Placement planner
The four-year plan
Most students start preparing in third year and find out too late that the base was supposed to be built in first and second. This is the order that actually works, and none of it assumes you already know how to code.
Sign up free to tick these off and keep your progress. Reading the plan needs no account, and it never will.
🌱 Year 1 — Learn one language properly
Nobody is hiring you this year, which is exactly why it is the cheapest time to build the base everything else sits on. One language, until it is boring.
C++ or Java if you want DSA and product companies later; Python if you want to feel productive fast. Switching languages every month is the most common first-year mistake.
OpenNot half. The last three chapters of any track are where the actually useful parts live.
OpenLoops, strings, arrays, basic maths. Speed on the easy stuff is what buys you time on the hard stuff later.
OpenRead it, do not panic-google it. This single habit separates people who improve from people who plateau.
Campus tests are half aptitude. Finding out in year one costs you twenty minutes; finding out in year three costs you offers.
OpenA calculator, a marks tracker, a text game. Anything you chose yourself.
🧱 Year 2 — Data structures and consistency
The year that decides most outcomes. Interview questions come from here, and the students who start now are the ones with offers two years later.
Understand them, implement them once from scratch, then use the library version forever.
OpenNot the table. Actually being able to look at a loop and say why it is O(n log n).
OpenConsistency beats intensity. Two problems a day for a year beats a frantic month before placements.
OpenProves to yourself that you can do the boring version of this.
Every recruiter looks. An empty GitHub is a missed free signal.
Aptitude and programming together, under a clock.
OpenCRUD is unglamorous and it is what most jobs actually are.
🎯 Year 3 — Interview shape and applications
Preparation turns into performance. What you know matters less than whether you can produce it in forty minutes with someone watching.
The four topics that decide product-company interviews.
OpenMedium is the interview band. Easy builds fluency; medium builds offers.
OpenService companies ask these more than they ask DSA.
OpenTimer on, phone away, no pausing. Practising untimed is practising the wrong thing.
OpenProjects with what you built and what it does. No skill bars, no rating yourself out of five.
Preparing for the wrong test is the cheapest failure to avoid.
OpenExplaining your approach while typing is a separate skill from solving. It has to be practised.
🏁 Year 4 — Convert
Execution year. Revision, applications and keeping your nerve — not new topics.
You already solved them once. The second pass is where they stick.
OpenOff-campus drives open before most campus seasons do.
OpenWhat it does, why you built it, what broke, what you would change.
Why this company, why you, tell me about yourself. Awkward is fine; unprepared is not.
Keeps you sharp and keeps the clock familiar.
OpenOne honest note about this plan
No roadmap gets anybody placed on its own. What decides the outcome is how many days you show up, not how good the list is — a student who does the boring version of year two every day beats one who reads five roadmaps and starts in year three.
Companies also change what they ask. Use the company pages for what to expect, and always confirm the current pattern on the company’s own careers site before a drive.