How I Cracked An Off Campus Offer As a Fresher
By: Fawaz Hussain
Tags: Off Campus, Job Hunting, Placement, Interview, Startup

Amagi office Bangalore

Introduction

Hello everyone! I am Fawaz Hussain, a 4th year undergraduate student pursuing Information science and engineering from a tier 2 college, MS Ramaiah Institute Of Technology

I recently got an internship + FTE offer from Amagi Media Labs, Bangalore.Amagi is a next-generation media technology company that provides cloud broadcast and targeted advertising platforms to TV networks and OTT providers, globally. Here’s a brief overview of my experience through the process of selection. Hope you find it helpful and also feel free to ping me on Linkedin if you have any further queries!

The Journey

I spent the first year of my college doing actually nothing, tried out different clubs and societies in college didn’t find anything really appealing.However, second year was different, being introduced to the coding culture by my seniors. I was mesmerized by all the fancy frameworks/technologies and tried to learn everything node, react, android, IOS. ML, DL, you name it and i had tried my hands on it, which obviously didn’t workout in my favor. Depth in one tech stack is always better than knowing a little bit of everything

Fortunately i had an internship at the end of the 2nd year,which required me to build a cross platform app, and through this internship i got learn a lot about flutter,I also published a package for flutter during this period which helped me a lot during my interviews.

Enter 3rd year, i realized the importance of data structures and algorithms, I figured that i have a good internship on my resume now i needed to focus on my DS and Algo skills. Discovered leetcode, which is by far the best website to help you with placements.I spent the next 3 semesters solving questions only on leetcode following this roadmap, by the end of 6th sem i had solved around 400 questions. this is my profile if you’re interested.

It was placement season, beginning of 7th semester, there was a dearth in companies visiting campus since it was just the beginning of the pandemic.Adding to that my bad luck in aptitude tests, no matter how much i practiced i just couldn’t clear the stupid aptitude tests.I ended up interviewing for a few companies, could crack 2 companies giving CTC of 6lpa and 3lpa, I wasn’t satisfied i knew that i deserved more. It was October, that’s when i started exploring off campus opportunities, of course it was tiring seeing all your friends getting placed with good packages. I started messaging people on LinkedIn, i believe it’s a number’s game the more you apply better your chances get.

The lucky message

Hello Sir,

My name is Fawaz Hussain, and i’m currently studying information science at MS Ramaiah Institute of technology. I’m graduating in the year 2021 (july) and i’ll be looking for a full-time software engineering role after graduation.

Previously, I was a software engineering intern at Heart Rescue India Project working on cross platform mobile app development. From my time at the previous internship, I gained a strong affinity for the type of work done at Amagi, particularly working on Cloud scaling, and I have also heard about the wonderful environment and culture at Amagi.

I’m very interested in starting a conversation about potential full-time roles after graduation in 2021 or Internship.Although Amagi had visited our campus there was some issue with the test link and a lot of students including me were unable to write the test therefore it would be tremendously helpful if i could get a referral from you. Additionally, I went ahead and attached my resume to this message, so that you can learn a little bit more about me. i’m excited to start the conversation and learn more about Amagi.

regards, Fawaz Hussain.

This was the exact message that i had sent to one of the CEO/founders of amagi, He ended up forwarding my profile to the talent acquisition team, and the company followed the standard procedure of hiring, i.e 2 rounds of interviewing, the interviewer seemed to be more understanding and knowledgeable than the rest of the interviewers I had faced.

The Conclusion

At the end of everything i had an offer letter in my inbox on the 24th of November. This article is not necessarily to guide you with the hurdles of placement, it is to assure you that you don’t need to have a ton of internships or a 6 star competitive coding profile to crack an above average CTC company, all you need is perseverance, and the will to better yourselves.Also, life is much more than your job and salary so please learn from my mistakes and give yourself time to explore yourself.

All the best folks!