YouTube Live with PrepInsta and Careerboat 🎥

27 Aug, 2022 • 2 min read

A live session on landing high-paying tech jobs as a fresher: my TCS to HackerRank journey, building projects that matter, and the skills nobody teaches you in college.

Listen

I got invited by PrepInsta and Careerboat for a YouTube live on a topic I care a lot about: how freshers can land good tech jobs without coming from a "target" college or having FAANG on their resume.

This one's personal. I went from TCS Digital Cadre (top 1,500 of 60,000 employees) to HackerRank. That path wasn't obvious and nobody handed it to me. So when PrepInsta asked me to share what I'd learned, I said yes.

What I talked about 🎙️

My journey from TCS to HackerRank

The full story: how I got into TCS Digital Cadre, what I learned building products there (TCS ClickFit, Google Cloud services, the works), and how I made the jump to a product company. The short version: side projects, hackathons, and showing up consistently in public. The long version is in the video 👆

The projects that actually matter 🔧

Not "build a to-do app." I'm talking about projects that solve a real problem, use real APIs, and ship to real users. Hashnode Blog Cards, COVID-19 Info Bot, PandoConnect. Every one of these taught me something that interviews couldn't test and courses couldn't teach. The projects you build outside of work are your proof of curiosity. Hiring managers notice that.

Skills that actually get you hired 🎯

Building things end-to-end: not just "I know React" but "I built a product from Figma to deploy and here's the repo." Full-stack thinking matters even if your role is frontend.
Learning in public: blogs, open source contributions, LinkedIn posts. Your GitHub profile and your writing are your portfolio. They speak louder than your resume.
Communication: the most underrated skill in tech. The developer who can explain their technical decisions clearly will always stand out over the one who can only code silently.

The mindset shift nobody talks about 🧠

College teaches you to solve problems that have known answers. Industry gives you problems with no clear answer, shifting requirements, and 4 stakeholders with different opinions. The sooner you make that mental shift, from "find the right answer" to "make a good decision with incomplete information", the faster you grow.

Personal branding isn't cringe, it's leverage 📢

I know "personal branding" sounds like LinkedIn buzzword territory. But here's what it actually means: be visible. Write about what you learn. Share your projects. Help others. Over time, opportunities start finding you instead of the other way around. My Topmate mentoring, speaking invitations, and even the HackerRank opportunity, all of these came from putting work out in public.

Thanks PrepInsta and Careerboat for having me on. If even one person watching that live decided to start building a project instead of collecting another certificate, it was worth the hour ✨