BigShyft-Xcelerate for Candidate

What does BigShyft-Xcelerate offer to you : As a candidate, who is actively searching for jobs or still thinking of a possible career change, we help them find the right jobs that suit their requirements and skill sets. We believe candidates are at a fundamental disadvantage compared to companies and we want to be their partners to help them discover the best career choices!

If you are actively searching for a job, You can sign up on our platform, complete your profile and indicate your preferences in terms of the type of role/company etc. The entire process would take around 10 minutes of your time. Based on the track you are looking to apply for, we would then require you to schedule an interview with us. A certified BigShyft-Xcelerate Interviewer will take you to the interview at the selected time and based on the interview feedback, we help fast-track your application to the right companies.

What is BigShyft-Xcelerate interview?

BigShyft-Xcelerate conducts live technical interviews as a part of companies/clients hiring process and the interview is for 45-60min and is conducted with the BigShyft-Xcelerate Interviewer over a video call. Its a live pair programming session in a fully tooled IDE to show your skills & the details of the interview depend on the track which you are applying for. E.g. For the software engineering track, the interview will be a live coding assignment, during which you will be required to use your knowledge of algorithms, data structures and coding skills to come up with relevant solutions to the problems presented. During the interview, you just have to write the code in your preferred language and you will have a live support, feedback and guidance from the BigShyft-Xcelerate Interviewer.

Who are BigShyft-Xcelerate Interviewers?

BigShyft-Xcelerate Interviewers are top software engineers from companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, etc who are passionate about technical interviewing. BigShyft-Xcelerate interviewers are trained through a rigorous process of Shadows and Reverse shadows to ensure calibration and enabling them to understand how to capture the right signals from the interviews and all interviewers are equipped with data driven best practices, interview questions and IDE environment.

Schedule Interview with BigShyft-Xcelerate : Anytime you feel comfortable! If you are actively looking for a job, its best to schedule the interview as soon as possible. You can schedule by directly applying to jobs on our platform which is reviewed within 24 hours and once approved, you can go to the Schedule interview tab to choose a slot of your convenience or our technical recruiter will connect with you to schedule the interview and will send an invitation via email and you can schedule the interview anytime that is convenient for you even nights and weekends.  

We strongly believe that resumes are not the best representation of a candidate’s software engineering skills, so don’t worry if you don’t have the best resume. We rely heavily on interviews to provide us with additional right signals for candidates. We then use a combination of signals from Resumes and signals from our interview to find out the right JDs that would be suitable for you and recommend them to you.

Pre-Interview : 

Interview Preparation

Make sure you’re in a quiet environment with headphones. You may want to avoid using speakers which would make communication more difficult. Given the time constraints of an interview, having to repeat yourself due to poor communication will result in a loss of precious time.

• Some useful preparation links DailyCodingProblem, Top Algorithms Youtube Channel, LeetCode.

Best Practices for a Successful Interview

• Ask Questions. If anything is unclear about the problem when you first read it over, ask your interviewer. Clarifying your assumptions and basic ambiguities are vital to ensuring you’re solving the correct problem.

• Start simple, then optimize. While having a high-level design in mind is important before starting to code, it’s good to first come up with a simple brute-force solution with your interviewer, and then go from there, When asked to provide a solution, first define and framework the problem as you see it & later Describe how you want to tackle solving each part of the question.

• Assumption : If you need to assume something ‐ verbally check if its a correct assumption!

• Think out loud : Take the time to discuss your approach with your interviewer and then walk them through your implementation as you code. Always let your interviewer know what you are thinking as he/she will be as interested in your process of thought  as your solution. Also, if you’re stuck, they may provide hints if they know what you’re doing.

• Hints : Don’t miss a hint if your interviewer is trying to assist you! If the interviewer offers a hint or counterexample, make sure you incorporate them in your approach.

During the interview – We try to capture every possible signal from the interview we conduct including Coding efficiency, speed, Problem solving, communication etc. A detailed break-up of the interview feedback is shared with the company of your interest and where we think you are the right fit. We maintain full privacy and do not expose the results of your interview to companies if we do not think you are a right fit for it!

Interview questions at BigShyft-Xcelerate: 

BigShyft-Xcelerate interviews are for 45-60 minutes and questions are designed to represent a real work environment where the interviewer can get the most accurate signals from the interviews. Candidates who are in early stages of their career will get questions on coding exercises and for those who are senior and mid-career will get a combination of coding exercises, specific questions and project level discussion. 

Post Interview : 

If you do well in the Interview : If you do well in an interview with BigShyft-Xcelerate, we allow your application to our portfolio companies to be fast-tracked.

Interview didn’t go well :  Mistakes are a part of life and our goal is to learn from them and improve on it. Even the best of candidates mess up interviews.

Here are the most common possibilities:

• If your interview didn’t go well and you believe it is not a right reflection of what you are capable of, we allow you to take another interview with us. Just let us know what went wrong and we will schedule another one for you. Note that because of volume constraints at our end, we only allow one additional interview for a 3 months period.
• Sometimes however, it might indeed be that some areas need further improvement from your side and we want to be honest with you. We will provide you the right feedback if we believe so and we encourage you to act on the feedback and come back to us when you are ready again (in weeks/months/etc. – at your own convenience.)!
• If you don’t pass the BigShyft-Xcelerate interview, it doesn’t mean you can’t apply to the companies. Our interview is confidential and like all processes. So, while we don’t fast track your application to the companies on our platform, we also don’t tell companies that you didn’t pass our interview. You are free to go and apply to those companies through other sources. Alternatively, you can improve, come back and interview with us again and then apply to those companies through our platform itself.
• We do not share any information about you with companies until you want us to. We will then only share with companies that you have shown an interest to join and where we think we can get your application fast tracked.

How companies will contact you after the interview : Our interviewers logs in their feedback within an hour of completing the interview and we then forward your profile to companies you expressed interest in, and you should expect to be contacted by the companies within a week after that.