CQ_Product_Series | Agniva Bhattacharya | Adobe

Interviewer: Hello, I am Hrick, Associate at Communiqué, and today we have Mr. Agniva Bhattacharya with us, who has secured an internship at Adobe. Hello Agniva, good evening. How are you doing today?

Agniva: Good evening, I am doing well. How are you?

Interviewer: I am doing great myself. First off, I would like to give you my heartfelt congratulations for securing the internship at Adobe.

Now, I would like to introduce to you the general flow of this interview. I will ask a few questions for our Intern-oriented blog series. The blog will be shared with the KGP community to guide them through the selection procedure based on your experience. So, shall we begin?

Agniva: Sure! We can begin.

Interviewer: Here is the first question. What was the general interview process for the companies you applied for? Please mention the number of rounds and the nature of the interview process.

Agniva: I was only selected in one software company, implying I had to interview for only that. But I can also give you a procedure and the basic information about how it works for the other companies.

In most companies, you have a coding round with MCQs and some coding questions. Mostly, there will be coding questions, with two to three questions, followed by MCQs with topics including your development, data structure, operating systems and others. That was the basic structure, but the number of questions and specific question topics vary among companies.

After the coding round, you will be shortlisted on the basis of your performance; after that, you will have to appear for an interview. The list of shortlisted candidates, in my case, was released a day before the interview.

In the interview, you may have two to three rounds. In most companies, there are two rounds- one technical and one HR round. However, in my case, in Adobe, there was only one technical round.

But for the product role, and in other cases like the MDSR role and the research role, there were probably two rounds- one technical and one HR. However, in some cases, you may also have two HR rounds in some companies.

That was, more or less, the general flow of the process.

Interviewer: That was very insightful. Moving on to the next question. What can students appearing for placements next year do, from now to December, to maximise their chances of getting into a company in this sector?

Agniva: I can speak mainly about software companies.

If the students have coded before, then they can start competitive programming and continue that for two to three months to get good at it. Because once you are good at competitive programming and you’ve got the hang of it, you become really good at implementing stuff, which is really important. So competitive programming improves your implementation skills.

On the other hand, you can start doing Leetcode from now on, but that, in my opinion, would be overkill because you’ll need only around two or three months to get through the entire Leetcode question set.

So, I’ll say if you want to start doing it right now, then start with a little bit of CP, and then slowly, once you have gotten the hang of it, you move to Leetcode. So that might be the best thing. You can also take courses like AlgoZenith because I was also enrolled in such a course, which was really helpful.

Interviewer: That was very informative. Moving on, how did your preparation for technical rounds evolve once you were shortlisted?

Agniva: I’ll briefly tell you about my own experience. My shortlist was just five or six hours before the interview. So, I did not have much time, but I can assure you that you’ll mostly know whether you’ll be having an HR round.

If you have an HR round, the first thing would be to go through the HR questions- a few basic HR questions that you have with you. You may have them on Leetcode because I saw them myself on Leetcode and wasn’t sure whether I would have an HR round. But that is, I think, the first step because the HR round is very important. Because even if you get through the technical round, a lot of people do not get through the HR round because they are not able to answer the questions in the proper way. HR questions are really important.

Another thing that you can go through is the questions most asked by the company. You get that in Geeks for Geeks and other such sources. Because some companies have a specific set of questions that they keep asking. So, there is a high chance of them being repeated.

Lastly, if you have anything that you are not able to cover properly, then that won’t be the time to cover that. If you have very little time — maybe a few hours, and if you have some weak points, there won’t be time to panic and start working on those because you will not be able to understand them at the last moment.

So, these are some things to keep in mind after the shortlist comes through.

Interviewer: Thank you so much. Those were some helpful pointers. Finally, I would like to ask if there is anything else you would like to share with the students. Any tips that you would like to give?

Agniva: I covered most of everything in the previous questions.

You start when you have a few months left. At that time, you can start focusing on the placements. Because waiting for the last three months, especially if one doesn’t have a software background, or has not prepared for the SDE role, and if they have not done a lot of data structures and algorithms, they should start preparing when five to six months are left. That is a good time to start preparing, so begin doing CP, and start building a project.

That reminds me of another important point. A project is really important. Having worked on one to two projects is helpful. If you have some specific companies targeted, see what those companies aim for and start building a project accordingly.

Interviewer: Thank you so much. These words, I’m sure, were highly motivating for the student community. Thank you for all the suggestions and the much-needed guidance that you provided. With this, we conclude the interview. Thanks, Agniva. It was great talking to you, and we appreciate the knowledge you shared.

Agniva: Thank you. It was a pleasure being here.