Hey reader ! I think you have your Google DSC interview in a few days or maybe you are just preparing for the next interview to join Google developer student clubs in your college. Okay! So first and foremost thing which I learnt from my experience and what I would like to advice you is to not back down from applying for the interview thinking that there might be a huge competition. So, having said that, let’s start with my test and interview experience.
Table of Contents
Background
I’m pursuing my BE in CSE from Shri Jayachamarajendra College of engineering, Mysuru and I was in second semester (at the time of writing this post). After a series of long boring classes, me and my friends were busy making some quick pocket money by referring Slice Card to each other and making Rs 300 each, and a notification popped up on my mobile. There are hundreds of notifications which get displayed on my smartphone daily, but this one was special. It was a post from GDSC-JSSSTU’s Instagram handle telling everyone to keep their resumes ready, though they didn’t mention anything else, this was enough for me to know that they are starting this year’s recruitment process. I closed what I was doing and gave some attention over it. I told my friends about it too. But they were not excited. I asked them if they would pe participating in it. Most of them told that there are many seniors already for that and the competition will be huge.
Seize the Opportunity
But I’m a kind of person who doesn’t want to miss even a single opportunity that comes to me. I said “Okay then, I will just give it a try” and I waited for the main update regarding recruitment. And there it was, after a few days. I was right! GDSC-JSSSTU team was preparing for their recruitment for the year 2021. GDSC-JSSSTU had posted about the recruit procedure on their Instagram handle as well as their Discord Server. I got the message from them through our class WhatsApp group too. Since I have experience in marketing field, I analyzed the marketing effort put forward by the team in reaching out to most number of students in the college regarding the recruitment drive. To be honest, their perfect marketing had resulted in an increase in competition for each and every available role.
There was a deadline for submitting our application through a google form. Due to heavy work load, I started filling the form on the last day. Everything filled, the resume was to be uploaded and I didn’t have an updated resume at that time. Since there was a function going on in our home on that day, I just generated one from my LinkedIn profile and I submitted the same and I applied for Cyber Security Lead role. Then I just waited for further updates from the team. After a few days, I got a mail. It was regarding the first round – An Online Test. It was to be held on HackerEarth platform and everyone was informed to create an account on HackerEarth. I had my account already. I just waited for the D day.
First Round – Online Test
The test was scheduled in the evening. We had 10 general tech based questions and 3 programming problems to be solved. I attended all 10 of them and then started the programming part and I could just solve only one question that too with one test case failing. The other two, I tried a lot and I was so close too, but I lost interest and I gave up. There was still 20 mins left and I ended the test with just 1% hope of clearing this round. Then life went normally for few days.
One day, in the lunch break, I was just checking my inbox and found a new mail from GDSC JSSSTU. I thought it might be about some event for a second, but yeah the subject caught my eyes. It said “GDSC JSSSTU – Application Updates”. With a lot of curiosity on what is it about, I opened the mail. Congratulations is one word which attracts my eyes a lot and there it was! The mail said “Congratulations on successfully passing the first evaluation round of your GDSC Core Team application! Great work! We are very excited to invite you to the next round of GDSC Core Team application enrollment, which is the online video interview on Google Meet. Details about the same will be sent to your registered mail IDs. We’re looking forward to seeing you at the interview.”
Second Round – Technical Interview
I was so happy after reading the mail that I didn’t attend the post lunch classes, came back home and started preparing for the interview. The next mail arrived the next day and it had information about the date and timings of the online technical interview. To be honest, I am so busy that I forget things, even important ones quickly. So I set two alarms, one before 30 mins and the other before 15 mins of the interview to make sure I won’t miss it.
Time won’t stop for everyone and hence, the D day arrived. It was around 7:30 PM and the alarm rang. I quickly got ready, opened my laptop and joined the meet. The interview started sharply at 8 PM as mentioned in the mail. Interviewers were my college seniors itself who were in the GDSC team. They introduced themselves and then I gave a quick introduction about me. Then I was questioned about DSA and I straightly said, “I don’t know DSA. I have experience in the development part”. I was a bit nervous too and I was stammering while talking with them. But them made me feel comfortable by asking me about my past stories linked to my applied role. Then they asked many questions about network security, web application security, Linux etc. I answered most of them confidently and the interview ended with everyone wishing me all the best for the result and I was 99% confident that I would get selected.
Third Round – HR Interview
I had thought that this was the last round but they made me surprised for two things. One was, I had cleared the interview. The other was, there was one more round – The HR Interview. So I started preparing for the HR interview, I got a mail regarding the meeting invite. Even this round was conducted online. The day arrived and I had joined the meet a little early this time. I waited for the interviewers to join. They joined in time and the interview started by everyone’s introduction. Then I was asked many questions to test my non-technical capability to join GDSC JSSSTU. Some of the questions confused me a bit.. but yeah here are some questions:
- Tell us about yourself
- Why do you want to join GDSC?
- Where do you see yourself after 5 years from now?
- Are there any other commitments for you?
- What if someone uses the skill you have taught to hack into College’s server?
- What if you get into black hat hacking in the future?
- And many more…
I answered all of them to the best that I could. We didn’t even notice that we had spent 30 mins more than the scheduled ending time. In the end, again as usual, they wished me all the best for the result and they also told me that this is the final round. Some kind of relief after hearing that. I closed my laptop and continued with my day.
Final Mail from GDSC JSSSTU
After a few days, I got a mail for which I had waited since the start of the recruitment procedure. The mail had a subject saying “GDSC-JSSSTU Congratulations!“. I knew by this time that I was selected for the team. Hurray! The mail read “Dear Chandan S Gowda, Welcome to the core team of GDSC JSSSTU! Hearty congratulations on clearing all the rounds of the GDSC recruitment! We are overjoyed to have you on board with us. Your active participation and stellar performance in our recruitment did not go unnoticed! We’re sure you will be an integral part of the core team in the years to come.” My feeling after seeing this mail cannot be expressed in words.
This was my Google DSC recruitment drive experience. I hope I have conveyed it in the best way possible. Thank you for being with me till here. i request you to share this article so that it will be helpful for others too. Have a nice day 🙂
