How did I cracked an offer from HARMAN?

I have always dreamt of getting placed in the Top Tech companies, thinking that my career would have an extreme growth along with the salary which is obvious(HAHAHA). So I did computer science engineering.

I was pretty much interested in development side during my first year. I joined few hackathons and bagged up some knowledge and most importantly got introduced to GitHub which really motivated me to learn more about open-source and contribution towards it.

Corona strikes down India where online classes were been introduced to all of the universities and that is where people started utilizing their time doing coding and other stuffs, but I was always lazy throughout the corona period wasting my time.

It was really difficult for the people to get jobs as there was huge financial impact on several companies. Here I wont say that I was serious about placements, until I reached my 3rd year of Engineering. I realized that wasting my precious time isn't gonna get me a job but at least by keeping myself active with my development journey and a bit of coding. I also started finishing up some valuable courses from Udemy, Coursera etc.

Placements started and the first company which arrived to our campus was "COHESITY". It's First round was Technical MCQ (50 questions), here I got rejected as I knew only 30 of them. But I think 40-45 was their passing criteria.

Next company which arrived was a service company "CAPGEMINI" which had basically Pseudocode, English communication, Gaming round, behavioral and one technical round. As every round was an elimination round. Still I was able to clear all the rounds and bag the offer for Analyst role.

Many service companies came to our campus like WIPRO,INFOSYS,COGNIZANT,TECH MAHINDRA and others. I was able to clear them as well.

But I wasn't satisfied with my package as well as the role hence I tried for the next Big Tech companies like Deloitte for SDE role.
I was able to clear the first round which was coding round but couldn't clear the technical interview-I as of nervousness and also not completely brushing up my DSA. As I had almost answered all of the questions except wasn't able to stick with optimal solutions. Interviewer advised me that I performed well but had to learn a bit of DSA to provide optimal solutions. Result : Rejected :(.

One day I saw HARMAN internationals are hiring for Associate Software engineer role. I was excited for this role as it was also my dream company to work for.

I blindly applied without even thinking to their career page. Received a mail from them regarding the rounds and the rounds were like this:

1. First round : Online Technical MCQ
   Talking about this round, the round was of medium level where questions were based on Android, OOPS, DBMS, OS, Networks etc.
   I was able to clear this round as I had started brushing up the basic concepts after my rejection from Deloitte.

2. Second round : Technical Interview
   I received a mail from the architect regarding scheduling the date and time for the interview. The interview started and he casually asked me about my day and how I've been doing to make me feel comfortable. I was not nervous this time as I had prepare well enough. So interviewer asked me about OOPS, DBMS based queries, just one Networking based question, 2 OS based questions, 2-3 coding questions which were easy to medium level then he asked me about my projects and he liked my android project so I showed him the demo of my app which I had posted in my YouTube channel then showed him my GitHub profile and he asked me several questions on my android project which I was able to answer him and he was completely satisfied with the answers. Then I asked him some questions about my performance. This time I was happy and was confident because the feedback from his side was positive.

3. Third round : HR round
   I got a call from the HR and he explained me about the role and company etc. He also mentioned that my performance was really good during the interview and told me that he would like to offer me the role. Congratulated me saying that "You been selected for this role".

I was really happy with my Hardwork and efforts as they were finally paid off.

So this is how I cracked a job offer from HARMAN.