I recently went through a lot of interviews. I was very fortunate to get these many opportunities. I would love to share my learnings and experience with you.

Grace Hopper Conference
GHC is one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. I highly recommend every women interested in technology to attend it. It not only opened many opportunities to me, it left me more inspired and made me believe in myself even more. It's a great opportunity to make connections, get interviews and have fun :)

I had missed all the deadlines for the scholarship. If you are looking for scholarship follow GHC-Scholarships: Comprehensive . I missed the deadline to buy a ticket as well. You can look for ticket transfers on Facebook Groups, but beware of frauds. Luckily, I got a ticket transferred from a friend at my internship. I got it just around 2 weeks before the conference. I had already landed 2 final round interviews at GHC with Microsoft and Amazon.

1. Microsoft | Full Time Recent Grad SWE | GHC:
   I had my first telephonic round which lasted about 30 minutes 1.5 weeks before the conference. The questions were based on my projects on resume and few behavioral questions. 6 days before the conference I was informed that I had final round at GHC. There were two 50 minutes rounds held at GHC. Each consisted one coding question and multiple behavioral questions and few resume based questions. The coding questions went really well for me but I found the behavioral questions little tricky. However, within a week I was informed that they are not moving forward with me.

2. Amazon | Software Development Engineer | Contacted Recruiter | GHC:
   I had contacted a recruiter on LinkedIn. He first sent me a coding challenge, which consisted of 2 coding questions and I had to also explain my solution. The questions were Leetcode medium level.Five days before GHC I was informed that I had been selected for on-site interviews at GHC. There were 4 rounds each about 55 minutes. All 4 rounds were held in the same room. For the first 3 rounds, each round consisted on 1-2 technical questions and many behavioral questions. It's very important to go through the 14 Leadership Principles of Amazon for the behavioral questions. The coding questions were Leetcode medium. The 4th round was System Design, the question was little unusual for me. The interviewer helped me to come up with a good solution. As I was also very new to System Design, this round did not go that well for me. After a week I got a call that they are not moving forward with me. However, it was a very good interview experience.

Most of my time at GHC went in the interviews. The career fairs ended quite early. However, I did get a little time for the career fair and networking. It is very important to plan the conference and target companies and roles of interest.

3. Goldman Sachs | Engineering New Analyst | Applied Online:
   I first got a coding challenge which consisted of 2 coding questions. After a week I was sent an HireView, where I had to record 4-5 behavioral questions around 3 minutes each. After 3 weeks I had my onsite interview (Superday) at NY office. There were 2 rounds of interviews. Each round was about 1 hour long. In the first round I was asked 4 Leetcode questions (only logic no coding). I could answer all. Second round went pretty tough for me, I was asked one hard coding question and very tricky behavioral questions. After the interviews there was lunch and Q&A with Analysts at Goldman. After a week I got a reject.

4. Mathworks | Engineering Development Group | Applied Online:
   Coding challenge included 2 coding questions and 5 short mathematics MCQs. There was also a 5 minute HireView video interview. After a week I had 1 hour technical phone interview in which I was asked 2 coding questions, OOPs concepts and a few resume based questions. The difficulty level of coding questions was easy to medium. A week after phone interview a 10 minute chat with a manager was scheduled to learn more about my experience and the projects that I have worked on, as well as answer any questions I had about MathWorks. It's very important to go through information about EDG program at Mathworks for this chat. Strangely, I got a reject after the 10 minutes chat.

5. Quora | Software Engineer - Machine Learning New Grad 2020 | Applied Online
   I was sent a 70 minute coding assessment of CodeSignal. I had to share my assessment report with Quora on CodeSignal. You can follow this paper to know more about the framework of assessment. I could solve 3 questions completely and for the 4th question I missed 4 test cases. 3 weeks after the test I was scheduled for a technical phone interview for an hour. I was asked 2 Leetcode medium questions. I could answer both the questions. The interviewer also complied the code for the first question for multiple test cases. Thankfully it did run in one go. Next day I got an email that Quora is holding search and unfortunately will not be moving forward with my application.

6. VISA | Sr. Software Engineer | GHC
   First round was a Hackerrank test for 120 minutes. The test had 5 coding questions. One question was to be solved in Java particularly. The difficulty level increased question by question. I was able to complete 2 questions completely. I could pass partial test cases (50%) for other 3 questions. After 3 weeks after the test I was scheduled for 2 Skype Video Interviews for an Infrastructure team. Each interview lasted around 45 minutes.I would say these were the toughest interviews I gave. The first interview had 1 hard leetcode question. It took me time to first of all understand the question. However, the interviewer did help me a lot to end up on a solution. The other round was based on programming languages paradigms, SRE & Infrastructure concepts, resume based and behavioral questions. I could not answer few of the questions. As I expected, I got a rejection email after a week.

7. LinkedIn | Site Reliability Engineer (New Grad) | GHC
   I was not much inclined towards the SRE role, but I learned a lot and had lot of fun during these interviews. The first round was 30 minutes phone screen with HR. It included short discussion of my previous experience, behavioral questions, around 5-6 port numbers, a question on a protocol and easy algorithm question. I could not answer 1 question on a protocol. Second round was technical phone interview for an hour. It consisted of 4 coding questions based on log parsing, Recursive API calls and Directory Parsing. I could solve all the questions, I was unsure about my regex, but the interviewer asked me not to worry about that. After a month I had my onsite interview at Sunnyvale. The rounds were as follows. Each lasted an hour:

• Interview with a Manager: It was based on resume and I was asked few behavioral questions. He talked briefly about architecture followed at Linkedin and about his work at LinkedIn.
• Lunch Interview: Casual talk with a SRE at LinkedIn.
• System Design: I was fist asked to scale the system for personal use, then for 100 people, then for 1000s and more and more.
• Operations covers how systems work, performing a task at large scale, and monitoring/alerting: These was very informative interview for me, I learned a lot. I was asked 3 questions. It was more of a conversation with the interviewer and we came up with solutions for each question.
• Reviewing code: I was given 4 pieces of codes to point out errors and make suggestions for improvement constructively.
• General troubleshooting and triage: I was very new to this. I was given a machine and asked to solve a problem. It was a type of question I had not prepared. I was able to solve troubleshoot and fix the problem. I got really excited when I could do it. But the interviewer expected SRE to solve more questions in given time frame.
  I was told that all candidates of SRE at all level have same type of interviews but their expectation of answer varies according to the level. After few days I was informed that I lacked Troubleshooting skills required for the job.This video gives a good idea about interviewing with LinkedIn for SRE role.

8. Oracle | Application Developer, Software Engineer | University Career Fair
   I was contacted by a recruiter and was asked to apply for multiple positions at different organizations at Oracle in which I was interested. I was selected by 3 organizations. I had 45 minutes phone screen for each organization. First interview consisted of an leetcode question and a system design question. The system design question did not go well for me. Second and third interviews had mix of Java, OOPs, algorithms, behavioral and resume based questions. I was called for onsite interviews with two of the organization at Redwood City Shore. I had 3 interviews with different teams. In the first interview I was asked leetcode medium and few behavioral questions. Second interview was Object Oriented Design, System Design and questions based on my previous projects. Third interview consisted of leetcode question and resume based questions. I was asked to give preferences of teams I was interested in. After 3 weeks, I was informed that they are moving forward with an offer from my top choice of preference.

9. Bloomberg | Software Engineer (New Grad) | Referral
   The first round was 45 minute technical phone interview. I was asked 1 leetcode easy and 1 medium question. I could answer both. My onsite was 3 months after my phone interview at NY office. For the onsite interview there were multiple candidates for interview. We first had 10 minute campus tour. After that there were two 1 hour interview rounds. For each round there were 2 Leetcode medium questions and few behavioral and resume based questions. I struggled in one question in 1st round, but I could eventually solve it. After few days I got a reject.

10. Facebook | Software Engineer (New Grad) | Applied Online
    For the first round I was scheduled with a 45 minute technical phone interview. I was asked 2 medium leetcode questions. I could answer both the questions but I struggled a bit in one question. In a week I was informed that I was selected for onsite interview. I was invited for University Day. There were around 20 candidates along with me for the interview. First we had an information session with the recruiter to go through the schedule of the day. Then we had three 45 minutes interviews. For the first round I was asked 2 leetcode medium questions. I struggled with one question, but eventually i could give an optimal solution. Second round had one leetcode medium question and bunch of behavioral questions. Third round had 2 leetcode medium questions. After the interviews we had lunch, campus tour and Oculus demo. It was quite a fun day. After 2 days of onsite I was informed that I received an offer.

I am not a very confident person. I was very anxious for all the interviews. I was sad after each rejection. My friends and family always supported me and motivated me to work harder. I learned a lot from each interview.

I have listed few of the resources I used for my preparation below:

Resources:

1. Job Listings: https://www.newgrad.tech/ and LinkedIn
2. Data Structures and Algorithm: many resources but mainly Leetcode and geeks for geeks
3. Compensation and interview experiences: Glassdoor, Leetcode Discuss and Blind

System Design:

1. System Design Primer
2. Gaurav Sen's System Design Videos

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