At first, I didn’t mean to write this but some significant things happened in the last two weeks and I thought it was better if I could just let it out.

Last two weeks for me have been very long, a little long than for others. The week in question starts from 3rd February 2019.

I had a blast-off with GATE 2019 examination, which quite frankly didn’t go too well. In fact, I had stopped preparing for it after last august. A couple of my friends too attempted the exam and the feeling is mutual.

Two days down the line, I got a call from a dream company of mine…… Yes, Google indeed. I had applied at Google for Full Time Opportunities last year. In fact, even in my third year, I had applied with them for internships and didn’t make the cut. So, a call from Google wasn’t expected (although I always hoped that I would get a call every time I applied !) and obviously, made me excited. I had a nice talk with my recruiter who is a very nice and kind guy. All in all, I get to know I would be interviewing with Google for an open position in the next two days. And, I did an interview with Google !

I will try to be as brief as I could be and won’t spill out many details over here. The interview went as planned and overall the experience was great. It was nothing like any other interviews I had given. At one point, it didn’t feel like an interview but sort of some discussion going on a topic. My interviewer was a relaxed guy and inherently, I had fun talking with him on the given problem. P.S. Don’t ask what the problem was.

Overall, interviewing with Google led me to joy of interviewing and discovering limits of my own. I got to know where I lagged, the topics that I didn’t put in work or didn’t interest me, started to make sense and I started having interest in them. I rediscovered the joy of data structures and algorithms. Probably, not having an IDE to code was a great gain where I had to painstakingly put all brackets, indents, etc. But, it was fun and most important of all, a sense of self-satisfaction that I may be doing something right if they at least saw my application through all the mountain of applications they receive.

Going ??? please stick around for a couple more minutes. This week is far from over. Next day, I receive a call up for another company I had applied for. Called Uniqlo, it is a Japanese cloth and retail giant, looking for new graduates to expand their core engineering team. So, again the cycle repeats itself.

I have CV screening, online test, followed up with two face-to-face interviews over the weekend. More screening and as of yesterday, I have given two more tests. So, overall, five rounds into the process and still going. I’ll admit that my preparation for previous interviews helped me out here.

In midst of all these, there is all the stuff going in college, which I played catch-up with in the following week. Final year project, practicals, lectures and the biggest ghost of all — attendance. My friends were very helpful in this week and made all possible attempts to cover up my attendance (You know what I mean 😉). So, a big thank you to Akshay, Shubham, Pranay, Hardik, Suyog and Pratik for the cover up. Also, a ton of thanks to Kevin and Rajorshi who gave valuable inputs, cleared my doubts and helped me in the preparation.

So, quite a lot happened in the past couple of weeks that showed me where I could improve and what’s next after that. A lot is to be learned and more than learning something, a lot is to be done.