 Okay. Hi, guys. Thanks for joining this session. We have a Muskaan Kedia who is from Odisha, and is presently a fourth-year student at CET Bhubaneshwar, and she has successfully completed GSOC with the My First Initiative, and an internship as a software engineer at Microsoft India during her junior year. She has mentored students participating in GSS SOC, K-Walk and more. She loves reading articles and books and traveling to different places. So, Muskaan, over to you. Thank you, Manashmi, for giving such a great introduction. Hello, everyone. As already she has given the introduction, I would like to directly begin with the talk and the main theme of... I'm going to present. So, sharing my screen. Please let me know if the screen is visible. So, as the title of the talk is, Yet Another Career Approach, I have actually seen a lot of students' confusions about their career and how they should prepare and approach towards the opportunity of their interest. So, I thought of giving the talk on how students, students, being irrespective of any of the years, should approach to different opportunities and grab it all and take the most of it. So, initially, I'll be sharing some of my experience of some successful attempts that aims to act as a guide to the students in selecting their career options. And some areas that bear high importance with respect to professional employment are also discussed over the session. So, as my introduction, I have recently completed my software engineering intern at Microsoft and have also successfully completed GSOC with the MIFOS initiative. Here I present my social handles. You can contact me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or email me at my email id. I'm Sondrat Kheria, 2000 at the rate gmail.com. So, in this session, what will we be discussing about? Initially, I'll be starting with how I approach to software engineering, how I develop my intern when I started in the programming. So, after that, we'll be talking about tips to get into software engineering, how to find different opportunities and openings. These are the main routes I have been heard from many of the students. Like, we lost the opportunity or we couldn't get informed about there was an opening. We got informed after the opening was closed and many other things. So, we'll be discussing how to get it at the correct time and grab it. So, and how to grab the intensive opportunities and make the best out of it. Like, it's not only about applying an opportunity but also performing the best at that position and gaining the best experience during the internship. Then, are personal projects necessary? Many of the students are like, they are more focused towards competitive coding and they don't have any of the experience towards personal projects. So, are they important or aren't they? We'll be discussing in the further slides. Why should you contribute to open source? Open source has been a great opportunity for students to widen their knowledge to learn a lot more about it. But some of them have just taken it as granted and don't focus more about it. So, I'll be giving a small glimpse about how is open source important? What are the benefits from open source? What is GSOC? Why to approach for GSOC and how is it beneficial? GSOC is also a program, is an open source program and it keeps in lots of benefits. We'll be discussing it further. What actually happens in an internship? What is the actual needs and the truth about what actually happens in an internship? I will be giving a small description based on my experience. And the last, you can raise up for any of the question answers also you can write in the question answer all in the chats I will be taking up at the end. So, starting with the, how and when I started, I have been passionate about professional course, competitive coding and developing softwares from my freshman years. So, but I took up my peers during my second year of engineering when actually I got involved in many of the hackathons and internships. I tried to catch all of them. And I completed one internship after another, like you can also have a look. I have come up till now I've completed more than five internship during this three years of career. And many more start to be going, are up to be add on our things. Then further, I have also mentored various students during the, during some open source programs like GSOAP or KWOC. And whenever I get opportunity to do so. So, the further some of the tips like, how should a student approach to our software engineering or why should a student approach to our software engineering or the IT field? The first thing is anyone interested in software engineering or anyone passionate about coding doesn't need to be in the CS field. So, like there is a myth that only the CSE students or the IT field students should get into development or get into software engineering, but no, that's not the truth. Students from any branch can get into software engineering. You should start as early as possible as the more early you start, the more experienced and with the more experienced, you can expertise the field. And it will increase your chance of getting selected for a better company or in a better position. Also participating in different sessions and hackathons helps you, helps for better understanding, better understanding in the terms of getting more knowledge, collaborating with peers of, peers sharing the same interest and many other things which also helps you know about the after world, how, how developers work, how, what is the actual life of a coder? Now, in the, I would actually recommend everyone that in the initial years, in the initial years of starting development or coding, they should not stick to a particular field. Instead, learn and explore the more, explore all the different fields like web development, mobile app development, ML, AI, everything and find the one that interests you. It's not like that one person is in MLAs so I should also just go behind them and start MLEI. It's your personal choice which interests you, you should go and start doing that. But in order to find your interest, you need to explore all the fields and get the best of it. And the second, and the next point is build projects and collaborate, like building more and more projects, help you learn new ideas, learn new technologies. Now this, the technologies are evolved, new technologies are evolving every day. So getting in touch with it and getting the pace with the new technologies is extremely necessary. Also, bring a habit and do a habituation, habituate yourself to read the code written by experienced developers. As the better the code you read, the better the code you write. Getting into the topic, finding internships and job opportunities. There have been various questions, how will I get to know that when there is an opening, how can I get to know that a company like, my dream company has now opened for the software engineering position or marketing position, anyone that you have aimed for. There are some of the basic knowledge you need to get There is a career page for every company, like that with Microsoft, Google, Amazon, every company have a career page and they post all their openings for different fields in that career page. So you can always keep an eye on the career page and look up for the possible opportunities and apply for it. And that is the main point is, that is irrespective of the college you belong to. It is not necessary that if you're only from the first year college, then only you can apply for it. Nowadays company have moved on from that college thing that only the IITs and IITs will be hired. Now they're mostly hired irrespective of the colleges. Also, another approach is connect to the seniors, like connect to the college seniors. They are much more aware of the openings and much more informed about the current openings and also the college passouts. And ask them about the openings in their particular company, approach them for the interns or job reference. And there is also in LinkedIn or Twitter also, there are various pages and media handles which post about the openings of different companies, like interview, and all the frequently post about all the companies, they all the companies, they have openings. So following it also, you can get to know about the recent openings of different companies and go and apply for it. But while applying for the internship now, obviously you have found the intensive opportunities. Now next is how can you grab that opportunity? So the first point comes is luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Many of them says that I got the opportunity but I couldn't pass it. Some of them says that I couldn't know the opportunity but I was prepared for it. So always be prepared, always be prepared that we regarding your resume or the company reporting. So whenever an opportunity comes, you can take the best out of it and get selected. Another point is apply only for openings that fulfill all your requirements. Like some of the companies they want the third year student but I've seen most of the fourth year students also apply for it. Just in the regard area, let's apply for it. But don't ever do that. It's only create a burden for the company and getting it. And it's obvious that if you don't fulfill the requirements and if you have filled the comp, you will be rejected. And that will lower your confidence and you will be thinking like there are a lot of reactions from multiple companies. So the point is how now for getting selected and the first thing comes when you apply for an opening is the selection or resume selection. How to get a resume selected? The, in order to strengthen your resume, make if either you need experience or you need personal projects. Most of the freshman year students don't have much of the intensive or actually the companies want experience and the students want intensive. So the barrier is been closed by the personal projects. Then further points come like as you can see in this particular quote, I can't get a job because I don't have experience. I don't have experience because I can't get a job. This is the major problem faced by all the professors, professors, passouts and also the second year career students looking for the intensive. So projects plays a vital role in managing this gap and making a strength, making a powerful resume which can actually attract the recruiters and help you getting selected or at least the resume selection on dress is on the student, how we are see a performance in the further interviews. Projects are also important as it helps us dive deeper in the respect to girls, get more knowledge about the particular text that you are working for the particular project. And it also helps us to write a better course, face real wild challenges and become a better developer every day. Purpose of open source contribution. Now, as it explained the purpose of the personal projects is it not only require that you are two or three students or just make a group and start working on a project. Also, you can go for the open source contributions. Open source contribution provides a wide range of work to learn and explore. The many of the course if you go even and the Google has now taken the initiative to make most of the core open source. So many of the students like they can read the code of the experience developers and learn from it and improve their coding skills. It opens those contribution also provides an opportunity to collaborate with contributors all over the world. That is irrespective of the year you are in the college, the college you belong to or the experience where there is no bias in that contribution. It only, they only look for your code. Then it also provides for the flexibility to work, raise issues and pull request, provides opportunity to improve the software on a user and a business level. Yes, you can also use the software and raise the pull request, raise the issue. At the same time, you can, for that issue, you can raise a pull request and solve it. Help you gain deeper knowledge about the software contributing to open source projects, help to build reputation and leverage your career. It also helps in creating a strong resume having a contributing to some of the major projects in open source creates a very heavy impact on your resume. You can write it over your projects or experience section in your resume. Contributing to open source projects is always fun and also gives you personal satisfaction of contributing something in real world. Benefits of open source contribution. Now when a person is doing some work, everyone expects some of the benefits from it. So gain early experience, it's irrespective, it's non-biased completely. Then helps you gain a recognition with the community, helps to increase chances of landing an intensive and improve the job and career process. As I said, it's helped to create a very strong resume. Open source programs provides perks to encourage students. Like there are various programs such as Google, Google Summer of Four, Maser Lake Hacking and they provides a lot of perks. For Google Summer of Four, I'll be discussing in the further slides what are its perks and why should a student approach towards Google Summer of Four. Now, how to approach first and how is it beneficial? Anyway, student interest for Google Summer of Four, there is a simple approach. Every one thing that is a very high piping we need to get for one year and then only we could get this or it's nothing such. It's a very simple approach. There are a list of 200 organizations in the website. You just have to go through organization if the one most suitable for you. It should be based on your tech stack and your interest. That might be front end, back end, ML, AI, any of the, or mobile app development, anything that interests you. And the tech stack that you could work for three months of career if selected. Start contributing to it as early as possible. The GSOC contribution actually starts in the month of Feb or March, but you can look for the organization much earlier and start contributing to it. So you could have a large number of peers, have a good number of good relations with the organization and the expected mentors. So you could build your reputation within the organization and increase your chance of selection. Also, you can discuss how the mentors over the GSOC are very helpful and very cooperative. You could discuss your ideas with the mentors and they could also help you to write a well-defined proposal in which you could express your ideas and how you are going to benefit that organization if selected. These are some of the basic steps that any student can follow and easily get into GSOC. Now, what are the advantages of getting into GSOC? First is exposure. You get a chance to work with developers all around the world and learn new tech stacks. It's not only based on your mentor but also the different developers that they were contributing towards it. You can talk to them, collaborate with them, even get to know many other opportunities and the more you involve in a community, the more experience and the more knowledge you acquire. Also, there is a full stipend amount. Then there is a brand making like the tag of GSOC will always give an extra advantage over other applicants while applying for the job or intensive, specifically for applying for any of the good startup companies. They specifically look for GSOC students. Even having a GSOC, you can skip the initial two to three rounds during the interview process. Build connection. It helps you to connect with awesome people, professional, like you will get a chance to work on the real world problem and get to work into production. So you get a complete wholesome knowledge, wholesome experience of the professional work and a bit of glimpse of the corporate on how it works. Further, this is the, I would like to summarize here a bit like about my experience, what actually happens in an internship and how a student preparing for an internship should have the mindset. As we have seen a lot of students always focused towards company reporting and have a thought like, I'm good at company reporting, I have been selected for an internship. But what's the real truth within the internship is when we go within an internship, it's very rare that any of the data structures or algorithms you have practiced hard during the interviews, during the preparation of the interviews, you are going to use it. That may for years, you are not going to use it anywhere. It's only to take your problem solving thinking and a problem solving skills. And right, optimized code, you have the interview procedure starts from company reporting, but the actual fact lies on personal projects. During the term of the internship, even during the term of the internship, you have to work on a particular project that you have to give it to production. You have to make a good core practice and also working and also learn different languages like Node.js or Golang or the backend language they are using, front-end language they are using that you are not going to learn anywhere during company reporting. I have seen a lot of students, they have faced a lot of problems during, they are the specific company reporting students, those who got an internship into MNCs and they have faced a lot of problems during the internship as they had never created their own project. And they had to learn everything from scratch. So having a personal project and having some particular information, a particular experience on it helps you a lot. So that's actually, I think very rare people tell about that what happens within an internship. Even I didn't knew when I joined an internship, I got to, I got to throw my own experience. So we always have, always have that mindset that our projects are also necessary with company reporting. Company reporting might lead you to get into an internship but won't make your life easy during the internship. That may be an internship or job. In both the case, it happens the same. That's all from my side about my some of my experience. And if anyone has any of the questions, you can raise it up now. Thanks a lot. I can't believe that you are a first time speaker. I mean, you did a good job. Thanks for sharing the experience. I'm sure that this session will highly help students get enlightened about the industry and how to make it work as a fresher in this industry. So thank you again. Thanks for saying yes to this and going for it. So yeah, feel free to share all your questions on this chat. I guess people have already left but there are a couple or more people. So feel free to share your questions. Muskaan will be here to take that up. Yeah, I had one question. How did you come across this topic like yet another career approach like? It was like quite related to YAP compiler. So it was like YACC compiler. So I made it like YACC yet another career approach. Okay, that's great. That's really innovative. So yeah, Jagannath says thank you. Okay, okay. So have you joined the Zulip channel, Muskaan? Yeah, I have joined it. Okay, Muskaan will be hanging around in the Zulip channel in case she is not able to take the questions now. So feel free to shoot your questions there or here, whatever works for you. And cool. So I guess we'll be having a keynote as well. Like it's already there, I guess. So we can quickly move on to that because no one wants to miss a keynote. Okay, yeah, we have one question. Ma'am, more about GSOC and other programs. Like more about GSOC you can ping me on my LinkedIn or my mail, like I can explain you how to get about GSOC and basically GSOC, giving a brief description. GSOC is World Summer of Code and Open Source Program organized by Google to enable to help students contribute towards open source. And it also like provides a great opportunity for three months intensive to the students. It's a brief introduction about GSOC. And there is another MLH major league hacking. It has been started this year only due to the pandemic situation. It also provides a three months intensive to the students about in the open source contributions. And actually it provides a wide area. Like it also provides a Facebook code for in which you can contribute. So when the student interested can also look for MLH instead of GSOC and all. Yeah, one more thing regarding open source opportunities in case you wanna get more knowledge about the other programs, you can always, you know, go to a repository that has been compiled by the Paswini Pathak on a Summer of Code programs. You can go there and have a look. I'll be sharing it here in case I get it right now. Yeah, I have like it contains the list of all the open source programs and the dates of openings and all. Yeah, yeah. So that will keep you updated about open source programs and what, at what time what program is starting so that you can leverage and make the most out of it. Cool, then we are, we still have seven minutes though, but we don't want to eat. Okay, it would be great if you could share the link. Okay, Muskan, do you have the link? Link for the presentation. No, like you can also share the presentation, right here. I have the link to Paswini Pathak's open source programs as well, I guess. Let me just have a look. Yeah, I have it. I'm sharing it right now. Yeah, I forgot it. Cool. So, Shrut, go to that link and you can have a look at all the open source programs that takes place around the year. So there are some things that take place like throughout the year as well. So you can have a look at that. Cool, then. I think we should be making a move because we don't want to eat much of the keynote. So thank you again, Muskan. Thank you all for joining. So feel free to, yeah, sorry. Thanks to the pilot is who made sure for giving me this opportunity to give my first talk during the PyCon and the PyCon India for organizing such a great online event. Okay. Thank you so much, Muskan. Yeah, thank you.