My Background: I am currently in my final year pursuing a B.E in Electronics and Computer Engineering from Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology. It was an on-campus opportunity(Through Code For Good Hackathon). I am sharing my experience and also some tips and suggestions which worked for me. I earlier got a summer internship and later got a 6-month internship + FTE offer based on my performance during the internship.
The Recruitment Process: The entire process is divided into three rounds with each round being an elimination round:
- Online Assessment
- Hirepro Interview
- Code for Good Hackathon
Online Assessment :(60 mins) It has two coding questions.
- Question 1: linked list (easy) – Given a binary linked list, you need to count the number of 0’s and 1’s.
- Question 2: Arrays (Medium) – Edge cases were tricky in this question.
TIP: Try to complete the assessment as fast as possible as the overall score is based on your accuracy and speed. I completed the whole assessment in 35 minutes.
Hirepro Interview: Hirepro is an online video interview software. It has 2 pre-recorded questions that needed to be answered. The computer announces the question and you get 30 seconds to think. Then you are given 2 minutes to record your answer and you get 2 tries to record an answer. The questions were HR questions
- Question 1: Tell us about a time when you went out of your comfort zone to do a task.
- Question 2: Tell us about a time when you worked in a team and what challenges you faced and your learnings.
TIP: Try to support your points with some real-life examples. Keep your points crisp. This assessment is to check your communication skills. So you should be fluent and use good vocabulary.
Code for Good: It is a hackathon where you’ll collaborate with other coders to develop innovative technology solutions for not-for-profit organizations. You’ll also learn about starting a Technology career with JP Morgan Chase & Co. while being guided by the sharpest minds in our industry.
Team Formation: In 2021, it was a virtual hackathon with 600+ students participating in the event and a total of 100 teams were formed. In general, the team size was 6–7 and you will be paired up randomly with students from different colleges based on your skills. My team had 6 members and we all were from different colleges.
The Mentors: Each team was assigned 2–3 mentors who will guide you throughout the hackathon regarding technical as well as non-technical aspects of the product. Also, the mentor will monitor each candidate individually throughout the hackathon and the final offers are extended based on reviews of your mentor. My team had 3 mentors who guided us.
Pre-Hackathon Activities: We were invited to CFG slack workspace where all the updates were shared and we had to set up our private channel with our teammates and team mentors. We had made a WhatsApp group and started interacting with each other. It was essential to know the technical strengths and weaknesses of all the teammates beforehand so that during the hackathon, we can divide the work efficiently.
One common mistake that most teams make is that they assumed that the problem statement would mostly require a web application, and they divided the team based on frontend and backend.
Be prepared for the worst. Try to find all possible tech domains of which your teammates are aware. Mostly the problem statements require web apps/mobile apps however, it might also require tech like AR/VR, ML, blockchain, etc.
Each team will be provided with a private GitHub repository.
There were some Workshop Sessions [2 Days Prior to the Actual Hackathon]. These were :
- Student Networking
- Hackathon Survival Guide
- Hackathon Tool Prep
- FLARE Workshop
- Power of Empathy in Coding
- Mentor-Team Huddle
Tip: I found the workshops quite helpful. During these, you also get a chance to interact with people from JPMC, and altogether it was a good experience. Do attend the Workshops as it would definitely help you during the real hackathon.
Hackathon Day :
Problem Statement selection:
- At 7 AM on 10th July, all the problem statements were live on the CFG platform. We were supposed to analyze all of them and rank them in order of our preference.
- From 7 AM to 8 AM, we discussed the problem statements and developed a rough idea of our preferences. Choose the problem statement considering various factors like skills possessed by your team, problem difficulty, and the scope of innovation.
- Then from 8 AM to 9 AM, each problem statement was well explained by NGOs. The biggest challenge is that you need to discuss this asap and fill in your preferences in order. (at 9 AM). Problems will be assigned on a first-come-first-serve basis. Be Ready to Submit your Preference within 30 seconds to 1 Minute, So that you get the Problem Statement that You find resonates with Teams Strengths. As we had a rough idea of our preferences, we didn’t face any difficulty here and were allotted our first preference.
- Our problem statement was given by The Social Town wherein we tried to find out a solution in bridging the gap between Volunteers, Corporators, and NGOs.
Development Phase:
- We were given 24 hours to develop our solution. Before starting the development, it is necessary to make a concrete plan and decide upon all the features. We had initially divided the team based on frontend and backend however, we realized that we might also need some machine learning models. So things are always dynamic and you need to adapt accordingly.
- During the initial hours of the hackathon, 2–3 people from each NGO were available at their zoom meeting, and we were allowed to ask them questions and understand their requirements. This helps in providing a better solution.
- After discussion with NGOs, we developed a basic wireframe of our website and distributed the tasks based on our strengths. As we had 6 members in our team, 3 of us worked on frontend and the other three on backend. Our Web application, built using Django Framework along with FireBase, involves various features, which majorly include:
- Provide a single platform for Volunteers, Corporators, and NGOs.
- Provide a Credit-based system for the top performers who take part in maximum events. ????
- These credits add to Company’s profile, with top Companies recognized to be maximum points.
- Enable Email notifications to intimate Volunteers about any events that are occurring.
- Allow NGOs to intimate their Volunteers about events on their dashboards based on an automatic match-making system.
Mentor Evaluation:
During the hackathon, we had a one-to-one mentor call. This is usually a small discussion about your hackathon experience. In my case, it started with some discussion on cloud computing and blockchain, but it was not like a proper interview, it was more of a friendly discussion. Then some discussion on Data structures. After this, we had some general discussions on career goals, technological interests, and a few situation-based questions. I felt that this was one of the most important parts of the whole event since mentors would be directly getting to know your experience and learnings, and accessing your personality. If you were a good team player then there will be people to back you up and appreciate your work in their mentor evaluations. This could be an added advantage.
Presentation:
After the coding period, we were provided one hour to submit our solution. We need to present a video [duration — at max 7 minutes] of our website which depicts the working of our website. Try to finish your development work as soon as possible and make a good video covering all the key functionalities of your project.
Judging:
1st round was the technical judging round, following which the top 2 teams would progress to the final judging round. My team [Team 19] did progress to the final judging round.[We were runner up]
Internship offer
After 3 weeks after the hackathon, a list of students and summer interns was released. The final offers are based on your mentor’s feedback. It does not depend on whether you won a hackathon or not. There might be chances that even if your team won, you did not get the offer and vice versa. You are judged based on what you do in those 24 Hours
- How you divide your work [Team Work]
- Considering other’s opinions and not dominating
- Solving issues with patience
So make sure to display the best of your abilities. Technical skills and interpersonal skills are equally important.
Though we were finalists, we did not win the hackathon. But still, in my team, 4 of us got the internship offer.
Tips:
- Web dev projects using MERN stack and Django are very common. Try to be familiar with these tech stacks before the hackathon.
- You need to have a basic knowledge of GitHub.
- Take leadership. E.g. assigning people to different tasks, code reviews, etc. but do not convert it to a one-man’s show.
- Try to give good ideas on how to tackle the problem statement and actively participate during the brainstorming sessions.
- Having a good UI always helps. Make sure the judges can clearly visualize and understand the features of your project.
- Figure out the basic requirements of the NGO[MVP]. Complete them and then move on to the additional features.
- Communicate with the mentors. Keep them updated with the project status and don’t hesitate to ask them for help.
- Lastly, it is very important how well you present your solution in front of the judges.