OffCampus Job Hunt — The Complete Path ✅
By: Kajol Kumari
Tags: Job Hunting, Offcampusfreshers, Mistakes, Software Engineering

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Being from a tier-3 college, offCampus is the only way to land into good companies. This blog is mainly focused to cover my whole offCampus job hunt journey. The mistakes that I did and then how I managed to get good number offers including companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Expedia and DBS.

Mistakes I did 🍁

Initially, I did a lot of mistakes while applying for offCampus jobs and I would like to list them all so that you guys don’t do the same -

I didn’t start to continuously work on improving my problem-solving skills until my 7th semester. Tho I used to do competitive programming earlier as well but not regularly which was a very big -ve point for me! I just used one of those fancy resume templates right away without any modifications. I used to apply to only 20–30 job applications and used to wait to hear back from them! Never Ever Do This! and I will tell you why in the later portion of this blog. I was not using the real power of LinkedIn! LinkedIn is like a saviour for all the off-campus job hunters but you should know how to use it.

The Complete Path 🌟

After getting just the auto-generated rejection mail, I sat back for a while and started to search on what am I doing wrong and how I can improve my way of applying for the offCampus roles.The process that I could came up with, after my research is —

0. Improve the problem solving skill 👩‍💻 🧑‍💻

It’s the most important part of your job hunt process. Unless you are good at problem solving, you can’t ace the interviews of good companies. So practice it well. Get your basics of DSA cleared, and get confident in the problem-solving skill by being honest, patient, and consistent.

Please note that the number of problems you have solved doesn’t define your DSA knowledge, instead it’s about how honestly you do them

1. List out the companies 📑

First of all, I listed out the companies where I want to work. Did my own research about the company’s culture, its positive points, and negative points along with talking to many people who work in those organizations/companies. I could come up with around 30+ companies which included a few startups, finTechs, and product-based companies in my case.

This is important as you need to keep track of openings of these listed companies only and in this case, you won’t miss any opening.

2. Standard Resume 📄

One of the mistakes that I did earlier was to use one of those fancy templates. Using them is ok, but most of the time, you should mould it in a way so that it’s easier for the Hiring Managers to find the exact keywords that they are looking for! I will list out a few points on how you can improve your resume -

a. Try to make your resume from scratch instead of using any template directly. If you look at most of the impressive resumes, most of them are made from scratch so take reference from any of those which suits your requirements and build one on your own.

b. If you are a fresher, keep your Education, Experiences and Project section on the top of your resume.

c. Try to keep it as precise as possible, use specific keywords while explaining your project or internships you did or the tech stacks you used.

D. Include concrete data like the project that you built is being used by <approx data eg 1000> people or the project that you worked on during internships is being used by <approx data eg 1000> people etc.

You can take the reference of my resume here to get a better idea of the requirements of a standard resume.

3. Put applications in bulk! ✅

The very harsh truth of the off-campus job hunt is that the competition is way too high there. Only 1% or 2% of your applications might get noticed so you need to constantly apply in bulk. The only point to notice while applying is that you apply only to relevant roles i.e the role requirements should match your skills and experiences.

P.S — There was a time when I had applied for principal software Engineer role 😬 😅

4. Use the real power LinkedIn 💪

LinkedIn is a very powerful platform but the only thing is you should know how to use it.

a. Make your linkedIn profile standard. It should show up all your work experiences, certifications etc. and your headline should clearly convey what you aspire for.

b. Build a good professional connection. The strategy I had used was to get connected with at least 5–10 people from my selected list of companies so that I could directly reach out to them at any point of time if I needed any advice or guidance. Along with this, I got connected with a few people like Arsh Goyal and Ganesh Kumar who are constantly helping job seekers including me by posting about the relevant openings, preparation strategies, etc.

c. Visit the career site of your selected companies and LinkedIn page at least thrice a week and apply to all the relevant roles that matches your experience/interest.

5. Put cold emails 📧

It’s a very powerful method for getting a job but only if used correctly. I got to know about this a bit late and was not able to utilize it fully but would surely recommend you to try it.

I am attaching here a video link that contains everything that you should know about the cold emails.

6. Ask for referrals 👩‍🏫 🧑‍🏫

In many cases referrals do miracles. But there are few points to be kept in mind so that it doesn’t waste the time of both the parties -

Try to get referrals from those who know you well. As they know you, they would be in a better condition to decide whether you are a good fit or not. In case you are asking it from some unknown person, try to provide as many relevant details as possible. Just sending a resume isn’t enough to impress someone that you suit for a particular role. You should provide the exact reason for why you want to apply and why you would be the best candidate for the same. Don’t miss opportunities! In many cases, the people might miss your message of referral request, in this case, I won’t recommend you to wait for more than 24hrs, either ask from someone else or apply on your own as losing the opportunity is never a good option!

7. Improve your Basics ✔️

Being a fresher, you should have your basic understanding of networking, DSA, DBMS and Operating System cleared. So, be well prepared to face the questions from these topics.

Apart from this, don’t forget to give the hiring challenges and hackathons from the platforms like Hackerearth, Techgig, D2C etc.

And the most important thing — Be consistent, patient, learn from your rejections and keep going :)

ALL THE VERY BEST!! 🤝

P.S —Choosing which company to join was totally as per my interest and parameters that I had decided. 🙂

If anyone wants to share anything that I might have missed, please feel free to drop it in comments here and If you are left with any questions, please feel free to drop it in my linkedIn dm.