel. I have been that person. Please feel free to comment if you want to know anything or want me to write anything.

Please feel free to dm me on Linkedin or Instagram if you have any questions.

Onwards and Upwards !