“Hard work is the key to success.”
This is the aphorism that Mohith Varma Tirumalaraju, a CSE student of Lovely Professional University, who got placed in Cognizant as a Program Analyst, after overcoming every hurdle in the most heroic way, lives by. Let’s listen to Verma’s story in his own words.
Not to mention, the optimum number of students this year went to play for Olympics from LPU itself and were accoladed by a number of renowned people, including Virat Kohli, this proves that LPU is braving formidable odds with its powerpacked performance in every field.
“I had always been interested in computer science, but it wasn’t until my third year of college that I started thinking about what comes next. As an engineering student, you have to start considering your options because only very few companies hire fresh graduates with limited programming skills.
At this point, panic and confusion set in after realizing the lack of job opportunities for software engineers like me due to COVID – which means reduced company budgets and increased competition concerning jobs.
With all these factors going against me, combined with not having enough experience coding before graduating into an oversaturated industry field, everything seemed hopeless; however, determined nevertheless!
Life is supposed to be a series of trials and tribulations hoping that the next one will go well. That’s what I thought when faced with such adversities until some miracle happened during our college seminar on campus. They discussed how SkillWiz would host a pilot batch for the upcoming placement drive for 3rd-year students.
It then dawned upon me that this could very well be my turn at success as I can easily brush up my knowledge of Java, Data Structure, DBMS, Aptitude, Algorithms, competitive coding, and Dynamic programming. I looked no further and enrolled myself in the program.
Here is a detailed illustration on how I prepared for my campus placements in six months:
First Month: During the first week, I invested a good amount of time exploring the platform, analyzing its features, and leveraging it in my best form. There were several metrics like overall class performance, individual student progress, strengths and weaknesses, etc., that shaped my preparation, helped me learn from my mistakes, and others. The platform also had a discussion forum where students can post doubts, motivational quotes, talk to their peers and comment on their posts, just like Facebook.
A very important aspect of any campus placement preparation happens to be the focus on key areas like Data Structures, Binary System and Aptitude. SkillWiz had an entire section on Aptitude and Reasoning which thoroughly helped me throughout my preparation. I didn’t have to refer to any other book as the aptitude questions were comprehensive and met the industry standards.
Second Month: Slowly and steadily, I brushed up topics like DSA, OOPs and DBMS. Since, during interviews, companies focus the most on coding rounds, I practised writing codes in my compiler and got it verified by my mentors through test cases. This was a win-win situation as I improved my Java programming skills and got a mini exposure to industry-level coding. Initially, it was difficult as we were only taught C and SQL in our college. And C, despite being object-oriented programming, isn’t dynamic in nature like Java, so learning Java was one of the best decisions.
Third Month: After rigorous learning and practice for two months, I finally gained the confidence to solve the mocks. Until the second month, I was stuck in Level 1, but as the third month seeped in, I jumped from Level 1 to Level 3, in no time. Not to mention, SkillWiz gamification of modules is a lot more fun when you are consistent enough with your practice. Each of the modules contained 100+ questions, and the levels were constructed so that one requires no pre-requisites. You can be from any engineering background and simply dive in.
Fourth and Fifth Month: Now that I was thorough with most programming concepts, I began to analyze my previous mocks from the second month and tallied them with my present ones. I could see a drastic improvement in my progress in just a few months. I also leveraged the leaderboard and analyzed what my peers were doing. I tried to figure out their strong points and applied the top-scorers’ strategy to mine. It really worked well for me. During my free time, I also spent some time learning Javascript, APIs and React JS. And trust me when I say this was one of the greatest reasons behind acing the interview of Infosys.
Sixth Month: By now, I was quite well-versed with computer science concepts. So, I thought of booking a 1-1 session with my mentor, an Industry Expert for the past ten years, to get some industry insights. His valuable guidance on different companies and their specific requirements were really useful. He also advised me to prepare for the HR rounds, as well. Although the HR round is usually a very basic one, and one need not prepare much for it, I didn’t wanna take any chances and further took help from my mentor over this. I also got my resume built with their Smart Resume feature. This automatically suggests the company-specific keywords and customizes your CV for different industries.
Finally, the placement drive began. I was nervous, but at the same time, I was confident enough to bag a good-paying job. For the upcoming batches, I would recommend them to study Data Structures and Algorithms well, especially the binary trees, as they are definitely the interviewers’ favourite.
If you are in your final year and want to ace your interview, SkillWiz is definitely the best platform to use. I feel there are no alternatives to SkillWiz . With consistency, perseverance and hard work, nothing is impossible, especially when digital learning is so easily accessible to students.”
By Mohith Varma Tirumalaraju, a CSE student of Lovely Professional University
