Education: B.Tech NIT
Years of Experience: 6
Prior Experience: MNC. Impacted by Layoff (> 6 months)
Was Impacted by Layoffs in First week of March. Took > 6 Months to land offers. Sharing Month wise preparation and interview experiences.
March-April (The initial burst of Motivation)
The news came as a shock to me and took couple of days to even register what actually happened. Started doing LC on a daily basis with occasional Design questions(HLD).
Started applying from 2nd/3rd week of march, got a couple of calls but couldnt make it past the initial stages.
Was still very confident to close out the job hunt in 6-8 weeks.
Phonepe: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5058789/phonepe-sde2-bangalore-55yoe [Reject]
Interviewed for Arista Networks but there were a lot of questions around Netwokring, hence couldnt clear it.[Reject]
Appeared for OA of New Relic, cleared the test and was asked to travel to a different city for in person interviews. Sadly i was going home at that time for Holi and asked the recruiter if its possible to reschedule it to next week to which she agreed. But tried reaching out to her multiple times the following week and didnt get any response.
Wasnt getting as many calls from recruiters as i expected earlier. Since i had very recently switched to the last company, my profile was not even getting shortlisted due to frequent job changes.
Started to lose confidence because of lack of responses.
May (The Ghosting Phase)
Thats when i started to feel a bit(more) anxious. Till now only a couple of people around me knew about my job status as was too embarrassed to share it with my friends/family.
Started to get some responses from companies. Recruiter screens were getting scheduled but when i joined, no one attended the meeting. Inspite of Multiple followups on mails and on calls, didnt get a single response back from them.
OCI scheduled a recruiter pre screen and never showed up.
Microsoft Recruiter reached out for a hiring drive, got my availability, didnt get any invite. Tried reaching out to the recruiter and via some friends internally as well, was updated that the interview will be scheduled the following week, nothing happened again.
This happened 2-3 times and eventually i never got any invite for the interview.
Was paralelly appearing for whatever Online Assessments i was getting from Microsoft or any other companies but even after clearing the tests, i wasnt getting any responses.
By the Second week of May, started to maintain streaks on daily questions on Leetcode and was more motivated than ever.
Dont remember if i gave any substantial interviews during this period.
June (The month of Realization)
Kept on maintaining the streaks till June Mid.
Gave a few interviews:
Microsoft: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5338820/microsoft-hiring-drive-june-7-bangalore [Reject]
Never got any update from the recruiter. All i ever got was "We are still waiting for the feedback" for months.
But still nothing seemed to be working out. Either i was somehow being put up with some unrealistic hard questions in interviews or i just messed up big time.
Again got Ghosted by couple of Companies.
- Coackroach Labs recruiter sync was scheduled, was recheduled multiple times but the recruiter never showed up.
- Was shortlisted for Zepto drive and some other companies, never received any invites.
- Cleared Online assessment for Salesforce, got the call from recruiter for an in person interview in bangalore in next couple of days but sadly i was in my hometown at that time. Requested to have the interview a few days later as it wasnt possible to travel back, but got no response even after multiple followups.
I am no expert on the definition of depression but i didnt have anything to look forward to for the next day, started being in my own shell, didnt feel like sleeping at nights since didnt want to face another day of applying for jobs and getting rejection mails. Stopped caring about myself, stopped talking to people, stopped enjoying anything and everything around me. Lost track of what day of the week it is. Thought about going to therapy multiple times but being jobless for months didnt go well with my finances so i guess it just felt like a waste of money.
Towards mid of June took some mental break, went on a solo trip, spent some time with family (pretending to work infront of them).
July (Mixed)
Had sever mental breakdowns towards end of June and first week of July.
First couple of weeks were spent in trying to analyze whats going wrong and where can i improve myself. Was seeing people around me getting jobs in 4-6 weeks after starting to apply for jobs which again made me lose my confidence even more and question myself.
Still kept on lying to my friends' questions "How's work going?" with a smile on my face.
Again appeared for Microsoft interviews in an attempt to clear it this time, sadly, it was worse than last time. Got rejected after first round itself.
Microsoft : https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5465329/microsoft-sde2-bengaluru-drive-10-july [Reject]
By the 3rd week of July, started getting a few calls from recruiters and had a few initial syncups, exploratory, tech screen rounds.
Stepped up on the preparation even more.
August-Sept (Well, Finally!!!)
Gave up on everything (sleep, workout, hanging out with friends, movies, deactivated Instagram, limited my Phone screen time). Was feeling mentally and physically exhausted on a daily basis with just a few hours of sleep.
Fortunately, i had started to plan every day hour wise in order to accomodate interview schedules. Started giving 10+ interviews on a weekly basis and drives on the weekends (appeared for even more than 17 rounds of interviews a few weeks)
Things started to happen at OCI. Yes there were some places where i could have done better but was still looking forward to an offer as overall the interviews went good. But sadly received rejection. This took a heavy toll on me but just somehow pushed myself to not crib about it prepare for the other upcoming interviews.
OCI - https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5758958/OCI-or-SMTS-or-6-Years-or-Reject [Reject]
Microsoft - Cleared initial OA and first 3 rounds, things messed up in the Hiring Manager round. [Reject]
Ghosted by ServiceNow and PayPal
Other Interview experiences during this period(Aug-Sept)-
Wayfair: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5756032/Wayfair-or-L3-or-Bangalore-or-Offer
Adyen: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5757749/Adyen-or-Java-Backend-or-Bangalore-or-Reject [Reject]
Atlassian: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5758945/Atlassian-or-P40-or-Offer-or-6-Years
Spare: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5757709/Spare-or-Backend-Developer-or-6-Years-or-Reject [Reject]
Goldman Sachs: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5756181/Goldman-Sachs-or-VP-or-Bangalore-or-Offer-or-6-Years
Salesforce: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5757562/Salesforce-or-SMTS-or-Offer-or-6-YOE
AngelOne: Rejected after round 2 [Reject]
Stripe: Cleared initial screening round. Rejected in virtual onsites [Reject]
Zynga: Rejected in first round [Reject]
UIPath: Rejected after second round [Reject]
Allen: Rejected after Round 2 [Reject]
Got the first offer from Wayfair but somehow just wanted to get something better considering the negative reviews around the company.
Eventually in the last week of August and first week of september got Offers from Atlassian, Goldman Sachs and Salesforce as well.
Purpose of this Post? : Someone out there might be in the same boat as me and might be losing hope as i did multiple times. And a reminder to self as well to not lose hope.
My suggestion? : Keep pushing! Eventually things will fall into place and your hard work will payoff. You will get what you deserve. Sometimes all you can do is keep working hard and do the hardest possible thing: WAIT!
To the jobs I applied in march/April, i was getting responses in July. I hate to say this but sometmes, yes luck can definitely be a big factor when it comes to job hunt.
Life is uncertain and more often than not things wont go even remotely close to how you planned them out. I had a lot of plans financially this year, everything just went down the drain. But this wont stop me from dreaming big and planning for my future.
What kept me going through this period? : Guess i am someone who tries to find something positive out of every situation. Always thought "I am gonna smile with a sense of pride when i make it past this phase and look back at it". Always thought about how this phase would make me a better person and how this would make me mentally stronger than ever.
Had weeks where i didnt have anything to look forward to, no interviews, no responses, so just kept pushing myself in the GYM. That sense of progress towards the end of every week in the gym did give me some relief.
Resorted to journaling, reading non-fictional books to keep myself sane through this period.
I am not an exceptional coder/developer. So tried working on my basics, even if i couldnt solve LC hard questions, kept on solving the medium/easy ones multiple times.
Leetcode community has been really helpful to me in my preparation, this collated list of interview experiences is just my attempt to give something back to the community.
Resources followed for LLD/HLD:
https://www.youtube.com/@TechDummiesNarendraL
https://www.udemy.com/course/system_design_lld_hld
https://www.youtube.com/@gkcs
https://www.youtube.com/@TheTechGranth/videos
https://www.youtube.com/@codeKarle
https://www.youtube.com/@SystemDesignInterview
Grokking the system design interview
Leetcode Stats: 300+ (~170 Medium)
Followed Blind 75 (54/75), Grind 169 (92/169), Neetcode 150 (80/150)
Used to follow company wise questions for preparations as well.
Have missed a few interviews in between, will add if i am able to gather the required information.
Hope this helps whoever is reading it.
Keep moving forward! :)