A first job is decided by fewer things than any later one. There is no level to argue and, at most campus drives, little pay to negotiate. What decides it is whether you clear a timed online test, whether you can solve two problems out loud in front of an engineer, and whether one page about you gives that engineer something to ask about. All three can be prepared from zero in about two months of evenings.
Not advice. General information, and every example is invented.
Statements here about how campus drives, assessments and internships usually run are the author's estimate (not measured). Your college's placement policy and each employer's own invite are the rules that apply to you; read them first.
Two routes in: campus and off-campus
Most first jobs at product companies come through one of five doors. The judgements are the author's (not measured).
Table: Route, How it works, What decides it, The trap (5 rows)
| Route | How it works | What decides it | The trap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Internship, then a pre-placement offer (PPO) | A two-to-six-month internship, usually in the pre-final year; the team decides on a full-time offer near the end | The intern project and the manager's view of you | Working silently and hoping the result speaks |
| Campus placement | The placement cell schedules employers; a talk, an online test, then interviews, often within a day or two | The test, then the first interview | Sitting for an employer you would not join, under a policy that then bars you from the next one |
| Careers pages | Applying on the employer's own site to new-graduate, graduate-engineer or SDE-1 postings | The resume screen, then the test | The same resume sent to two hundred postings |
| Referral | An employee submits you for a posting | It gets your resume read; it does not pass a round | Asking a stranger with no posting ID and no resume link |
| Employer-run challenges | A coding contest or hackathon run by the employer itself, with interviews for those ranked high | The ranking, then the usual rounds | Treating a rank as an offer |
Read your college's placement policy before the season starts. Many placement cells, in the author's estimate (not measured), limit how many offers a student may hold or bar a student who has accepted one from sitting for others. The policy turns your order of applications into a decision.
Figure 14.1 puts the routes on the calendar of the last two years of a degree.
Next stop: Online assessments: what the vendors say, 1 min
Online assessments: what the vendors say
Almost every route above starts with a timed online assessment (OA). This guide uses only what the vendors' own pages say, not company-specific test reports. Mercer | Mettl's campus page lists "coding, technical, aptitude, language and personality evaluation tools", and its coding-test page describes "auto-graded evaluation through pre-built test cases" (vendor statement, read 4 Nov 2026).
This guide prints no cut-off score. No vendor publishes one, and an employer can change its own from one drive to the next. The sections below are those the vendors' pages name; how to prepare is the author's advice.
Table: Section, What it checks, How to prepare (4 rows)
| Section | What it checks | How to prepare |
|---|---|---|
| Coding (two or three problems) | Working code against hidden tests, including large inputs | The eight weeks below; read the input limit first (lesson 6) |
| Aptitude | Arithmetic, logic and data reading under a clock | Twenty timed questions a day for two weeks before the season |
| Technical multiple choice | Operating systems, networks, databases, output of a code snippet | One page of notes per subject; the course syllabus covers it |
| Language or written English | Reading, grammar, a short written answer | Read the question twice; write short sentences |
Lesson 6's "Online assessments" has the vendors' proctoring and scoring rules, the pacing for two or three problems and the campus basics (modular arithmetic, gcd, matrix walks). Run the platform's demo test first, on your own machine and network.
The AI rule in your first rounds. In an online assessment, assume AI is banned unless the invite says otherwise in writing (HackerRank's Proctor Mode flags AI assistants, lesson 6); ask the recruiter in writing, with lesson 9's email. "How do you use AI?" can come up even in a round with no tool: give lesson 9's student version, one project task, how you checked the tool's draft, and one time it was wrong.
Next stop: DSA from zero in eight weeks, 4 min
DSA from zero in eight weeks
The plan assumes you can write a loop and a function in one language and nothing more. It takes about twelve hours a week, by the author's estimate (not measured): ninety minutes on five weekday evenings, three hours on Saturday and ninety minutes on Sunday. Use Java if you have no preference, because every listing in this guide is Java 21. Each week points into lesson 6's pattern selector, worked solutions and drill set. It replaces the DSA line of lesson 5's plans for an intern or a from-zero SDE-1, so a full week is these twelve hours plus its other lines, about 16 to 18 (author's estimate, not measured).
Table: Week, Lesson 6 patterns, By Sunday you can (8 rows)
| Week | Lesson 6 patterns | By Sunday you can |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Input limits and complexity (lesson 6's table "Costs to know by heart" first); arrays, strings, hash maps | Say the complexity of any loop you write, and pick O(n) or O(n log n) from the input limit |
| 2 | 1 two pointers, 2 fast and slow pointers, 3 list relinking | Solve an unseen array problem in 25 minutes, saying the pattern first |
| 3 | 4 sliding window, 5 prefix sums, 6 intervals | Sort-then-sweep without looking anything up |
| 4 | 7 monotonic stack, 8 BFS and DFS on a grid and a graph, 9 tree recursion | Write BFS with an ArrayDeque from a blank page |
| 5 | 10 topological sort, 11 union-find, 16 Dijkstra | Model a word problem as a graph before coding |
| 6 | 12 binary search on the answer, 13 heaps, 19 greedy | Write a binary search that ends on the right boundary every time |
| 7 | 14 backtracking, 15 dynamic programming | Write the recurrence in words, then the table |
| 8 | The drill set, timed, hint table covered; one mock test | Two problems in 45 minutes, out loud, with tests |
Each weekday: retype the week's worked solution from a blank file (lesson 6 or the Solutions appendix; weeks 1 and 2, lesson 6's "Two first problems"), then solve that day's problem from the table below, out loud, on a timer. Saturday: the week's pair in 45 minutes, then lesson 6's four "stuck" moves on any miss. Sunday, ninety minutes: redo every miss without looking. Patterns 17 and 18 come after the eight weeks; read their selector rows, nothing more. Figure 14.2 is the plan at a glance.
The daily problems, in the author's words:
Table: Week, Monday to Friday, one a day, Saturday pair (7 rows)
| Week | Monday to Friday, one a day | Saturday pair |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Two words anagrams? First character occurring once. Most frequent value. A repeat within k places? Rotate right by k in place | Longest consecutive-integer run, O(n). Product of all others, no division |
| 2 | Zeros to the end, order kept. Palindrome, letters only. Dedupe a sorted array in place. List palindrome, O(1) space. Delete nodes holding v | Two walls holding most water. Reorder a list first, last, second, ... |
| 3 | Max sum of k neighbours. Shortest positive run summing to s or more. O(1) range sums. Attend every meeting? Most 1s, k zeros flipped | Fewest meeting rooms. Longest run with equal 0s and 1s |
| 4 | Nearest smaller value to the left. Fewest grid steps around walls. Tree balanced? Root-to-leaf path summing to t? Friend groups from a matrix | Minutes for rot to reach all fruit, or -1. Last node of each tree level |
| 5 | Can every course finish? A course order, or none. The edge closing a cycle. Signal time with delays. Friend groups as friendships arrive | Cheapest grid path, cells as costs. Alien alphabet from sorted words |
| 6 | First and last index of a value. Least ship capacity for d days. Kth largest by heap. K points nearest the origin. Most meetings in one room | Split into m runs, smallest largest sum. Running median of a stream |
| 7 | All orders of distinct values. Ways up n stairs by 1 or 2. Most loot, no two neighbours. Every k-subset of 1 to n. Longest common subsequence | Count n-queens placements. Split into two equal sums? |
If your campus loop has a machine-coding round
Most campus loops are an online assessment plus DSA interviews; some product companies add a 60 to 90 minute machine-coding round or a 45-minute low-level design talk, and the invite names it (author's estimate, not measured). Minimum, about 10 hours (gate C needs two clean drills, so 8 plus a second timed one; lesson 5's 4-week plan finds only 7.5): type lesson 7's version one from memory until it runs; read "Now add X"; run the stdin driver; read lesson 7's seat hold (hold, confirm, expire); type lesson 7's tic-tac-toe and its undo step, then rebuild it cold on the 90-minute plan; build Snake and ladder from the Practice banks if time is left; then do lesson 7's timed drill. The Java you need is in lesson 7's box "The Java this code uses". Skip concurrency unless the invite mentions threads. In the review, take hints aloud.
Next stop: A resume with no experience, 5 min
A resume with no experience
An engineer screening fresher resumes is looking for one thing to ask about. In the author's judgement, evidence ranks in this order: an internship with a result; a project that people other than you used; merged work in an open-source project; a contest rating; and coursework projects, last. One deep project beats five tutorial copies, because the interview will spend ten minutes on whichever you list first. Lesson 3 covers the page format and the screening software.
Open source counts as experience if the work was merged. Google Summer of Code is one structured way in: Google's FAQ, read on 4 November 2026, says contributors must be 18 or older and a student or an open-source beginner, scopes projects at about 90, 175 or 350 hours, and pays a stipend to those who pass their evaluations.
INVENTED example: a final-year resume, before and after 1 min
Rohan Mehta (invented), final-year computer science, a private engineering college in Indore.
| Before | After | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "Library Management System using Java and MySQL." | Removed. | A tutorial copy; nobody used it. |
| "Hostel Complaint Portal using MERN stack." | "Hostel complaint tracker (Java 21, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL). Used by 410 students in two hostels for a semester; 1,270 complaints logged. Median time to close fell from six days to two after I added assignment by block. Code and a 90-second demo linked." | Real users, a number, one decision of his own, a link. |
| Nothing. | "Open source: three merged pull requests to an open-source Java library, including a date-parsing fix with a regression test." | Code that strangers reviewed and accepted. |
| "Skills: C, C++, Java, Python, HTML, CSS, JS, React, Node, MongoDB, MySQL, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, ML." | "Java (fluent), SQL on PostgreSQL, Git. Familiar: React." | Every listed skill is fair game; fifteen invite fifteen probes. |
Prepare four answers for each project you list, because they are the questions an interviewer can ask about any project: why you chose this stack over another; the hardest bug and how you found it; how many people used it and how you know; what you would change now.
The questions that are not code
Campus loops, in the author's estimate (not measured), usually end with a round on you rather than on code, often with a manager or HR. It is short and it does reject people, mostly for answers that are vague or rehearsed to the point of saying nothing. Lesson 10 teaches the story format; at fresher level these questions carry most of the round.
Table: Question, A strong answer's shape, The trap (9 rows)
| Question | A strong answer's shape | The trap |
|---|---|---|
| "Tell me about yourself." | Sixty seconds: what you study, the one project you are proudest of with its number, what you want to build next | Your school marks, hobbies and home town, in that order |
| "Why this company?" | One product or engineering fact you checked on their own site, and why it connects to your project | "It is a great brand with good growth." |
| "A time you worked in a team that disagreed." | A college project: the disagreement, what you proposed, what was decided, what you learnt | A story where everyone agreed |
| "Where do you see yourself in five years?" | The kind of engineer, not the title: "owning a service end to end" | "In your position" |
| "Why should we hire you?" | One skill the role needs and the project that proves it, with its number | A list of adjectives |
| "Your biggest weakness?" | A real, small, work-related one and what you are doing about it now | A strength in disguise: "I work too hard" |
| "Any plans for higher studies?" | The truth in one line, with what you would finish here first | A "no" you do not mean |
| A CS-fundamentals question (an index; a process against a thread) | Three lines: the definition, where it showed up in your project, one trade-off | A textbook paragraph with no link to your work |
| "Why switch after a year?" (SDE-1) | One true sentence on what you learnt, one on what this role adds that yours cannot | Complaints about your manager or pay |
A fresher story bank
For: Intern, SDE-1.
Lesson 10's eight slots assume a job; a student fills five, from the sources in the table.
Table: Slot, Question it answers, Where to find it (5 rows)
| Slot | Question it answers | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Project decision | "Why this approach?" | Project report, commits |
| Team disagreement | "A time your team disagreed" | The project's chat group |
| Missed deadline or failure | "Something that went wrong" | Internship tracker, hackathon result |
| Learnt fast | "Something you learnt quickly" | The internship's first two weeks |
| Took initiative | "Something nobody asked you to do" | Club or fest records; a fix sent unasked |
Apply lesson 10's three tests (mine, measured, scope); at this level "only me, and nothing else changed" passes.
The recruiter or HR call, as a fresher
Off campus, the first call is a filter, as in lesson 4. Keep your marksheets, graduation date and any offer letter on the desk. Scripts are the author's constructs, untested; say only what your papers show.
Table: They ask, Say (7 rows)
| They ask | Say |
|---|---|
| "When can you join?" | "Finals end on [date] and the degree is due by [month]; I can join from [date]." For an internship: "I am free [dates], with my college's NOC." |
| "CGPA? Any backlogs?" | "[CGPA] out of [scale], as on my marksheet." A backlog: "One, in [subject], cleared in [month]" or "due in [month]". Never round up; marksheets are checked before joining. |
| "Expected stipend or CTC?" | "What is the range for this role? I would like to hear it first." Then a range, not a single number; reading a fresher offer: "The first offer" below. |
| "Will your college allow this?" | Read the placement-cell rules first: "Off-campus offers are allowed [after date / with an NOC]; I can have the NOC by [date]." |
| "Are you placed? Any other offer?" | "I hold an offer from [company]; under our placement policy I can still accept this one because [rule]." Or: "No offer yet." Never invent one. |
| "OK with a bond, any location, shifts?" | "Can I see the bond clause first?" (read it as in "The first offer" below); then your real limit on location and on shifts, one sentence each. |
| "Is this internship a path to a full-time role?" | Ask it yourself: "How and when is the PPO decided?" |
Next stop: The intern project and the PPO, 2 min
The intern project and the PPO
A pre-placement offer is a hiring decision made by a manager who has watched you work for a few months. By the author's reading, the manager is asking what they would ask of any SDE-1: did you ship something that works, how much help did you need, did you ask good questions early, and can they read what you did without a meeting. A PPO also depends on headcount, which you cannot change; there is no guarantee even after a strong internship. Figure 14.3 shows where the moves go.
- Week one: a plan page. Write what you will build, what "done" means and what is out of scope, and get your mentor to agree to it in writing. Most intern projects that disappoint, in the author's estimate (not measured), were never scoped, not badly built.
- Every week: a written update. Five lines: done, next, blocked, a decision you made, a question. It is the record your manager will use. An invented one:
Code, 6 lines
DONE Retry worker handles 3 of 4 failure types; 41 tests. NEXT Fourth type (timeouts); load test at 2x peak. BLOCKED Need read access to staging queue (asked Priya, Tue). DECIDED Exponential backoff capped at 5 min, not fixed 30 s: fixed retries piled up in last week's outage replay. QUESTION Should the dead-letter alert page on-call or email? - Midpoint: ask the question. "If you were deciding today, what would you need to see from me by the end to recommend a full-time offer?" Write the answer down and work to it.
- Last two weeks: demo and handover. Show the result as numbers (time saved, errors removed, users), and leave a one-page doc on how to run and change what you built.
If no PPO comes, ask your manager for written feedback and whether they would refer you to another team or give a reference. A strong internship with no PPO for headcount reasons is still the first line of your resume.
Next stop: The first offer, 1 min
The first offer
A fresher's offer letter usually contains: the designation and level; the pay, split into parts; the location and joining date; a training or probation period; any service agreement or bond; background verification and the documents you must bring; and the notice period, which is often shorter during probation. Campus offers can carry a joining date many months out. What each pay component is worth in hand and how it is taxed is in lesson 2; before you compare two offers, skim it as its strip says for an intern: the tables and the part on bonds.
Read any bond clause line by line. Here is what one can look like.
INVENTED example: a bond clause 1 min
"If the Employee leaves the Company for any reason within 24 months of the date of joining, the Employee shall pay the Company Rs 2,00,000 towards training costs."
Questions to ask HR in writing before you sign: does the amount reduce for each month served? Does "for any reason" include being asked to leave? Must you hand over original certificates, and if so, when and how are they returned? Lesson 2 sets out what a bond can mean for you.
On campus there is little to negotiate on pay, by the author's estimate (not measured), because one offer goes to a whole batch. The joining date and location sometimes move if you ask early and give a reason. Off campus there can be a little more room; lesson 13 covers offers and negotiation. Until you have a joining date in writing, the author's advice is to keep one other process open: delayed joining dates happen, and a second option costs you only a few evenings.
Next stop: The first switch, after one or two years, 1 min
The first switch, after one or two years
The first switch is usually from SDE-1 to SDE-2, and the loop changes in four ways. A machine-coding or low-level design round appears (lesson 7). Someone asks you to walk through a project you built at work and defend its decisions (lesson 11). Design questions start, at a smaller scope (lesson 8, skim; for a light question know its table "What one box handles" and its section "Capacity estimation"); a high-level design round is not part of an intern loop (author's estimate, not measured). And an AI-allowed round may appear (the Google pilot in lesson 9 is for junior and mid roles): read lesson 9's worked round and score yourself on its rubric. The coding round stays, at a harder level.
When: in the author's judgement, after twelve to twenty-four months, once you have shipped something in production you can describe with a number, and once any bond period has run out or you know its cost (lesson 2). Before you apply, rewrite the resume from projects to work results (lesson 3 shows how), read your notice clause, and use lesson 1 to pick the target level honestly. From here your track is SDE-2: read the lessons its column marks in the table of contents, starting with lesson 1.
Sources
4 sources
- HackerRank knowledge base, "Proctor Mode", https://hackerrank-knowledge-base.help.usepylon.com/articles/5663779659-proctor-mode, read 31 Oct 2026.
- Mercer | Mettl, "Campus Hiring | Virtual Campus Recruitment", https://mettl.com/en/campus-hiring/, read 4 Nov 2026.
- Mercer | Mettl, "Online Coding Tests & Technical Interview Platform", https://mettl.com/en/coding-tests/, read 4 Nov 2026.
- Google, "Google Summer of Code: Frequently Asked Questions", https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/faq, read 4 Nov 2026.