Placement Preparation Guide

Placement preparation fails for one of two reasons far more often than any other: starting too late, or studying everything at once. Neither is a knowledge problem. This guide lays out the order that works, what each stage is actually assessed on, and roughly how long to give it.

Everything here is free on crackalgo and tickable as you go, so you can treat this page as the plan and the sheets as the work.

What a placement process actually looks like

Almost every Indian recruiting process, on-campus or off, runs the same four stages in the same order:

1. Resume shortlist or eligibility filter — often automated, and often the largest single cut.
2. Online assessment — aptitude, reasoning and verbal, plus one or more coding problems. This eliminates the biggest share of applicants.
3. Technical interview — one or two rounds on DSA, core CS subjects, your projects and your primary language.
4. HR or managerial round — fit, communication, and situational judgement.

The order matters because the stages are not equally weighted in your favour. You cannot reach a technical round you are strong in without clearing an aptitude test you ignored. Prepare in the order the process happens, not in the order you enjoy.

The order to prepare in

1. Aptitude — start first, keep it small and constant

Quantitative aptitude, logical reasoning and verbal ability gate the entire funnel at most service-based companies and plenty of product ones. It is also the stage with the best effort-to-outcome ratio, because the question types repeat almost exactly year to year.

Thirty to forty-five minutes a day is enough. What is not enough is starting it two weeks before the drive. Work through the aptitude sheet topic by topic — formulas first, then worked solutions.

2. DSA — the longest stage, so start it early and never stop

This is where most of your hours go and the only stage that genuinely takes months. The mistake is solving problems at random. Solve by pattern: doing eight sliding-window problems in a row is what makes the ninth recognisable under interview pressure, and jumping between topics does not.

Pick one sheet and finish it rather than sampling four. If you have no strong reason to prefer another, the Striver A2Z DSA Sheet is the default worth defaulting to: it starts from basics and ends at advanced graphs and DP, so it is the one sheet that does not assume you already know where to begin. The DSA sheets page tracks the well-known ones, and the comparison page gives realistic hour estimates for each so you can pick by the time you actually have. If you are short on months rather than unsure, the 22 essential patterns is the smallest set that still covers most of what gets asked.

3. Core CS subjects — cheap marks, frequently skipped

DBMS, Operating Systems, Computer Networks and OOPS come up in almost every technical round, and they are pure recall rather than problem-solving, which makes them far faster to prepare than DSA. Candidates who are strong at DSA routinely lose rounds here because they never revised them.

Work through the core subjects banks and the topic-wise interview questions.

4. Projects and your primary language

You will be asked to explain something you built. Two projects you can discuss in depth — the design decisions, what broke, what you would change — beat six you can only describe. Expect follow-ups in whichever language your resume claims, so revise that language's question bank too.

5. Company-specific practice — the last four weeks

Once a company is confirmed, switch from general practice to its actual question set. Every company sheet on crackalgo is ordered by the patterns that company leans on most, so the first two or three sections buy you most of the coverage. Browse all of them on company-wise DSA.

6. HR round — prepare it, do not wing it

The HR round is not a formality and it is the cheapest stage to prepare, because the questions are largely known in advance. Have real answers ready for strengths, weaknesses, why this company, and a failure you learned from. The HR questions bank covers the standard set with model answers.

How long each stage takes

These are working estimates, not promises — they assume consistent daily effort rather than weekend bursts.

If you have six months, run aptitude and DSA in parallel from day one and add core subjects at the halfway mark. If you have two months, cut the DSA sheet down to the patterns list, keep aptitude daily, and do not skip core subjects — they are the fastest marks available to you.

Common mistakes

• Collecting resources instead of finishing one. Four half-done sheets is worse than one finished sheet.
• Skipping aptitude because it feels beneath you. It is the stage that removes most candidates.
• Solving problems without writing the approach down. Interviews assess reasoning out loud; silent solving does not build that.
• Ignoring core subjects. Strong DSA candidates lose rounds on DBMS questions every year.
• Starting company-specific practice too early. Broad pattern coverage first, company sets last.
• Treating off-campus as a backup. For most students it is the primary route — see the off-campus guide.

Track it rather than guessing

The reason to tick problems off is not neatness. It is that "I've done graphs" and "I've done nine of the twenty-two graph problems" lead to very different revision decisions in the last fortnight, and only one of them is true. Every sheet, subject bank and company set on crackalgo is tickable, free, and needs no account.