A guideline for CS Graduates

This blog post is intended for those are graduating in Computer Science and worried about their job. Just relax, if you didn’t qualify for some ABC Software house,  maybe that company is not up to your standard 😀

In last couple of years I have noticed tremendous growth in IT Industry of Pakistan. There are various job opportunities and there is a huge competition among graduates too. So don’t get emotional if you are rejected at first place in your favourite company. There are other jobs waiting for you. All you need to do is to learn from your recent Interviews / Programming tests.

How to plan for the right company:

Initially, you should analyse your area of interesting technologies (including Mobile Platform, Cloud Apps, Cross Platforms, Mobile Games) which are on demand in the market. You can do some research by asking your alumni who is already working in tech industry. Then you can list down the companies which are working on these technologies of your interest. Also see the profile of company including long term clients, number of staff (Specially number of Lead developers or Architects). Once you are done with prioritising your companies, you can start applying there.

How to prepare for Job test / Interview:

You should revise the basic concepts which you have learnt in 1st year even though you know every thing. Try some coding examples on white board or paper (Do not use Compiler). Also, try to debug them manually and think about different approaches. You can find the sample coding questions from Google. You should revise everything related to:

1. Data Structures (LinkedList, Binary Tree, Heap, Hashing, Stack, Queue, etc)

2. Database (DBMS, RDBMS, ERD, SQL Queries, Normalization, NoSQL, Indexing, Clustering, ACID Properties)

3. Operating System (Inter Process Communication, Threading, Processing, Tasking, Race Conditions, Locks, Semaphore, Mutex, etc)

4. OOP (Abstract, Interface, Polymorphism, Overriding, Overloading, Diamond problem, Inheritance, Static class / variables and their impacts, Deep copy, Shallow Copy, etc)

5. Scenario based questions (Solving real world problems and some logic building questions) 

6. Behavioural Questions (Prepare for questions like tell me about your self, why we should hire you and ask some relevant questions at the end of interview)

After you have cleared the technical interviews:

When you are done with all the technical interviews (phew!!) and you are called for final interview for offer, you should take few days to think whether this offer makes sense to you or not. A lot of graduates after signing job contract don’t really join the company. Because they seem to be confused when their friends are going in some other company with a little more salary package. Make sure you don’t follow that practise because you are entering in professional life now.

Conclusion:

At last, I would advise you to concentrate on your studies if you are not done for final exams yet. Don’t be upset if some company rejects you there are plenty of other opportunities waiting for you. Always try to get help for job opportunities from your alumni because they can easily recommend your CV to hiring manager.

Thanks a lot for reading, positive critics are always welcome. I would encourage other alumnus to share their opinion through comments so graduates may learn from them as well.