Imagine getting rejected from 20 companies in a row and still turning up for the 21st interview.
It was my love for the field and unrelenting efforts that were always greater than any rejection for me. These two things helped me brave all those rejections and land up at the top fantasy sports platform of India.
You don’t need to come from a fancy background to dream big. My journey is a testament to this fact. Coming from a very small town in Rajasthan with an obvious lack of resources and studying in a government school didn’t stop me from having bigger goals and achieving them.
I studied in a government school in Rajasthan. During those years, I had little to no guidance for knowing the nuances of this field. Regardless, I joined the MBM engineering college in Jodhpur. Since this was a tier-III college, I didn’t have any major expectations from the college as such. But my graduation experience wasn’t anything that I had imagined, at least for the most part.
My coding journey started in graduation as a way of getting rid of fear. This must have got you thinking- what does a college student have to fear? Let me tell you something. So when I started college, I was not only unaware of the concepts in the curriculum but also way behind as compared to other batchmates. It might be hard to believe but seeing others do programming to perfection while you were just a novice, induced real fear. The fear of not being as good as them and lagging was increasing with every passing day. I then decided to not relent before I get better. While the journey started on this note, it didn’t continue for this reason. As soon as I was introduced to the world of coding, I knew this was it for me as nothing had ever interested me more.
Consequently, I got better with my constant efforts. I became confident enough to participate in the ACM ICPC competition with my friends. We failed in the first round itself in our first attempt in second year and second attempt third year. But we weren’t the ones to give up that easily. We again participated in the competition in our 4th year. This time, not only did we clear all the rounds but also secured all India 39th rank. This has to be one of the best experiences of my graduation as it was a great achievement for us as well as the college. I didn’t have much to complain about the level of education during those 4 years of graduation but you know how it is with the placement side of tier-III colleges. We didn’t receive even a single opportunity of interviewing with any big companies during our placements. I managed with whatever resources I had and joined a startup in Udaipur, Rajasthan.
I got a pretty good practical learning experience at this startup but I wanted to try different avenues. I was looking for different opportunities on the internet and I found quite a few free online courses but they weren’t of much help due to a lack of consistency from my end. Then, I came across Scaler Academy’s online coding course and it solved my problem of lacking consistency with a system of regular lectures and assignments.
Along with consistency in efforts, I didn’t compromise on my time commitment to the course. I remember spending 5-6 hours on average while DS Algo was being taught at Scaler. My lectures used to be from 9-11 at night and when they would get over at 11, I ended up wanting to learn more. The college version of me would laugh in disbelief if he heard me wanting extended lectures. But that’s just how much I enjoyed learning during those months. I readjusted my schedule after DS Algo as the concepts didn’t require more than 1-2 hours to get done with.
I subsequently got an offer from Lenskart and worked there for a few months before beginning another round of job hunting. This time things were different for me. I don’t know why but when I was interviewing for jobs in March 2021, I got rejected from 20-25 companies in a row. From startups to tech giants, I was rejected from everywhere. I can’t begin to discuss the amount of frustration this brought on. Even more than frustration, I felt distraught somehow because I had both the experience and the expertise. But you know by now, giving up has never been an option for me. I knew that not giving interviews would hardly be a solution to this. So, I kept on giving interviews even if I ended up getting rejected and guess what? The magic of consistency worked for me suddenly when I got attractive offers from Swiggy, Dream11, and Flipkart in June 2021. I decided on Dream11 and now that I look back, what a journey it has been!
From my experience, consistency is the solution to all your problems and it would definitely bring results, sooner or later.
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