Season 2: The one with The Interview

"I say more dumb things in an interview than most people say in their whole career..."

There are good days. There are bad days. Then there are days where everything goes wrong but yet it ends in the best way possible 😌.

On the morning of the interview, my confidence as well as my anxiety was at its peak 🏔️. Then it all unfolded.

Things that went wrong ☠️ - Internet problems, zoom crashing, joining late and, to make matters worse, the doctor checked on me in the middle of the interview.

Things that went amazing as well as nerve-wracking - MY INTERVIEW!! 🥳

Starting from the start, I had a total of two calls. The first one was with the Co-founder and CTO of the company, Harishankaran K. A bit weird, right, the CTO investing so much time and effort in the hiring of mere interns. Well, for me it was intriguing and that was when I felt this company, with so much attention and importance given to each one of us, was the right place for me.

Nervous yet prepared, I felt confident during the interview. It went smoothly with a simple introduction and a showcase of the personal projects that I had worked on (psst, do check out lofibolly.club 🎧). The call went deep into my resume, including the tech clubs that I am a part of. The conversation then moved on to all the open-source contributions and what role I played.

Therefore, you may apply here if you have already contributed to open source or have worked on impressive personal projects and are interested in working with HackerRank.

The first call ended with me asking a company-related questions. How did it go? Well, I wasn’t quite sure about the impression I made as it was impossible to guess any kind of emotion from my respected interviewer and now-manager, Hari 🙂.

My second call was scheduled after almost a week's gap with Rajesh Tiwary, who was then, the (cool 😎) Engineering Manager at HackerRank. The week went extremely slow and by the time I was discharged and all settled in my post-covid phase, the interview day arrived.
The structure of this call was pretty much similar to the first one. I demonstrated my projects at a deeper level focusing on the impact the product makes. It then moved on to my interests, and my personality and turned into more of a conversational kind. It almost felt like a casual catch-up. We had a one-on-one talk about our experiences and he also kind of introduced me to the various initiatives that HackerRank undertakes.

That sounds like a great interview, right? 🧐

Almost great except for how it happened -

It was pouring cats and dogs and electricity was out at my place. When I was asked to switch on my camera, it was pitch black on my side, and I seriously doubt that anything was visible. Panicked me, and ran all around the house to find a place bright enough to at least show my face. Then, when I finally settled in and turned on my camera, there was a power outage on his end! And we ended up sitting there for a few minutes in total darkness, contemplating life 💭. But we pulled through and the interview ended on a good note.

And then after a week of overthinking about how I might have messed up, I directly received a mail regarding, an “Interns - catch up” call. The subject mentioned was pretty clear but without a direct confirmation, I was not at all ready to accept that I had made it.

What happened in the call?

🥁 Drumroll, please...🥁

_1 Mississippi 2 Mississippi 3 Mississippi...

I GOT THE INTERNSHIP!!!! 🤩

Vaasavi, aka super boss with her sunshine voice, congratulated me on getting hired as the SDE Intern - 2021 🥂.

Enough information for this blog, stay tuned for the next one! 🙋🏻‍♀️

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