Getting Past that All-important Technical Interview Gets Easier with MyCareerStack

The placement season always stirs up a frenzy among students and an interview with 'that dream company' is sure to send a chill down your spine. MyCareerStack was started with an aim to spread some warmth in these "chilly" times.Founded by Sachin Gupta and Vivek Prakash, two students of IIT Roorkee, MyCareerStack is a social interactive platform geared towards Technical Interviews.

“The triggering factor behind the inception of MyCareerStack was the extreme problem we faced during our campus interviews. We realized that most of the interviews we sat for actually did not test the person’s ability to build stuff and do things. They were almost always centered around a bunch of interview questions like “Reverse a Linked List”. A lot of smart people could not get selected in some good companies, not because they were not talented enough but because they did not know enough about the interview process. So we decided to build something that would level the playing field,”

says Vivek.

What they do

MyCareerStack aims to solve the technical interview pain with a variety of features - questions for interviews, tutorials on common computer science concepts, an online code editor to write and run code right in the browser, a forum to discuss questions, a blog post to share

experiences and more.Currently, they are in the process of converting MyCareerStack into a generic learning platform, where people will be able to learn programming in various languages like C, C++, Python and Java and also create applications in frameworks like Django and Zend and development kits like Android right in the browser.

How they do it

They used technologies like Python, Django, C, jQuery, node.js, and Bootstrap in their website. The database is MySQL and they use Memcached for caching the queries. "We are quite happy that we chose the right combination of tools and technologies that made our work somewhat easier and enabled us to push new code very fast," says Sachin.

"We have not focused much on the business aspect of MyCareerStack. One of the things that we have realized over time is that if we focus on building something good, we will find out ways to make business out of it. The only marketing we did was that we posted on HackerNews after the launch in February. However, we plan to do some active publicity and marketing in the near future. We also aim to increase our outreach in campuses across India," he adds.

Milestones

In just 4 months of launch, MyCareerStack has received over 140,000 page views, which they consider an achievement in itself.

Message for student/wannabe entrepreneurs

Sachin and Vivek realized, after working for a few weeks, that starting was the toughest part. "Once we were through that, everything was easy. Also, we were little scary at the start about the technologies that we were using to build the project as we didn’t have much experience in them. But gradually we became proficient in them and it couldn’t have been more fun while learning and building at the same time. So I would advise to just start building one day without over thinking about the idea. More often than not, the idea we start with changes very drastically according to the situation. So, we should not be very fanatic about the idea, instead we should listen to suggestions of experienced entrepreneurs. Networking is very important. Try to come in contact with people who are in this domain and can guide you better. Not disclosing the idea fearing that it might get copied is a very baseless fear. Also, I would advise not to start alone. Having a good Co-Founder is very essential to take the startup forward to the next level. And, college is the best period to start working on an idea. We don’t have anything to lose!" says Sachin.

On a Special Note

“Working on a startup is much more effective in keeping you up the whole night than coffee and redbull," concludes Vivek, with a smile.

The StudentStory wishes MyCareerStack all the good luck and charm. Stay tuned for other awesome startup stories!

-With inputs from Jubin Mehta and Meghna Chhabria