In this article, we will study what is a product-based company and how to get a job in them. We will learn the process and different tips to get an interview call as well as how to crack the interview in the same company. We will also go through different rounds that generally the companies prefer during the candidate selection and how to clear those rounds to get the job. So, let’s get started!
What Are Product-Based Companies?
Product-based companies are the companies that make their own product which may not be related to the IT domain but they do have an IT department in their organization to make their sales high. For Example, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Adobe are some of the product-based companies. They prefer to hire a very limited number of candidates from top colleges like IITs and NITs and also, they do not conduct campus placement in tier 3 colleges.
Even for hiring the candidates, they conduct more interview round and these interviews are more difficult in comparison to Service-Based companies. The most important advantage of getting a job in product-based companies is that they have a good learning curve and you get opportunities to work with the latest technologies. You also have flexible office timings; all you need is to complete your project/work with a given period.
Getting Job In Product Based Companies
Getting a job in any product-based company is a dream for every passionate developer. Everyone is aware of the pays, perks, and recognition that you get while getting into such companies, and hence the demand of getting into these companies increases among every student as well as working professionals. But along with good perks and pays the difficulty level for getting this job increases and the most important question that arises is how to get this job? The answer to this question is that there are many processes and tips which you should follow for getting this job. Below we have discussed this process and tips to get into these amazing companies.
Get Selected For Interview Call
The first and foremost step to get the job into these companies is to get the call for an interview. If you don’t get selected in the interview itself then you won’t be able to get into further interview rounds. As mentioned earlier these companies generally place the students from institutes like IITs and NITs because the student from these colleges have good knowledge and experience to work with the team and therefore, they perfectly suit the job role. But even if you are not from this college that does not mean you lost your chance for working with top companies. All you need is some extra effort and the right approach to get an interview call from the company. So let us go through some of the tips and processes which can lead you to get an interview.
- Getting Recommendations: There are many professionals too who apply for getting jobs in these companies along with the students and freshers. Therefore, if you are already an experienced software engineer then you just need to apply directly from the company portal and get some recommendations from workers which are already working in these companies.
- Creating Resume: If you are a student then the first step for getting an interview call is to create an effective resume. It is always said that “First Impression is Last Impression” and therefore, the resume is your first impression in front of your interviewer/employer. It is always advised to keep your resume precise and short as much as possible because when you apply for a job application there are many other candidates to apply along with you and hence, it is not possible to read and filter a detailed resume of every candidate. Therefore, your resume should be summarized in such a way that you can include all your details in it and it should be scanned within 2-3 minutes. Also, you should build your resume keeping in my that every detail in your resume should properly convenience the recruiter to hire you for their job role. There are many websites and blogs which can help you with the tips to build a perfect resume.
- Develop Skills: If you are not an experienced developer then it is important to have equivalent skills which can convince the employer to hire you as an employee. It is important to have a good command of your programming skills and hands-on practice if you are dreaming of getting into these companies. You can participate in many coding competitions and hackathons for getting good practice and increase your knowledge of coding. You can also take live coding help from FavTutor.
- Make Connections: Having good connections is the most important advantage to getting into product-based companies. Good connections help us to get good recommendations and good referrals which can help to approach the recruiter. This can be done by creating an effective profile on social media like LinkedIn. There are many cases where many candidates are selected from there and hence it is not a wise choice to lose these opportunities.
- Make Projects and Apply for Internship: The most important thing that makes your resume to be good is your project and internships during your academic’s period. If you have quite good hands-on experience on the technologies you are pursuing by creating amazing projects or if you have good experience in the same technologies as an intern in some organization then this increases your chances of getting an interview call. The best thing you can prefer is to work under a mentor for working on real-world projects and this can help you get a good recommendation and good practice. You can participate in many open source competitions like GSoC(Google Summer Of Code) or Outreachy which will boost your skills in programming and working on real-world projects under the guidance of the best mentors in the world.
Therefore, if you follow all the above 6 tips in the correct manner, you are most likely to get an interview call from the top product-based company. But what after getting an interview call? The main target to get into these amazing companies is to crack their interviews. So let us take a look at how to crack the interview rounds after an interview call.
How To Crack The Interviews?
After an interview call, you have to go through some interview rounds to get into the companies. Although the companies are different based on their production and organizational goals, almost all the product-based companies have similar interview rounds following a similar pattern of questions. There are mostly 5-6 rounds for any candidate to go through. Now the question that arises is what will they ask in these rounds? Below is the process that any product based company follow to conduct an interview:
Aptitude and Reasoning: This round is mostly conducted to filter out the crowd and pick the correct candidate for the next round. Aptitude and Reasoning round is mostly the MCQ round where you are given some complex questions and you need to solve them in a given time. As this round is for everyone who applies for the job, there is much competition among the candidate but also this round is not so difficult to crack if you are good at your logic and basic mathematics.
Technical Round: This is the most difficult round to clear for any candidate who is applying for any role in a product-based company. The main goal of this round for any interviewer is to check whether the candidate is strong at his/her programming skills and therefore this round is difficult to crack for any candidate. The difficulty level of the questions rises with every question passing and if you can answer even a few of them very well then you get one more step closer to your dream job. In a technical round, there are two phases to be cleared by any candidate:
- Problem Solving Ability: In the first phase of the technical round, the candidate is given some of the problem statement and coding questions to know their problem solving and programming ability. The problem statement may be any real-life case scenario. Sometimes they even ask the questions whose solutions are already in existence but they expect the solution to be solved with a new approach or with less complexity. For this round, you should go through the courses like Data Structure and Algorithms along with learning the time complexity and space complexity of the different problem-solving approaches. It is also recommended to learn Object-Oriented Programming, Database Management systems, and the concepts of Operating systems to clear this round with maximum score and to impress your interviewer with your skills and knowledge.
- Project Questions: The second phase of the technical round consist of the knowledge-based questions on the project you build during your academics. As we mentioned earlier it is most important to have some of the projects build on the technology you are learning to get through the first stage of the interview. Therefore, in this round, the interviewer will focus on asking you questions about your project like which technologies did you used while building them? The reason behind building this project? If you worked in a group while building the project then they can also ask about your contribution to the project. The best way to answer all these questions is to analyze all the requirements and impacts of your project while you are building them at the first place. Also, you can ask your friends and family to review your project to know the ideology of others which can help you to know how well you have worked on it and get reviews and feedback on the same.
HR Round: This is considered to be the last round before your interview process comes to an end. In this round, the candidate is tested for checking whether he/she will be able to survive the company environment or not. Here they will ask you the questions like how well you are at communication? Why do you think you are the perfect candidate for this job? They will also ask you to describe your college life and your future goals. There are no sources that can teach you the correct answer to these questions because these questions are related to you and only you can answer them based on your mentality and your experiences. But there are some blogs and sources which can help you to know the correct way and pattern to answer this kind of question. You can go through them and answer your questions accordingly and once you are clear with this round, you are in your dream organization.
Other than this, there are many things to remember and follow while giving an interview. Some such tips are given below:
- Be polite and nice to your interviewer. Do not bring attitude and avoid faking anything. Communicate properly, make eye contact, and show some enthusiasm putting your best foot forward.
- When any questions are being asked, give your proper attention and clear your all doubts first before beginning to solve the question. Also, try to avoid giving too many details of the question other than what is asked for. Also, just answer the question which you know perfectly avoiding the buzzwords. If you don’t know the answer except that you don’t know about it.
- Many-a-times when you get stuck at finding the solution to the question that the interviewer asked, they also help you to solve it by giving some hints. It is always great advice to take the hint and solve the problem accordingly without showing any attitude.
- When you are given coding problems to solve during the technical round, solve the problem with the approach that the interviewer expects. If they want you to solve the problem using the brute force approach or using the recursive method then use them in your solution. Try to find the most optimized solution and make the solution short and simple. Avoid using variables and constants unnecessarily along with nested loops and conditional statements. Try to use reusable functions to make your code look clean and effective.
- It is always a myth that companies and recruiters always select the candidate pursuing the new and popular technology. Well, this is not true. Programming language is just the source to write your code therefore, the interviewer will only judge your code and your coding approach, not the programming language you use to solve the problem.
Conclusion
As we all know getting into product-based companies is not everyone’s cup of tea. But if you start working with a good roadmap and proper tips that are required to be part of multinational companies, there is no one to stop you from getting your dream job. To help you with the same, we have mentioned all the necessary strategies to follow rigorously with all the tips and processes you should go through to get into a product-based company and brighten your future.
