My Journey to a Summer Internship at Adobe

Sign Up for an Interview with Adobe

That is what the subject line of the email I had received in the afternoon said. I was excited and surprised to receive that email as I did not remember applying to Adobe. I was sure about that because I noted down all the companies I had applied to and Adobe was not on the list. The applications hadn’t even opened up!

After talking about it with a few friends and going through my older emails, I realised that they sent me an invitation after reading my resume. And I did remember giving them my resume when I signed up for an online Technical Panel event in September 2021.

Note: Due to confidentiality agreement, I cannot share the exact questions that I was asked during the interviews.

Preparation

Like any other interview, I looked over the most frequent Adobe tagged questions on LeetCode, read about the stuff that I had written on my resume, and revised the basic CS concepts for questions related to database (DBMS), operating systems (OS), object oriented programming (OOP) etc. GeeksForGeeks is one my most favorite places to revise the CS concepts. I also went through interview questions based on React.js and JavaScript as they were one of the main skills on my resume.

I followed the same process for my final round of interviews as well. However, I focused more on the things I had written on my resume instead of LeetCode questions because after the first round, I felt that I should read about some technologies I had mentioned on my resume in more detail. For example, in the first round, the interviewer asked me about the difference between SQL and NoSQL as I had worked with PostgreSQL and MongoDB both. Hence, it was important for me to read about everything that I wrote on my resume and I would advise you the same.

On a side note, don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t know the answer to a question during the interview. It’s okay to not know something. Even I did not know the answer to a question during many of my interviews. However, I feel that it is important to make a genuine effort to answer it during the interview. You can also drive it like a discussion and ask the interviewer what it is exactly, take notes, and read about it later. Doing so has helped me so far and it may help you as well.

Interview Process

My interview process was a bit different. I was first invited for a 30-minute round. In the first round, the interviewer asked me a simple programming question and my approach’s optimization (only the logic, no code required). I was also asked some basic questions related to OOP, DBMS, OS, questions based on things that I had on my resume such as React, SQL etc, and a couple of behavioral questions. This interview was a very quick one as I felt that there were too many questions for a 30-minute window.

A week after the first round, I was invited for my final round. This is what was most different from other interviews. The final round was called ‘Software Engineering Interview Forum’ and there were more that 25 teams who were interviewing as a part of the forum. I received my final schedule where they informed me about the teams that I will be interviewing with. A day before the final round, they also hosted a welcome call for the interview candidates where they explained the overall process and cleared general queries regarding possible offers and deadlines. This is when I realised that there are many other students who are going through the same interview pipeline.

My interview was scheduled with four different teams. In all the interviews, the panelists comprised of the manager of the team and one or more team-members. Summarizing all the four interviews, I was asked questions based on my previous experiences, projects, publication, research work, typical behavioral questions, and two algorithmic questions which I was required to code. Overall, my experience with all the interviews was quite positive. They were interested to know what I can bring to the table and asked specific questions regarding my previous experiences. Moreover, they were friendly if I did not remember something or had to take up a hint for a programming question.

After the interviews, I was asked to give my preferences for the teams that I would like to receive an offer from. Imagine a stable matching problem. First, the teams gave a preference for interviewing candidates, and then the candidates gave their preferences for the teams.

I received an offer after 4 business days. I did have an offer deadline from a different company. So this duration may be longer or shorter depending upon your situation.

Key Takeaways

Every international student on an F-1 visa goes through the same pressure of finding an internship, followed by a job. My prime lesson from this experience is to keep applying, attend webinars, connect with recruiters, reach out to friends or seniors until you have one offer on your hand. Having an offer takes off a huge load of your shoulders. Don’t feel shy or ashamed to ask for help. If you don’t get response from the first person you contact, ask the next one. Remember the dialogue from Harry Potter?

Good luck for your interview!