A-Walk-Into-Interviews-Right-After-Graduation

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# A-Walk-Into-Interviews-Right-After-Graduation

Hi there, I am Faria. I am writing this guide for students, especially those who are nearing graduation in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) and have started thinking about their next steps: career planning, interview preparation, and everything that comes right after university life. If you are one of them, then this is for you.

First of all, warm congratulations to you. You are very close to completing a major milestone in your life, yoohooo. Graduation is not just an endpoint. It is the beginning of a completely new phase. What comes next is both exciting and overwhelming.

Your days were filled with 8 AM to 5 PM classes, campus life, deadlines, and spontaneous get-togethers with friends. Slowly, these will turn into memories. In their place comes a new reality—professional life, responsibilities, independence, and decisions that actually shape your future.

I remember being at this exact stage and feeling quite overwhelmed.

A lot of questions start to appear:
- What will life be like after graduation?
- Where do I even begin?
- How do I prepare for interviews?
- Am I already too late or not good enough?

Uncertainty is completely normal at this point. So before anything else, take a deep breath. I want to walk you through this phase—how to approach interview preparation, how to think about academia vs industry, and how to move forward.

## Job Prospects for CSE Graduates

There are a wide range of opportunities available for CSE graduates. You might consider roles in industry, academia, remote jobs, research positions, or even pursue higher studies. The options are diverse, and there is no single “correct” path.

In this guide, I will primarily focus on two major directions:
- **Industry**
- **Academia**

This is because I personally prepared for these two paths and maybe can share practical insights from that experience.

A very common question at this stage is:

> Should I prepare for one specific path, or keep multiple options open?

The answer is: **it completely depends on you**.

It depends on:
- how much pressure you can handle  
- how well you can manage time  
- how clear you are about your long-term goals

There are indeed some overlapping areas between academia and industry preparation. However, when it comes to interviews, these two paths are quite different.

Before diving into preparation strategies, it is important to understand:

> What should you keep ready *before* you even get an interview call or apply for some position?

In the next section, we will go through the essential things you should prepare, organize, and document in advance.

## Preparation Checklist Before Interviews

Before you start applying or receiving interview calls, it is important to have certain materials ready. These represent you even before you speak.

---

<details>
<summary>1. Curriculum Vitae (CV)</summary>

There is no hard and fast rule for writing a CV. I am sharing the points that I used to follow or learned from seniors.

1. A standard CV is usually around 2 pages. Even some companies explicitly prefer this. However, if you genuinely have content to show, you may extend it. My own CV was 3.5 pages long. The CV should be in a single column. CVs that are automatically parsed may face issues with having two columns. Background color must be white. What matters is clarity and conciseness.

2. It is generally recommended **not to include your picture** in the CV.

3. The header section should contain your basic information, such as your full name, email address, phone number, GitHub link, LinkedIn profile, and portfolio link. For academia-focused CVs, avoid adding LinkedIn.

4. You should list your education in reverse chronological order. Start with your university, including duration, CGPA, and class rank if available. Then add your college and high school. There is no need to include primary school xD (I have actually seen some CVs with that).

5. If it is an academia CV, you may add a research interest section next. Do not list too many areas. Keep it aligned with your thesis work and maybe one or two related fields.

6. After that, you can include your research experience or thesis section. As an undergraduate, this is often your thesis or a milestone project. Keep this section separate, as both academia and entry-level industry roles value it highly. You can mention the title, your supervisor’s name, a short summary including the problem definition and specifically what contribution you made to solve it, and the current status (such as submitted or under review). If it is being drafted, no worries. It is quite normal. If you have publications, you may list them here. However, this list should be meaningful. A longer list without strong contributions, or just arXiv uploads, does not add much value. Interviewers are experienced and understand the depth of work.

7. Next comes your achievements section. Keep this concise and relevant. Extracurricular activities are good, but they do not add much value unless they are relevant to the role. For example, I had awards in Rabindrasangeet competitions, but I would not include them here. On the other hand, achievements in programming contests, hackathons, datathons, or CTFs demonstrate technical strength.

8. Then comes your projects section. You can include well-documented and recognizable projects from your undergraduate life. Sometimes you may wonder whether a project is meaningful enough. Even if you implemented an existing algorithm or system as part of coursework, it still carries value. For example, I was once asked about implementing a feedforward neural network. Since I had built it from scratch, I could explain it in detail, and they appreciated that. The work itself was not novel, but understanding and implementing something deeply is very valuable.

9. After that, you can include remaining sections such as technical skills, extracurricular projects, and problem-solving experience. You may include links or stats from platforms like Codeforces or LeetCode, even if you are not a regular contestant. This is relevant for both industry and academia. I was asked in a university interview about my problem-solving experience, including how many problems I solved and how I balanced it with coursework.

10. Finally, you may include one or two references.

</details>

---

<details>
<summary>2. GitHub Profile</summary>

You should organize your GitHub profile page properly. You will find many resources online on how to do this. This page may include your brief introduction, achievements, highlighted projects, and GitHub statistics (there are many third-party tools available for this).

You may take a look at my page here: [f12-mou](https://github.com/f12-mou).

</details>

---

<details>
<summary>3. Project Documentation</summary>

In your undergraduate life, the assignments and projects you have done should ideally be maintained on GitHub. Even if you missed uploading some of them earlier, you can always upload them now.

There are several ways to organize academic projects and assignments. However, the first thing a viewer notices is your documentation. I always encourage my juniors and students to document their code while working on it. Otherwise, later you may forget what you actually did. A good documentation should include the problem definition, dataset used, algorithm implemented (a brief technical summary), and instructions on how to run the code. It should give a clear idea of your work without requiring someone to go through the entire codebase. Good documentation often makes an average project stand out.

While preparing for interviews, you must revise your previous projects. During this process, you can also improve and update your documentation.
Here is a simple sample of my thesis documentation. You may take a look: [link](https://github.com/f12-mou/SuNSTAMP)

</details>

---

<details>
<summary>4. Portfolio / Personal Website</summary>

Think of it as an extended version of your CV in website form. This can act as a superset of everything—you can include anything here that represents you. There are several codebases publicly available that you can use to create your own portfolio. You do not need to build everything from scratch. Your portfolio may include your introduction, education, projects, publications, extracurricular activities, leadership experience, and contact information.

</details>

---

<details>
<summary>5. LinkedIn Profile</summary>

LinkedIn may play an important role—especially for industry roles. Recruiters often check LinkedIn before or after shortlisting candidates.

Make sure your profile includes:
- a clear headline (not just “Student”)  
- updated education and experience  
- projects and skills  
- consistent information with your CV

You do not need to be extremely active, but your profile should be **complete and clean**.

</details>

---

## How to Prepare for Interviews

While some fundamentals overlap, preparation for interviews is not the same for academia and industry.

### Industry Preparation

There are typically several segments in industry interviews. Among them, coding rounds are usually the most challenging ones.

<details>
<summary>1. Coding Round </summary>
Here you are given a problem, sample input and output, along with time and space constraints. You need to write code that works correctly within those constraints. That’s it.

For those who have been involved in competitive programming or regular problem-solving, this round is relatively manageable. However, if you have been away from DSA for a long time, you will need to dedicate a significant amount of time to it.

For practice, you can start with structured problem sets like NeetCode 75 or NeetCode 150. Despite having CP experience, I still solved around 100 problems from NeetCode 150.

While solving a problem, try to first understand the intuition. Then develop a solution. In live coding interviews, you are often asked:
- how you approach the problem  
- whether you can optimize your solution  
- if there are better alternatives  
- in which scenarios your solution might fail

So instead of just solving problems and getting AC on LeetCode, try to think a bit deeper about each problem.

Useful resources:
- https://leetcode.com/problem-list/plakya4j/
- https://neetcode.io/practice/practice/blind75

</details>

---

<details>
<summary>2. System Design Round </summary>
Sometimes this appears as a separate round, or sometimes it is merged with a coding or technical round.

This is mostly based on concepts from your Software Engineering course. You are given the requirements of a system, and you need to design it properly.

You should:
- understand basic design patterns  
- know when to use which pattern  
- practice designing simple systems

You can also search online for common system design problems and their solutions. In my experience, after designing around 10–15 systems, you start developing a general intuition.

Also, try to understand the differences between different design approaches.

Useful resources:
- https://www.interviewbit.com/design-patterns-interview-questions/
- https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer 
- https://github.com/karanpratapsingh/system-design 
</details>

---

<details>
<summary>3. Technical Round </summary>

In this round, you are asked questions from core subjects such as OOP, DSA, Database, Operating Systems, and Networking. Along with these, make sure that you can explain every small detail of the projects or tools you have mentioned in your CV. Saying things like “I forgot how I did this” creates a very negative impression.

Revise your projects before interviews. For group projects, you will be asked questions like which part you worked on, how the entire system works, how your part integrates with others etc. Even if you did not implement certain parts, you should still understand how everything works together. Saying “I didn’t do that part, so I don’t know” can hurt your impression. So, be prepared to explain your work clearly and confidently.

Useful resources:
- https://www.interviewbit.com/data-structure-interview-questions/
- https://www.interviewbit.com/oops-interview-questions/
- https://www.interviewbit.com/networking-interview-questions/
- https://www.interviewbit.com/machine-learning-interview-questions/
- https://www.interviewbit.com/technical-interview-questions/

</details>

---

### Academia Preparation

<details>
<summary> 1. Demonstration Class</summary>
Some universities conduct this round in a real classroom environment to assess your teaching abilities.

First, you will be asked to introduce yourself. I will share a template for this later. This part should be clear and detailed enough to represent who you are. By that, I mean you should not just say something like “Hello, I am X. I graduated from University Y.” They implicitly expect a bit more depth from you.

After that, you may be asked to talk about your thesis. While explaining your thesis, try to address the following points very succinctly:
- which domain it belongs to  
- your supervisors and their designations  
- what problem it addresses  
- limitations of existing methods  
- your contribution  
- key results/findings and why they are significant  
- publication/submission status (if any)

Try to keep each of these within one sentence. Do not go into too much detail at this stage—it becomes boring, and honestly, no one expects a full deep dive here. However, you must be prepared to answer any detailed questions afterward, including dataset, methodology, and decisions you made.

After this, you will be given a topic, and the faculty members will ask you to treat them as students and take a short class using a whiteboard and marker. They may also interrupt and ask questions just like students would.

For preparation, you can refer to the topic list mentioned in the resource sheet below.

</details>

---

<details>
<summary>2.Theoretical Questions:</summary>
This is probably the most challenging part. No single resource from the internet can fully prepare you for this.

There are usually multiple faculty members (around 4–5), and each of them may ask questions from different undergraduate courses. You need to have at least mid-level understanding of common topics. Surface-level knowledge is usually not enough.

Which courses should you prepare from? This is exactly what makes these interviews difficult.

If a faculty member mostly teaches a specific course, they are more likely to ask questions from that course. So, you cannot predict the exact areas beforehand.

In my opinion, you should revise your undergraduate course materials as much as possible. Otherwise, it often happens that you recognize a term but cannot recall it properly during the interview.

You can refer to the topic list provided below as a starting point, but keep in mind that this is not exhaustive. You may need to study beyond that.

</details>

---

<details>
<summary> 3. Teaching-related Questions: </summary>
Faculty members often ask questions related to teaching philosophy and classroom handling.

Some common examples include:
- Why do you want to teach?  
- What will you do if students do not pay attention in class?  
- How will you handle both fast learners and slow learners?  
- How would you respond if a student shares personal or academic struggles during consultation hours?  
- What would you do in an ethical dilemma?

If you ask me what to answer, I would say that after entering the teaching profession, I have developed my own perspectives and professional ethics regarding these questions.

However, right after graduation, my answers were not very clear either.

One important suggestion: do not blindly follow answers generated by others (including LLMs). Think about these questions yourself and come up with honest and thoughtful responses that reflect your own mindset.
</details>

---

Resources:
Topic-List (to be updated soon): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ufZaHuNYJVjxfpeYJ3StlYwCxVK1zCRTCclg2ZPr2DQ/edit?usp=sharing

Sample template for introduction:

Greetings, honorable board members. I am [Full Name]. I graduated from the Department of CSE at [University X] in [Month, Year], with a CGPA of z.zz/4.00 and a class rank of X. My thesis is in the area of [topic/domain], conducted under the supervision of [Prof. X, designation] and [Prof. Y, designation]. The title of my thesis is [Title]. [Insert one or two concise sentences describing your thesis, focusing on the problem and your contribution]. Alongside my studies, I actively participated in [relevant CS-related extracurricular activities—for example, competitive programming]. [Insert one achievement or highlight to complete this part]. I am particularly interested in pursuing a career in teaching because [insert 2–3 lines explaining your motivation—focus on clarity, impact, and your interest in guiding students]. [If applicable] I also have some experience in teaching, such as [briefly mention]. I found this experience very fulfilling and it further strengthened my interest in this profession.

---

### A Small but Important Note

While applying to any company or university, be very careful about the application portal. Always read the notices and emails thoroughly.

I am emphasizing this because I made a mistake myself.

In one university application, there were two separate portals:
- one for CSE lecturers from a CSE background  
- another for CSE lecturers from an EEE background

I did not notice this difference and ended up submitting my application through the EEE background portal. As a result, my interview was scheduled with EEE candidates instead of CSE candidates. So, please double-check everything before submitting your application.

## Interview Structure (Some Universities & Companies)

Based on my experience, I am sharing the general interview structure of some universities and companies. These may vary slightly over time, but this should give you a rough idea.

### Companies

1. **Therap BD Ltd (Machine Learning):**  
A written exam, followed by two technical interviews and most probably one HR interview.

2. **Samsung R&D:**  
A coding round, followed by one HR round and one technical round.

3. **Chaldal:**  
Three coding rounds (I was rejected after that, so I am not sure what happens later 😄)

4. **Synesis IT:**  
One written coding round, followed by one technical + behavioral round conducted by the senior board.

---

### Universities

1. **United International University (UIU):**  
One demo class, followed by an interview with 5–6 senior faculty members, professors, and board members.

2. **BRAC University:**  
One interview with senior faculty members and professors. Some candidates were also asked to take a short demo class.

---

### Places Where I Received Offers

- UIU (Lecturer)  
- BRAC University (Lecturer)  
- Synesis IT (SWE Developer)  
- Samsung R&D (SWE Developer)  
- Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) (Adjunct Lecturer)

---

### Places Where I Was Rejected

- Chaldal  
- Therap BD Ltd

---

### A Small Note for My Juniors

All of you will land a job—maybe earlier or later.

While getting an offer is definitely a moment of celebration for you and your friends, please try to stay connected and be compassionate towards those who are still waiting.

One of the main motivations behind writing this guide is that about a year ago, I was going through a very stressful and uncertain phase. I received most of my offers around the same time, which meant I had to wait for a long period without any certainty.

So I understand how difficult that phase can feel.

## Some Behavioral FAQs in Interviews

I am providing some common behavioral questions that I faced during interviews. I will add more if I can remember.

1. In a group project, if any conflict arises among your teammates, how did you resolve it and reach a common ground?

2. Suppose you discover that the software to be released the day after tomorrow has a serious bug that could be harmful to users. What would you do?

3. If you disagree with your boss or a senior colleague, how would you handle the situation?

4. How do you plan to balance your professional and personal life?

5. You have a very high CGPA. Why did you not choose academia?

6. Why do you want to join this company?  
   _Tip: Explore their website and try to connect your past projects or experiences with what they do. Explain how you found that connection and why it interests you. This can create a very strong impression._

7. Is there anything that you want to share about yourself which is not in the CV?
8. How did you progress in a group project? 
9. What are your weaknesses and strengths?
10. How do you handle situations when you feel very depressed?

---

At this point, I also want to share one harsh and unprofessional question that I had to face in a particular renowned company. I will not mention the name anywhere in this write-up.

Even before starting the interview, the CEO asked me:

> “Usually girls don’t like to code. Do you? Are you sure you can work for our company?”

I handled the situation calmly and tried to respond in a confident manner. I explained how I completed my projects and assignments before deadlines, often adding extra features beyond the requirements—not for marks, but because I genuinely enjoyed doing it. I also mentioned my problem-solving experience and Codeforces statistics.

However, no candidate deserves to be judged based on gender or to face such questions.

Still, situations like this may arise. It is important to stay calm, confident, and respond in a way that reflects your capability rather than reacting emotionally.

## Contact & Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge my seniors and peers from whom I learned many of these things, both directly and indirectly. This guide is not a complete or perfect resource. It is simply a collection of things I found useful and wished I had known earlier. If this helps even a few of you, that would already make it worthwhile.

If you have any suggestions, feedback, or questions, feel free to reach out.

---

Faria Binta Awal (Moushe)  
Adjunct Lecturer, Department of CSE, BUET  
Lecturer, Department of CSE, School of Data and Sciences, BRAC University  
https://cse.sds.bracu.ac.bd/faculty_profile/485/faria_binta_awal  
faria DOT awal AT bracu DOT ac DOT bd

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