Charting Your Path in Software: Lessons from Software Developer, Mr. Mohammed Rizwan!
Hello everyone. I am Manisha, secretary at Academics and Career Council in Career Development Wing. In today's session, we have a special guest, Mr. Mohammed Rizwan, who is working as a software developer in Zl Technologies.
Questions for the Software Domain:
Q1. What motivates you to pursue your career in software development and how did you prepare for this job market? (Duration: 0:32-1:37)
Okay, so firstly, who all are watching this podcast? This is one of the questions that's asked in the interviews as well. So be prepared to answer this question in the coming future. Now, answering your question, you must have heard the proverb charity begins at home. So, for me it was more like motivation begins at home. Cause my brother, who is a Y17 is also SDE at Amazon, so he shared his experience as how a day goes in the life of a software engineer, which pretty much excited me as well. Apart from this, I always found it intriguing as to how all the apps and websites around us work. Like from just a click of a mouse you can get all the input related to a place on Google Maps and stuff like that. And one of the generic reasons was that everybody around you is doing coding, so why not give it a shot?
For DSA preparation, I mostly use LeetCode and InterviewBit for solving problems, and for theory, I mostly use GeekforGeeks.
Q2. What coursework or project that you have completed for this job? (Duration: 1:42-2:35)
So, like in the first year we had ESC101 course, which is an IC course. Apart from that, for DSA I did ESO207 as an OE and for preparing for other computer Fundamentals like CN, DBMS and Operating System, I mostly refer to YouTube channels of Code with Harry and Love Babbar. To prepare for puzzles you can use Brainsteller.
And one more thing is that if you are not from a CSE background then they don't expect you to have in-depth knowledge of these topics. But it's always beneficial to have as many skills under your belt because you never know when they act as lifesavers.
For the project part as such, I didn't have any project in software development but yeah, I had a front-end development intern which came in pretty handy for me.
Q3. So, can you share your experience of the job application and interview process? (Duration: 2:40-4:06)
Okay, so for the job application you mostly for all the job applications you apply through SPO portal only. So, the first step of the job application was resume based shortlisting. After that there was a quick online test in which you had to solve about like 50 Basic Math Aptitude and Puzzle questions in five minutes.
After that, the next round, which was an offline one, was taken by one of the senior managers at Zltech. So, as I've already said, I had a front-end development intern, so this round was mostly centered around that only he asked me to develop a small component of a web page using React.
I had to extract CSV values from the input box and then apply Bubble Sort on it and display that on the web page. This round went pretty well for me, and the manager looked pretty impressed, and the offer was almost certain at that point. After that there was an offline DSA round in which there were three questions. One was sort of an extended version of the Two Pointer Algorithm for which I provided like two three alternate approaches and the other two questions were mostly based on Tree Data Structures. Yeah, this was the last round, after which me, along with one more person, got the confirmation for the offer.
Q4. Is there any additional advice that you would like to give or share with our aspiring software professionals who are preparing for the interview? (Duration: 4:10-5:26)
Okay, so not a lot of people will tell you this, but in DSA, prepare for Feinwick tree, Segment tree, Digit DP and Trie, a lot of questions were asked from these topics, and these proved to be bottlenecks. So better mark these topics. And in DSA, you have to be consistent. And rather than on focusing on the number of problems you solve, better focus on the quality of the problems that you approach and try to approach it with different ways and try to figure out different approaches for that problem and prepare each and every point of your resume thoroughly and get it verified from as many seniors as possible. And one more thing that I would like to share is that be prepared for the HR interviews as well. Because I face the consequences for not preparing for HR round in my Razorpay Scan AI interviews, so better prepare for it. Apart from that, you can always reach out to any seniors of yours and never be shy to ask for help. You can contact me as well; I will be more than happy to help you guys out.