Yash Kulkarni – Finmechanics

About me

Hello, I am Yash Kulkarni, a fourth-year student in MEMS department. I was also a part of sports council and MEMS department council in my second year, leading me to becoming the Rubiks Club Manager in my third year, so I believe I have explored the PoR spectrum of insti 😉 I like hanging out with my friends and play(discuss mainly) cricket in my free time apart from playing chess during studies (not so proud). I am one of the department ranker in my department, so yeah I have good academics, however I am not much interested in pursuing career in it. I am doing minor in CSE, and which interested me in the field of software development. And thus I decided to put my best foot forward for software internships in my internship season.

My Internship preparation and Interview preparation

As I was sure I wanted to go into the software development field, I started my preparation from my 6^th semester. I mainly focussed on the competitive programming part in this phase, I ensured that I am able to solve medium level questions of hot topics at least. Apart from that I wasn’t a part of any tech team or club, so I mainly had self projects showcasing my interests in tech. Here I would like to emphasize that even if you have self projects, those are treated equally good if you have truly worked good in it, and know what it is inside out. Apart from that I ensured I would have a decent CPI and other achievements, so that I would be able to build my resume and didn’t lack any points.

Interviews are the most controllable factor in your selection process, because sometimes in a coding exam things might not go well or some hard questions might be asked or from the topic which feels hard to you might come. However such is not a case in interviews, you can steer it, and questions are asked based on your resume or in your field of interest, which makes it possible to prepare for. So on every point in your resume, prepare 3-4 points which you know about and prepare well for it. 

Could you describe the selection/ interview process?

When the IAF is opened, it classifies the internship as Finance related, however it is not that. They also offer software, analytics roles as well.

The selection process for FinMechanics included one test, followed by two personal interviews. 

Test: Test had two parts, first where we were supposed to submit Google forms, which has various behaviour and personality related questions. And also about the your perception and opinions about the firm

Personal Interviews: First round interview was very different for everyone. So based on your profile, your interest they asked you questions. So for me, it was majorly software related. They asked some DSA questions, and some basic puzzles and probability.  For some other friends of mine, who had something in finance, they asked something related to finance on which the candidate has written in the resume. 

The second round was more of a resume go through round imo. There was a panel of around 8-10 people in front of you, and they ask questions on your projects. Also some other personality based questions were asked.

So to summarize, the first round was a technical round and the second round was the general interview.

So the selection process was overall very good for me, as I was very well prepared for it. So you could practice well for all of your resume points (projects or otherwise), you could very well get landed safely.

Internship Experience

FinMechanics (FM) really ensures you get a very nice internship experience. They take care of your financial background, and organise FM101 sessions. These sessions are taken by company employees and they teach (yeah really, on a whiteboard with a pen in hand!!) ensuring everyone understands the work which company does. Also there are Tech101 sessions, ensuring a similar tech background. They floated a form during the second week to ask us for our interests, and in which domain and on which part we want to work. And they ensure that we all get the best project available based on the filled interests. I got to work on the flagship product for my project. So I had to develop features to the currently present system such as adding visual features such as graphs, developing new financial instruments and then extending features to it, and more. My tech-stack was ExtJS (Javascript based frontend framework similar to React), Java Spring, Hibernate, MS SQL. 

People are very approachable in FM, no matter who is your mentor, if you ask your doubt to anyone else, no one said otherwise. Also fun activities and team dinners were there, so there was fun apart from work xD. 

FM exclusively goes to only 4 IITs, IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, so it was really fun to interact with other IIT students, and alums. 

Hurdles

There were not many hurdles overall in my internship tenure, I was exposed to Java Spring beforehand, and I code in Java, so it was easy for me, however if you don’t know Java, and are looking for software development in FM, I would recommend to start learning it, at least basics of it, so that it would be easy to start working during the project. The difficulty which I faced was in Javascript, so I had to learn it on the go, but I guess we all have to learn something along the way, and that’s why it is called internship. 

I was really excited to look at the corporate world for myself, I really enjoyed it. However, working 5 days a week along with travelling to and from the firm was tiring sometimes due to Mumbai traffic. 

Also as I mentioned before, I was not a part of any tech team or club, so I was new to such large projects, wherein there are thousands of files (which are not written by you and thus difficult to understand if we just wander off to understand xD), and use of Git at an enterprise level.

Other explorations during internship period

As FM is in Mumbai, so there was no city exploration part remaining, however we did explore various clubs. On weekends I also enjoyed some cooking in my room, apart from that it was really fun to see insti in summer when there was so little population. 

Final Remarks

Preparing for interviews is important and equally necessary if not greater than practicing your competitive coding skills. And keep talking to seniors for any need whenever required, everyone is approachable, all you have to ask!

As there are many opportunities for software roles, it also has large competition, so don’t feel sad if you get shortlisted soon, keep working when the time is tough, and then the sun will rise for you. This really helped me during my internship and got me a PPO.

Even though I would like to give more “Gyaan”, I would stop here, and would like to wish all the best for your internship season!

So in case you feel like talking, feel free to reach out.

Cheers!

Yash Kulkarni

8799866332