Ekanshi Agrawal- PPO at Adobe SI
Written on September 8th, 2020 by {"login"=>"jcbitshyd", "email"=>"journal@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in", "display_name"=>"Journal Club, BPHC", "first_name"=>"", "last_name"=>""}Adobe hired 12 interns from our campus for the summer of 2020 from CSE and Phoenix branches. The stipend for the said internship for both product development (10) and research (2) interns was Rs. 1L per month and all of them ended with a Pre Placement Offer. Ekanshi Agrawal- a 2017 CSE student was one of the product interns and she shares her experience with us through this interview.
Q. What was your position at Adobe while you had your SI there? What work did that involve you doing? What was your project about?
A. I was a product intern working directly on Adobe's products. I was in the cloud technology team, which worked under the Creative Cloud division. My work was to build an app similar to Google Drive to be used for Adobe owned apps like Photoshop and Illustrator. This was meant for internal use where the other teams could learn how to use the cloud technology team's API in their products.
Q. Can you tell us about the selection process, the testing process, and the interview you had for getting your SI?
A. There were mainly two rounds, while some of us went through three rounds as well. The first round was an online test common to both the research intern and the software intern roles. This test was different from other internship tests because it had many questions from Mathematics – particularly Linear Algebra and Probability. So, brushing up on these topics would be advised if you were weak in these areas. There was just one coding question, a few MCQs on the computer science fundamentals, and one essay question that aimed at testing your knowledge on the present technological progress. I had to give an interview after being shortlisted while some people gave two of them. My interview was thoroughly problem-solving based. I briefed on my project; then, I was asked the language I was comfortable coding in – I went ahead and said C++. This followed a problem that expected me to show specifically how a vector is implemented. There was a short discussion on this question, which led to the second question based on binary trees. This consumed a large chunk of the interview, which lasted for almost an hour and a half. Despite the question being pretty straightforward, I was encouraged to explore every minuscule aspect of it at great length. Overall, it was an informal and discussion-oriented one.
Q. When did you start preparing for your SI? How much time and effort would you ideally advise for the same? What are the resources you used to prepare for your interview process? (with special reference to what resources you used for CC)
A. At the beginning of my second year, I delved a little bit into competitive programming but left it midway due to my college courses. I resumed it during my PS- I. I would continue preparing for the interviews after coming from my PS-I every day. It is vital to cover the generic interview questions as most of the ones asked in the interviews are direct or an extension to the standard ones. Getting the knack of this would help realize that the difficult questions can be aced. I used InterviewBit and my notes from the courses OOP and DSA. I would suggest other platforms like LeetCode as well as GeeksForGeeks.
Q. What were the courses (and other college-related resources, including your PS-1) which helped you with the same? Were there any courses that companies look at extensively while selecting people?
A. There was no mention of any course explicitly, but having a fine grip on the CS CDCs will be very helpful. Proficiency in second-year courses like OOP and DSA is a must. DBMS is not too necessary, but there are questions based on it in the online tests. None of the electives were a compulsion; if you did mention an elective on your resume, you must be well-versed with it – I was asked a few questions on AI because I had mentioned it on my resume.
Q. Could you tell us a bit about your profile (including your projects and research experiences) and what you thought helped you in the selection process? How important did you think those aspects of your profile were?
A. I had experience from my research internship at IIIT Hyderabad, and I bagged the GHCI scholarship in 2020. The GHCI is a scholarship awarded to female students in their Senior Year or at any point in time after that (MSc. and Ph.D. as well). It is an event consisting of many speakers, mainly female, talking about the women in technology, a lot of workshops, and a career fair. I was intrigued and curious when I stumbled upon it on LinkedIn mainly, so I applied. The application was too long and expected me to write 3 essays, get LORs – my PS mentor and a Professor under whom I worked on a project helped me with them. My internship at IIIT Hyderabad was not a hands-on research one; it pushed me to take up a research project on campus. It isn't very significant on my resume in the present time because it expected me to work on small tasks like Data Cleaning and Data Scraping. The companies don't expect you to have an internship experience prior to your third year, so they mainly look at projects – since BITS has the PS system, everyone has an internship or two on their resume. So, my IIIT-H experience didn't really play a part in my SI because it was a research-based internship while the role I was applying for was a product intern one. Most of my projects were CS-based, which were done for fulfilling my CDCs requirements – which were of some importance during the SI.
Q. Did you participate in any non-academic activities (like Hackathons or coding challenges), and how did it help you?
A. I started with contests online because my friends' circle was that of competitive programmers who encouraged me to do it. I gave this up after a while to focus on academics. As I said, I picked it up in my PS-I and have been exploring it since then. The importance of competitive coding in an interview would be less because most of the questions in the online tests for the interview process are quite different from those in the CC background. However, when the company is hiring freshers, it wouldn't have much to look at in the resume, so building up your skill-set in coding would be a good start, an ideal time for which would be the beginning of the first year. Speaking from my experience, starting at the end of the second year will help too, as one has less to do with regard to competitive coding when one gets into a software development job.
Q. How heavily do you weigh the role of soft-skills, CGPA, technical skills, and in your SI process as well as in the SI to PPO conversion? (rank on the basis of 1-3 and add other factors that they see as important)
A. I'd say Technical Skills followed by CGPA and Soft Skills. The former is highly essential because that's the reason you get hired in the first place. Coming to CGPA – if one is going for the on-campus placements, CGPA doesn't matter as long as you clear the cut-off. Companies don't differentiate you on the basis of your CGPA during the SI to PPO conversion. However, maintaining it consistently well will help you clear the unset CGPA criterions some companies might have. Soft Skills are not less essential, but you must have the basic communication skills to delve into discussions or answer the questions posed to you in an interview. Staying active in a group discussion or the like will keep you in a better position. Apart from this, just doing your work and being responsive will be more than enough.
Q. How did the WFH aspect of your SI affect the general nature of the job?
A. Adobe has a really good work culture when it comes to entertaining the interns – owing to the work from home situation, this was conducted online, but it was a really good experience; every Friday, we would have a lot of games and events which were good incentives. We were also compensated for all the necessities like a WiFi connection or a pair of headphones. Most people don't have a good workspace at home and providing reimbursement for these purchases was a nice initiative.
Q. How did you find working with your team at Adobe, and how big of a role did the senior colleagues there play in guiding you?
A. Each team had only 2 interns at the most, and there were a lot of teams in Adobe, each of which was assigned a Mentor. My co-intern teammate was from IIT-BHU, and our mentor was a Software Development Manager who was also a developer in Adobe. He would continuously keep up with our progress while he guided us and laid out the framework for our tasks so that we don't just go by our intuitions once a problem statement was given. We also had frequent meetings with the managers and the senior officials, who were very helpful too. They would also take inputs from us, which was like an exchange of information for us. They would also catch up on informal meetings sometimes, so we felt more welcomed into the team.
Q. Could you tell us more about the SI-PPO conversion process? What made you stand out apart from all your colleagues that led to your PPO conversion? How easy or hard would you say it is to convert the SI to a PPO?
A. Honestly, it wasn't that difficult, just do the work assigned to you and try putting in your inputs where required instead of just following the mentor's steps. My mentor was happy about this one thing because it is always good to go the extra mile and figure a way to solve the problem if the method given to you wasn't comprehensible. Being open to learning on your own and exploring different approaches is seen as a good factor in taking you in for a PPO. Once the internship ends, the mentor gives feedback to the managers as well as HR. We were then told to give a final presentation on our work to these officials as they would be continuing it after us. After a few other evaluative components, they convey the information of the candidate shortlisted to the HR. This also varies from the time of application and the company's financial position while hiring people.
Q. How important do you think doing an SI is for a single-degree student? With special reference on CS/IT roles? How much do you think single-degree students should focus on getting an SI?
A. There are many people who don't have an internship before applying for a full-time job, so it's not compulsory to do so. Most companies employing freshers don't always expect them to have experience beforehand. However, it helps you stand out while going for an SI as it gives you some sort of validation for having prior work experience. Even if you apply for an SI and don't bag it, it will serve as a good trial for the placements season.
Q. What are your plans for the upcoming placement cycle, as well as the PS-2/TS process? Do you have any off-campus placement/internship plans?
A. I have no off-campus options at hand at the moment – I am just taking things as they come to me, so I will take whatever offer I get in my 4-2.
Q. Do you have any suggestions for your juniors who are appearing for the SI cycle this year or would be appearing for it in a year from now?
A. All I can say is to keep brushing up on all your concepts, make sure you attempt all of the questions in the online test because it is a crucial step in the SI application. Just make sure you are proficient in all the important courses. Stay calm and focused during the interview; getting nervous will only lower your chances of giving it a good shot. Being honest and relaxed in front of the interviewer is also a good thing to remember.