\u201cI want to be an expert in whatever I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harsh Yadav first obtained a bachelor of science degree and followed it up with a master\u2019s degree in computer application. His tryst with computers goes long back, he says, and though physics interested him, the last two years of school life told him that he wanted to explore the field of computer science.<\/p>\n
Even the decision to pursue MCA was a result of not being able to get a computer engineering seat at a good government-run college.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut most institutions today continue to teach us obscure concepts without any idea about what will be relevant when we need to search for jobs at the product or technology-focused companies,\u201d says Harsh.<\/p>\n
Ask him about whether that degree helped him at all, he laughs.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything that I learned from thereon was on my own, going on platforms such as Codechef and practicing whatever I found interesting and thought could potentially help me with competitive programming going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
By his own admission, Harsh, who now works at logistics firm Delhivery<\/a>, the lack of any mentorship or guiding hand at that point in time meant his aim was getting a job at any of the service companies. The thought of building products as a coder didn\u2019t even cross his mind.<\/p>\n Why Scaler Academy?<\/strong><\/p>\n A friend introduced him to the InterviewBit platform that he found super useful when it came to solving coding problems, and when Scaler Academy (then InterviewBit Academy<\/a>) was launched, he was among the first few to apply.<\/p>\n \u201cThe single-most attractive thing about the course was that it promised to make us \u2018industry-ready\u2019 and that is perhaps the biggest limitation in most colleges today,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n From the very beginning, Harsh says it seemed like a different journey altogether. From the way everything was structured to how you solve problems<\/a>, all of it was a welcome change.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had never approached problems that way before, we just had no clue about certain things. We learned how to solve many different kinds of questions, without wondering how tough this or that would be, for example, trees <\/em>had always seemed tough but now, it seems like just another topic and I have Scaler to thank for that.\u201d<\/p>\n But it doesn\u2019t end there. He remembers how in his first mock interview with the mentor, he couldn\u2019t solve problems and that put him in a bad headspace. In fact, that incident put him down so much that he didn\u2019t schedule any mentor sessions for a while after that.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mentor, Pulkit Aggarwal, however, stuck with me and approached me from his own end after that. We sat down, and he constantly motivated me to help with how I approached interviews. If I have to thank anybody, he would be right on top of that list,\u201d he says. Apart from him, Harsh said he was also thankful to Alka Kumari, his student success manager, for being there throughout.<\/p>\n