On 20th March, 2023. I applied for the GDSC Lead role, at that time, I was in the 1st semester of the 1st year. And then on 12th April, I completed the diagnostic test. And after a long wait, I finally got an interview scheduled option via video call on the 30th of April.
I scheduled my first-ever interview on the 4th of May, around 1:45 pm. So, in this article, I'm going to share my GDSC lead interview experience.
On the interview day, I joined the meeting 2 minutes early, and the interviewer joined exactly on time. The interviewer was young, very friendly, greeted me warmly, and asked me how I was. I answered him confidently. And asked him too how his day was. After that, he told me to write my college name, branch, and location in the chatbox of Google Meet. He also inquired whether my college already had a GDSC club.
After all this, the interview started and the first question was, "Rohan, could you please introduce yourself". I was prepared for this and answered the same things, that I attached in the video answer in one of the GDSC Lead form filling. Then he asked some situational questions, such as how I would deal with conflicts among team members or handle a speaker canceling a day before an event, and many more tricky questions. To be honest, I was not ready for this, but still, I answered every question and the interviewer liked my answers. And he appreciated me too for some of them!
Now moving to the next section of the interview where he asked me about my past leadership experience in leading a club or project and what qualities I look for in core team members and teamwork. Since I was in the 1st year, I don't have any such experience in my college. So, I shared my school experiences about teamwork and leadership.
After this, we moved on to the technical round. In this round, he asked basic questions about OOPS concepts, DSA, and time and space complexity. And this is where I stuck. I don't know about DSA, and OOPs at that time. And was unable to answer the questions. I didn't research this role before, and the types of questions that will be asked. In short, I was not prepared for the interview due to college exams. So, in this section, I just said, "Sorry, at this moment, I don't have the answer to these types of questions. He said, "It's okay, Rohan. It happens sometimes". Then he asked me about my projects which I showed him. That time, I just had 2-3 mini projects. I showed him and he asked me about the tech stacks and the process of how and why I built them. I answered this question confidently.
Again, after all this, he asked me some general affairs questions. Microsoft was banned in a few countries. And the questions are following this thing. Finally, he asked, "What changes or different things would you do during your GDSC tenure??" I answered this question, by taking a bit of time to think. Then, he said, "Thank you Rohan" and I too thanked him back. And the interview was over. It was around 20-25 minutes long interview.
Verdict: REJECTED (On Aug 10, 2023, I got this mail)
