Round 1(Coding Contest): Round 1 was a simple Coding Contest consisting of 2 medium level Problems.
Problems asked were
- You have to count number of Substrings in the given String which consists of Equal number of 0’s and 1’s. You can find the problem here. (https://leetcode.com/problems/count-binary-substrings/)
- This is a pretty famous Stack Data Structure problem called Merging Intervals. You can find the problem here. (https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-intervals/)
I was able to solve both the problems and after the coding contest All the participants had to take a virtual pre – recorded interview which was mailed to every participant after the contest.
Round 2: It was a Simple Video Interview round. It consisted of two HR related questions. It varies from person to person. Every participant will be given two attempts. If you choose the second attempt It will be the final answers that will be sent. So Be prepared, the questions will be Simple. Sit in a nice Environment and be confident. You’ll be given a time of 2 minutes for one question. So keep your answer straight to the point.
The Questions I was asked were.
- What are the goals that you’ve established for yourself?
- Narrate a recent real life Learning Experience in your Life and what you’ve learnt from it.
Based on both these Rounds a total of 32 Students from our College were Shortlisted for the final round i.e The Code For Good 24 Hour Hackathon.
Round 3: This is the Final Round. The Entire Event lasted for a period of 4 days.
On the first day, the event lasted for 3 hours.
- In the first hour I met my teammates for the Hackathon.
- We chatted, got to know about each other a little bit and understood what our skills were.
- The Next hour they Conducted a session named Hackathon Survival Guide. (This is a really helpful session for students who previously has never participated in a hackathon).
- The Last session of that day was a GIT workshop which covered all basics of GIT and is really helpful for students who never used Git before.
The Next Day the event was planned to be 3 hours long.
- The first hour was the Opening Ceremony and the next 2 hours were 2 interesting workshops named Art of powerful Questions and how they will be helpful in finding the solution to the problem that will be given in the hackathon.
- The Last Hour was the mentor- team huddle. This is where we met our mentors for the hackathon for the first time. Mentors will stay with the team throughout the hackathon. They play a huge role in the hackathon, They’ll help the team brainstorming the solution, understanding the problem and also help while coding the problem.
- Participants can also individually ask the mentors about their queries regarding the work in JPMC or anything else.
The 3rd day was the D-Day. The Day of the Hackathon.
- It started at 8 am in the morning. Where every team will be shown the problem statements of the NGO’s and after the problem statements were shown, we’ll be given a time of 15 mins to rank our choices of preferred problem statements in order.
- This works in First Come First Serve Manner, My team and I were quick to find out what problem statement we want and we, fortunately, got our first choice to work with. Then we had a session with the particular leaders of NGO whose problem statement was our problem statement for the Hackathon.
- The session was to clarify the doubts and to get a clear understanding of their requirements, After the Session the main part started, the coding part. My team and I discussed the problem statement and their requirements and then started working on the coding part for the next 22 hours. After the Coding is done we then had to present our solution to the leaders of NGO and answer their questions.
- After all the presentations of all the teams the finalists for every individual Problem Statements, (Every Problem Statement will have exactly 3 finalists) were announced.
- Fortunately, we were one of the finalists of that particular problem statement and we went to the final judging round.
- Unfortunately, we were not able to win the Hackathon but all I can say was it was a beautiful experience, Even though the Organizers could not arrange the hackathon offline they were still able to do an amazing job to arrange an event of such a high magnitude online.
VERDICT: SELECTED
20 days after the Hackathon the results were announced and coincidentally everyone from our team got selected.
This is one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, I learned more in this Hackathon than what I’ve learned in a semester. I was fortunate to meet really amazing and talented people in my team and get a lot insight from my mentors and SME’s. I really thank my college and JP Morgan Chase for giving me this wonderful opportunity.