how did you prepare for your interviews so for uh the Microsoft interview specifically um my internship was um very different from other fellow interns this is my first internship only so how was your journey from a tier three College to Microsoft okay so that's very interesting so how these platforms like LinkedIn Twitter and Reddit helped you in your career okay so LinkedIn is something that I was uh hi everyone this podcast is going to be very interesting today we have Ruma who has recently completed her two months internship from Microsoft she is a student in final year from the same College from where I graduated in 2021 that is bit cnri in this video we are going to have conversation about her journey from tier three College to getting an internship at Microsoft and we will also talk about how did she get to know about the opportunity how did she apply for the role and most importantly how did she prepare for those interviews and will get insights about her work experience at Microsoft how did joining tech industry for the first time change her perspective about software Engineers so watch this video till the end let's start hi Roma first of all thank you so much for coming to this podcast already intruction but can you introduce yourself so uh hi ma'am and hi to the YouTube audience so my name is Ruma and I'm currently studying in final year at V Institute of Technology dbar and my branch or my major is computer science and engineering so how was your journey from a tier three College to Microsoft challenges obviously face I think this question is asked by a lot of audience so it will be helpful for them um I think third fin interket candidates right but when I started in my first year we didn't used to get as many opportunities as we expected one in while applying to compies so we had to choose that others option and then enter the name of our College and challenge was community so it's not that flourish as it is in IIT or nit so there are numerous students who are doing uh coding but there's not enough of that culture but yeah in other theer tier three colleges I see it's it's much less but in our College it's like cring it's it's a lot better now so were you part of this community yes I was so I was lucky enough to be a part of uh uh the official coding Club of our college that is hncc and now I'm the vice president of it so it feels really nice and we regularly organize many contest like from the from our end also from the colleges and also it happen so students are very engaged join hncc and how it helped you in your preparation okay so I joined in the first year only and in the very first month of when the inductions were going on were already doing lots of things like CP they are very proficient in web development so even if there's not someone who is like going to make you sit and guide through all of it being from the place where you you are from instant motivation basically so there were many seniors who were like quite good at CP many who had already cracked g off so uh that was kind of a source of motivation from me so I also started doing the same following the same path as they were following and then I created my own from all sorts of like experiences I agree with your point so I have myself fac this internship Microsoft so what were your insights during those two months what project did you work on or key takeway internship okay so my internship was uh very different from other fellow interns so they had to work on something like maybe react or Android or or uh generic things that you may find or may not find on the internet but mine was completely those things that are related to Microsoft's internal tools was it disclose them it very challenging yeah so it was something that even my it was like a transition phase so even my uh like other full stack you know the team members uh who were in the in in fulltime even they were going through that transition so they were not uh like enough resources for that but whatever it was they were very help throughout so my project was basically around an upcoming Sovereign Cloud environment so basically what Microsoft does is that they create a tailored or personalized Cloud environment for different countries so I had to work on the platform development for that and uh basically uh I was given a task to automate the processes which already exist I had to make it completely like uh low touch so that was it I had to understand many C workflows and I had to run many partial scripts and that was all like my all day work and troubleshooting is one of the skills that that really mattered there okay so what were your key takeaways from from that internship uh firstly teamwork would be communication skills like my communication skills were evaluated every second at Microsoft so that really matters third key takeaway would be that you know networking like how many people you interact with every day I used to go to the bus I used to take SLE and I used to talk to some senior manager is sitting next to me some senior software engineer sitting next to me and I get to talk to that person so that is something that I used to dream of when I was in college and I got that opportunity there so networking is uh something you know like my personally my favorite take away from there okay so was this your first internship uh technically speaking this is my first internship only I had cracked uh something called call AS myx myx Global in research internship ear year but because of the timings you know I couldn't join it so I chose Microsoft then so it is it is my first how did you apply for this internship opening Microsoft follow you know there's something called as job section if you go and turn on the notifications there then every opening they have you'll get the notification for it also I have been rejected by Microsoft like twice before this so I always used to apply to Microsoft via career portal so uh I have also like uh kept the notifications on there so as soon as they have a new opening it comes to my email so that's what happened after facing rejection three times the fourth time I got the notification so I applied by I was also rejected five to six times like my resume was not even shortlisted even after taking referral after five or six times I got shortlisted for the interviews yeah it happens that's what happens yeah it happens so I applied by a career portal I was not expecting to get shortlisted I did and then I received an OA link so there were two questions there I cannot discuss the questions because of NBA so yeah I had solved one and solve the other one like I would say 80% of the test cases passed okay so I was lucky because in the the second question I have encountered earlier sort of similar question so I was able to solve so what was the difficulty level of the questions was it very hard or lead code medium level types I'm say uh lead code hard it could medium to hard or one one is medium and the other one is hard generally that's that's the case Okay so and then what were the other rounds yeah so there were technical rounds and then there was U AA round which uh which is basically HR round but Microsoft likes it likes to call it a just like Google calls it googliness okay so how many rounds did you give for interview so there were two rounds only I would say because the third was more like a screening I would not consider that as an interview so the first round I had DSA questions two along with follow-ups and they uh do not expect you to like uh compile the code and run it but they do expect you to have production ready C like okay and it should be the most OP optimized approach like in my uh in the first question that they gave me so uh they asked the time complexity I said it's offen and they was like they were like no it's not o ofn it's O of 2N so Trav the data structure just once so that's the level of optimization they want and I don't know how I figured out and I was able to crack for the first J and then there was a call on the same day and I picked up the call with lots of apprehension that what's going to happen and they said that you have qualified the first round and uh your second round will be scheduled in five minutes only like 15 minutes only okay and it was an a round where they discussed about my projects uh it was a very senior engineer who had been working there for like 10 to 12 years um and then he asked me various like situation based questions and he also asked me like how do you stay updated like with the tech world so they assess your whole personality they want to know if you are someone who just sits and practice DSA or you someone who is genuinely interested in Tech so how did you stay one of the just share with the audience okay so that's very interesting so I used to stay updated by LinkedIn and I said LinkedIn very first like in the as soon as they asked me the question I said it within micros seconds because I knew that LinkedIn is something which is associated with Microsoft I need to say it so I said that and then Twitter I'm active on Twitter also uh and then there was Reddit so these three things so how these platforms like LinkedIn Twitter and Reddit helped you in your career okay so LinkedIn is something that I I was uh a part of even when I didn't start my college so before that also I was on LinkedIn and because uh there were some people around me who once mentioned or point the term so I was very curious so I just made an account and I had written that I attended my this this school and I used to make connections with people okay who were like in man companies because it was kind of my dream from the very beginning so I started there and then LinkedIn helps you on building connections with like anyone you can even connect with SATA Adela if you want so uh let's you connect with various HRS and uh you know senior engers that that is a very big deal so it gives you kind of a platform and form and identity of who you are as a tech person LinkedIn is your it seems like networking is your favorite thing to do right uh yeah it helps a lot it really helps I agree with it I totally agree with you yeah and what about other platforms Twitter andit how did they help you okay so Twitter is basically something if you want to dive deep into something and connect with people who are genuinely very curious about it like suppose you're doing web development and you want some really good design to take inspiration from you can go there you can just search with the hashtags and there will be multiple posts about you know genuinely good designs generally good approaches so in-depth approaches are there on Twitter there's this The Tech Community is very active there I would say third was reddit reddit was something U where you can just anonymously go and connect to like-minded people so you can go and go to like any sub and it is basically like a du sharing it was for me a du sharing place so every time I used to like feel dejected or you know not able to figure out what to do next I go so that's interesting about your social media Journey yeah so it was very interesting to know about your internship journey and your application process and uh you use social media very effectively to reach your career goals so now everyone would be interested in knowing how did you prepare for your interviews so for uh the Microsoft interview specifically um when I received the kind of email about my internship so um it was very generic uh throughout but then when as soon as I got to know that my interviews will be conducted um I went to gfg instantly and then there were questions tagged with Microsoft gfg and read code both and also if you go to interview bit they create a curated list of problems asked actually asked in the previous interview so that also helped um so I used to filter apply filters and solve questions every day uh that was my Approach and also you need to go through you can so I utilize medium a lot uh I used to go to medium and search for interview experiences because that kinds of kind of gives you an Insight in raw form so kind of prepared me for that interview and Technical interview I had no idea what was going to happen so I was taking it like U I was very nervous but endend I started taking it like a test ball H let's just give it all and not stress too much about and that um attitude I think helped me a lot and before getting this interview call what topics did you prepare okay so I had prepared like everything from every data structure to not not the advanced ones like segares and all but I would say that uh it's good to know till tries and I did that uh DP I used to practice a lot and then um many approaches like you know 2 point approaches or the sliding window thing I used to practice questions based on that did you make any projects also during college yes I did so uh I had made two full stack projects um and both were very different from each other so that kind of helped a lot during you know they they do not focus Microsoft didn't Focus much on my uh uh project but yeah they do ask you and they analyze whether you have made everything from scratch or not and if they detect you then you will be caught very instantly but thankfully I did it all by my own like from like which T did you use there so I used monack um which was yeah monack so both of your projects were mon stack okay right and I used a libraries like material UI for one that makes your like project a lot easier to maintain like the UI part okay so uh my next question is was there any skills or knowledge that you learned in your btech that you applied there in the internship which may have helped you in the internship yeah so very interesting and I think nobody would expect me to say that but there was a subject called Flat which helped me very so people usually say that you only have to study DSA and computer fundamentals like dbms and operating system and that's it but you are saying of another subject with no one would expect that has helped you in the exctly yeah yeah I think people would expect or something but it was flat which actually held me at one point I was stuck there and I was not able to understand it so basically we had to understand a lot of C workflows so every it's not very generic like C++ that you will see the structure of the file and you'll get to know it will take some time for you a lot more time for you to discover how things are happening so um there was a thing called I cannot tell you the exact concept but that concept is used by Microsoft and to explain it so I was really stuck and not able to understand what it was so I asked my uh help from my mentor and he explained me that thing using a concept of L that was finite automat and that's when I understood the importance of it like how important it is so kid yeah so he explain me how the entire workflow is functioning and what why this part is like this the way it is supposed to nice that's really interesting so it's also important to focus on other subjects instead of just doing DSA and operating system and oops right yeah yeah that's true like whatever you are studying I would say just get a gist of it that if someone at some point of life gives you that context like my mentor as me do you know what Fin automatize and I was like yes I know definitely you go for computer science background only but what about students who are interning in Microsoft and they are not from computer science background so so many of my fellow interns were from ECE right and there was one person who was from mechanical also so uh for them what they do is that uh they have to manage their own subjects also and then computer science fundamental also so they take time out to like kind of grasp the computer science fundamental concept also so so that's definitely a challenge for them I used to ask them what about your EC subjects and they were like oh my God they are way harder compared to cs1 yeah yeah I also heard this review yeah so they were like since we are going like studying something which is so like tough CS becomes a bit easy on their side but yeah it's a additional pressure you have to cover this also for the interviews so that was a challenge for them rest you know uh who ever comes there they are all all very like sharp minded people I would say they have a lot of presence of mind so they are able to Gras things so you told me that it was your first internship right in the tech industry or your first internship in during your college times so uh you must be having some perspective about the tech industry so did that change after joining Microsoft or was it same uh no it changed completely I used to think he working is St in is something which is way out of my league and they have a lot of actual software engineers and then uh when I went there my perspective changed everyone does not know everything and there is very certain thing that you need to work on but you need to be a master of like experience even if someone goes who does not know anything about that particular text like I was working on cloud I didn't know even C of cloud but when I went there then uh you know you're provided with such good environment resources and help for teammates that you'll ultimately be able to learn it and with experience like everything becomes like a cup of tea so that that is what I learned there okay that's nice to hear even before I joined Microsoft uh my opinion was also similar to what you said now so is there any advice you would like to give to students who want to intern at Microsoft or any tech companies or those who want to join full-time yeah so I would just say that be prepared from your end like if an opportunity comes to you you should not uh you know afterwards feel like oh I was not prepared enough you should be able to have that feeling that I have given my 100% and after that if it doesn't happen just don't bother over it just don't think about it that much so when this opportunity came to me um I had that feeling I'm not prepared well enough but somewhere in your heart you know that I am that prepared I have right confidence if you put some efforts just be honest to yourself be consistent and just do your best as you can or opportunity even if you are not able to crack it just you know tackling it and being able to get over it is a very big deal if I sit in an interview I do not go blank I am able to give a solution maybe it is not the most optimized one but I should able to give the best uh you know I can I should be able to think the best that I can so advice and start early uh I know there are many people who start late and then they are able to catch up but not everyone has that capability so I think you should start early only that helps and what do you mean by starting early by starting early I mean that there are many students who kind of uh in the first year they have that feeling that okay I have lots of things to explore not in the sense of tech but all many things when you when you go to college you are distracted by a lot of things but yeah it's it's good to enjoy but kind of reserve some time for you know what you have came for to college right so I would say as early as you can so in the first year only if I in first year you have that curriculum in your curriculum there are cc++ languages M so at least being able to master a language and then pick your domain is something that should you should do at the end of a year I used to participate we not good enough just one decided my entire career yeah so I think you mentioned about the involment so maybe all the people start performing good so this is a very this is very important factor here why most of the students from top colleges perform good yeah I'll tell you a thing that um I when I went to Microsoft there were fellow interns who had cracked off campus as well Coles situation that you know it's it's not something that I should I will be able to disbe they had no coding culture at all and I've seen people from there come to Microsoft and I just asked them how many companies come to your college and it was way worse than I me or you can imagine like nothing almost nothing and so I then realized that I am very privileged to have come from a college where there is a buing coding culture and there are companies coming so I would a keen side that I took from them I asked them that what motivated you how you used to stay connect so um they had an answer so interact with people from outside your college or outside the kind of environment that you are in environment that's not the entire world like right so I don't know I was once talking to a person and he said that I have seven years of experience and I was like where and he said Google so I was like oh my God so you don't know what kind of people you're conc right I can also prepare I can also go there yeah this is impossible thing to do right exactly step one step Step One is the hardest yeah that's the toughest so or Branch wise I think's [Music] companies but yeah off campus is the is the is a big solution it is a big pool of companies will get an opportunity maybe late but yeah it's not that you'll not get it if you're working hard you'll ultimately get something that is what this was very insightful so last question what is your plan for future like what is your goal my career goal is definitely number one to secure a job at a good company by Good Company I mean not just m there are many other companies like as atlan dreams of many and then many many companies to explore um so I would definitely want to be a part of one no even if it's not an MNC a good startup because startup I have heard that it gives you the most number of skills that you can G Microsoft or any other MNC would become a kickb for you and if in future I get the chance I would like to switch to managerial posts also because I like taking roles positions of responsibility and I used to talk to many PMs and even my manager like how did you get get there so I used to ask them a lot of questions that is also what I aspire to do nice nice so thank you so much for coming to this podcast it was very insightful conversation with you and I hope my audience would have learned a lot from you and it would be helpful for them so thank you and and let me tell you you are you are like an inspiration for all all the students of our college that is what you must know I'm very happy to hear this yeah and and you're like I think one of the most talked about alumin of our college that is what I would say okay I didn't know that but it is good to hear yeah that's when uh when I came the first day at Ms I knew I to meet you so I texted you immediately and you saw my message immediately it was very nice of you it was nice you yeah thank you so much thank you have a great day