#1 Software Developer at Citrix
Name: Aaryan Sood
Department: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Company: Citrix
Profile: SWE
When did you start your profile oriented preparation?
1st January 2020
What were your prior experience and level of preparation(in the field) before March?
I had experience in the domain of Data Analytics and Machine Learning.
Along with that, I had knowledge of DSA, Machine Learning, Probability and Statistics.
The roadmap that you followed for preparing?
I started out with DSA and Probability initially. DSA was necessary to tackle the coding questions in the CDC internship tests. I enjoyed probability and it helped that it was a pre-requisite of ML.
Following InterviewBit is a good way to get an idea for topics needed for CDC.
For practice, one can blindly follow GeeksForGeeks and Codeforces. Practising puzzles from GFG is useful for the sake of answering questions asked in the interview.
I was preparing from the perspective of getting an ML internship and not an SWE internship. So, I thoroughly went through ISLR (Introduction to Statistical Learning), which is more than sufficient to get a feel of what ML algorithms are and how they work. Side by side, I went through two very IMPORTANT RESOURCES — 50 Challenging problems of probability and Heard on the Street.
For me, the key to success was time optimization and the ability to be focused for at least 3 months.
What was the selection process of the company?
There was one online test — on Hacker rank. The test comprised of questions related to Networking, OOPS, Operating Systems and Debugging skills. In addition to this, there were 2 coding questions — one on graphs and one on DP.
Post the interview shortlist, there were 2 interview rounds:
1st round was entirely technical. I was grilled on my CV, my projects, what I did during my 2-year stay at IIT Kharagpur. I had to solve one question while interacting with the interviewer (Knapsack DP) and 2 puzzles (Standard GFG).
2nd round was the managerial + technical round. I was exposed to common corporate situations and what I would do if I were in them. Post these HR questions and SRTs, I was grilled again on my resume. After this, I was asked to interact with the interviewer on a linked list question and explain to him — line by line — as to what (and why) I was doing the particular steps. Post this, the interview ended and I was notified of my selection.