Start by exploring the field. The technology domain is very vast and has a wide variety of options. The first 2 years of your engineering years should be exploring the options that this field provides (Not a hard and fast rule, but this time period should be adequate enough for you to find something of your interest). In future, you wouldn't want to end up doing something that you don't like, have no interest in or simply have no knowledge about. Take it easy and Network with as many people as possible. Knowing your seniors is very important.
Befriend most of the teachers in your department. Try interning at reputed institutions like IIScs, IITs or at startups. Wouldn't recommend interning at large established companies. They dull you down, and above all you wouldn't have done anything worthwhile to add to your resume. While you are not interning, try reading on google scholar - the latest papers on your field of interest and publish your own in high impact journals like Springer.
Internships > Projects > Certifications
If you're not able to secure internships, try doing projects on the domain you're interested in or in any domain. Mind you, these preferably should be personal projects and not academic (the ones you do during your semester). Certifications from Udemy are pretty much worthless. Certifications of courses that are offered by big universities (Stanford, Harvard, Cornell etc) are much more valuable. Else, instead of doing an application based capstone project, take up research projects. Most unis have PhD profs who would be more than happy to involve interested students. Make that your undergraduate thesis. Grades, open source profile, papers and UG thesis can help you get into merit heavy colleges like CMU, Caltech, USC etc. Not only do they help you get good colleges they also help you land better jobs.
Higher studies may be pursued either abroad or in India in engineering or management streams. Getting admission for post graduation in India is very difficult due to tough competition compared to abroad admissions. However, if one aims to get admission into top ranking institutes, he /she must ensure initially whether they have good percentile of marks/CGPA in graduation. Preparation of good “Statement of Purpose” explaining the reasons clearly, why he/she wishes to pursue higher education is very important. The students should also take recommendation letters from their professors and keep them ready for submission when applying for Admissions.
If getting good campus placement is your target, then efforts must be put right from day one of final year. Students targeting at core jobs should have sound knowledge of fundamentals of their branches. Students targeting software jobs should be good at soft skills and programming. If target is to get an opening in a multi national company, then learning a foreign language would be very much helpful.
Attending mock group discussions and mock interviews would do lot of good in their preparation for campus interviews. Dress code, body language and time discipline will all be closely watched by the HR officials during selection process. Resume preparation is very vital and preparation of answers to typical questions like “tell me about yourself” is very important.
Majority of campus placements particularly in IT companies will begin after seventh semester, as the IT body NASSCOM’s had urged all its members and colleges not to commence campus recruitments before the end of seventh semester. During the campus placements, students should submit their resumes with latest photograph against any job notification to the placement office within stipulated deadline. Before interviews, study about the company by going through their websites and interacting with alumni working in similar organizations.
Try things in life outside studies (I know you want to get into google and the 1 crore salary but being a nerd doesn't get you a life, a dating life and a confident life. Participate in societies that interest you theatre, comedy, music everything try new stuff, this will make you really confident moving forward and maybe you will get a new career choice, its not that hard in today's YouTube era)
TV series and movie competitions between friends is cool but hampers you in final years when you have to focus on studies, try to get that sweet balance spot between studies and fun early on if you miss out on that you might easily become a slave to the laptop or mobile screen soon. Keep your GPA above 8 at least. As long as you take exams seriously it's not difficult. Specially try to do well in the early years as it generally gets more difficult in 3rd/4th year.
Get serious about learning skills and getting internships. Join Internshala / Letsintern early on. You can join marketing/writing internships right from first Summer and learn some new programming language/framework during Winter. You can often get research internships by mailing professors from geographically closer colleges. Starting mailing them after you have some experience from projects/interns. Learn Latex(overleaf) , design your resume using an overleaf template.
Decide what you want to do after Undergrad by 2nd/3rd year and start working towards that. A graduate degree from North America can be greatly beneficial. But you need to start working on building a profile early on. M.Tech from top Indian schools can be worth it specially if you can get in right after Undergrad. Some work experience would help in Masters and Research internship towards PHD.
Samsung had come on-campus for a 2021 summer internship in SRIB, Bangalore. The CGPA cut-off was 7.5. There were three rounds in the hiring process.
Round 1 (Coding round): The coding was conducted on Cocubes platform and there were three simple questions. I do not remember the exact questions but there were one DP question and the question of one tree which were of easy level. I think the shortlist was based on how fast we have solved and how efficient our solution is. So submit as soon as you have coded the solution even you have time but make sure your solution is the most efficient. 24 people were shortlisted for the technical interview.
Round 2 (Technical interview): The interview was on Skype. The questions asked were
I have given brute force, hashmap, and two-pointer solutions
for the first question. He asked me to code the two-pointer
solution and I had done that. For the second question, I gave
him the brute force and DP approach. He asked me if I can
optimize it and I have given him a solution with O(1) space
complexity. He then asked me to write the pseudo-code for that
solution and I have done that. He was satisfied with my
answers.
15 out of 24 were shortlisted for the next round.
Round 3 (Technical interview): This round was also on Skype. The questions asked were
He gave me a few print statements related to pointers and
asked me for the output. Something like
this.
Implement two stacks using one array. He had asked me to code it and I did that.
The entire interview was mostly based on CS fundamentals. They
had asked KMP algorithm, OOPS concepts, questions on ML, and a
few puzzles for other shortlisted people. 9 students were
finally selected, and I was one of them.