🇮🇳 Astra Fresher's Handbook · MAY 2026

Crack Your First 10 LPA Job

The complete, no-fluff guide for 2024–26 graduates — from your first LeetCode problem to your offer letter. Everything in one place.

10Weeks DSA

50+Interview Qs

10Job Boards

10Live Jobs

90Day Plan

01 · DSA Roadmap

10-Week DSA Study Plan

Structure matters more than hustle. Work through these three phases in order — each one builds the mental models you need for the next.

Phase 01

Foundations

Weeks 1 – 3

Arrays & Strings
Sliding Window & Two Pointers
Linked Lists — reversal, cycles
Stacks & Queues
Hashing & Frequency Maps
Basic Recursion

Phase 02

Core DSA

Weeks 4 – 7

Binary Search (& on answer)
Trees — BFS, DFS, LCA
Graphs — Dijkstra, Union-Find
Dynamic Programming
Heaps & Priority Queues
Backtracking

Phase 03

Advanced

Weeks 8 – 10

Tries & Prefix Trees
Segment Trees / BIT
Topological Sort
Greedy Algorithms
Bit Manipulation
System Design Basics

📚

Resources: LeetCode Top 150 · Striver's A2Z Sheet · NeetCode.io · GeeksforGeeks Practice. Target 150–200 problems before your first interview loop.

Must-Solve Problems

Two Sum — hash map approach, O(n) time
Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters — sliding window
Merge Intervals — sort + greedy merge
Maximum Subarray — Kadane's Algorithm
Number of Islands — BFS / DFS grid traversal
Valid Parentheses — stack-based matching
Climbing Stairs — classic 1D DP
Reverse a Linked List — iterative & recursive
Binary Search on Rotated Sorted Array
LRU Cache — HashMap + Doubly Linked List

02 · Core CS

Interview Questions You Must Know Cold

Every technical round pulls from these four pillars. Understand the concepts — don't just memorise answers.

Operating Systems

What is the difference between a process and a thread?

A process is an independent program in execution with its own isolated memory space. A thread is a lightweight unit within a process that shares memory and resources. Context switching between threads is faster and cheaper than between processes.

What are deadlocks? How do you prevent them?

Deadlock occurs when processes wait on each other indefinitely. Four Coffman conditions must hold: mutual exclusion, hold-and-wait, no preemption, and circular wait. Prevent by breaking any one condition — most commonly via lock ordering or timeouts.

Explain virtual memory and paging.

Virtual memory gives each process the illusion of a large address space. Paging divides this into fixed-size pages mapped to physical frames via a page table. A TLB caches recent translations to speed up repeated lookups.

Mutex vs. semaphore — what's the difference?

A mutex is an ownership-based binary lock — only the acquiring thread can release it. A semaphore is a signalling counter — any thread can signal it. Use mutexes for mutual exclusion; semaphores for signalling and resource pool management.

DBMS

What are ACID properties?

Atomicity — all or nothing. Consistency — DB moves between valid states. Isolation — concurrent transactions don't interfere. Durability — committed data survives failures.

Explain 1NF, 2NF, and 3NF normalization.

1NF: atomic values, no repeating groups. 2NF: 1NF + no partial dependency on a composite key. 3NF: 2NF + no transitive dependency (non-key attributes depend only on the primary key).

Clustered vs. non-clustered index?

A clustered index defines the physical storage order of rows — one per table. A non-clustered index is a separate B-tree with row pointers, requiring an extra I/O hop to fetch actual data.

Explain INNER, LEFT, and FULL OUTER JOIN.

INNER: only matching rows from both tables. LEFT: all rows from left table, NULLs for non-matches on the right. FULL OUTER: all rows from both, NULLs wherever there's no match.

Computer Networks

What happens when you type a URL into a browser?

DNS resolution → TCP 3-way handshake → TLS handshake (HTTPS) → HTTP request → Server responds → Browser parses HTML, fetches sub-resources → Layout and paint.

TCP vs. UDP — when do you use each?

TCP: reliable, ordered, error-checked — use for web, email, file transfer. UDP: connectionless, low overhead — use for video calls, gaming, DNS where speed beats guaranteed delivery.

Name the 7 OSI model layers.

Physical → Data Link → Network → Transport → Session → Presentation → Application. Mnemonic: Please Do Not Throw Sausage Pizza Away.

OOP Concepts

Encapsulation — bundle data and methods; hide internal state via access modifiers
Abstraction — expose only essential behaviour through interfaces or abstract classes
Inheritance — child class reuses and extends parent behaviour; enables code reuse
Polymorphism — overloading (compile-time) vs. overriding (runtime)
SOLID — Single Responsibility · Open/Closed · Liskov · Interface Segregation · Dependency Inversion
Design Patterns — Singleton, Factory, Observer, Strategy — know at least 2 with examples

03 · Aptitude

Beat the Online Assessment Round

Most Indian tech companies open with a timed online test — 30–45 minutes. Accuracy matters more than speed. A wrong answer may carry a penalty.

Topics to Cover

Time & Work — pipe & cistern, combined efficiency
Time, Speed & Distance — relative speed, boats & streams, trains
Percentages, Profit & Loss, Simple & Compound Interest
Permutations, Combinations & Probability
Number Series — arithmetic, geometric, mixed patterns
Ratio & Proportion, Mixtures & Alligations
Logical Reasoning — syllogisms, blood relations, directions
Verbal Ability — reading comprehension, sentence correction

Fix your career, Now!

Find jobs, internships, freelance gigs and more with better preparations.

Sample Questions

#	Question	Answer
01	A finishes work in 10 days, B in 15 days. How long together?	6 days
02	A 120 m train crosses a pole in 12 seconds. Speed in km/h?	36 km/h
03	30% of x = 45. Find x.	x = 150
04	Missing number: 2, 6, 12, 20, 30, __?	42
05	Bag: 4 red + 5 blue balls. P(picking blue) = ?	5/9 ≈ 0.556

🎯

Practice sites: IndiaBix.com · PrepInsta · Examveda · Freshersworld. Aim for 85%+ accuracy in timed practice. Do at least one full mock test per day in month 2.

04 · Resume

Write a Resume That Gets Opened

Recruiters spend 6–8 seconds on a resume. You need to pass the ATS filter first, then survive the human skim. One page. No exceptions.

Sections to Include

Header — Name · Phone · Email · LinkedIn · GitHub · Portfolio
Summary — 2–3 lines tailored to the role; mention your stack and what you build
Skills — Languages, frameworks, databases, tools. Cut the fluff.
Projects — 2–3 projects with tech stack + a one-line impact statement each
Education — Degree, college, CGPA (include only if ≥ 7.0)
Internships / Certifications — Cloud certs (AWS, GCP), relevant MOOCs, open source

✓ Do These

Use action verbs: Built, Reduced, Implemented, Optimised
Quantify — "Reduced API latency by 40%"
Keep it to exactly 1 page
ATS-safe fonts: Calibri, Georgia, Garamond
GitHub with active, documented repos
Tailor keywords to each JD
Add LeetCode profile if rating is strong

✗ Avoid These

Photos, DOB, gender, or full address
Graphic templates — they break ATS
Generic lines like "hardworking team player"
Projects with no problem statement
Every skill you've vaguely touched
Tables or columns — ATS can't read them
Spelling or grammatical errors

🛠️

Free tools: Jake's Resume Template on Overleaf (LaTeX, ATS-safe) · Novoresume · Resume.io · Canva (single-column only)

05 · Job Boards

Where to Apply Every Day

Set up daily alerts on at least three platforms. Apply to 10–15 roles every day. Track every application in a spreadsheet — company, role, date, status.

LinkedIn Jobs

Set daily alerts → Easy Apply

Naukri.com

India's #1 portal — update weekly

Indeed India

Custom resume per application

Instahyre

Tech-focused, great for startups

Wellfound

Startups & equity-stage companies

Internshala

Internships that convert to FTE

Freshersworld

Exclusively for 0–2 yr experience

Unstop

Competitions + campus-style hiring

HackerEarth

Skill-based assessments + jobs

Career Pages

TCS · Infosys · Wipro · Cognizant

⚡

Referral tip: A referral makes you 5× more likely to get a call. DM engineers at target companies on LinkedIn — under 80 words, mention a specific project of theirs, ask directly for a referral.

06 · Live Jobs

Active Openings — Bangalore & Mumbai

Sourced from Indeed India this week (April 2026). Click any role to go directly to the application page.

📍 Bangalore

Software Engineer 1

APNA · Bengaluru, Karnataka

Apr 2, 2026Apply →

Graduate Engineer Trainee

InstaSafe (Cybersecurity) · Bengaluru

Nov 2025Apply →

GET — Graduate Engineer Trainee

ABTYCHE ALFOTEC PVT LTD · Bengaluru

Feb 2026Apply →

QA Automation Engineer

Brit Technology · Hosur (near Bangalore)

Apr 20, 2026Apply →

Inside Sales Representative

GSAS Micro Systems · Bengaluru

Mar 2026Apply →

📍 Mumbai

Associate Engineer, Software Engineering

RXO · Mumbai, Maharashtra

Apr 19, 2026Apply →

Junior Programmer

Garena · Mumbai, Maharashtra

Apr 14, 2026Apply →

Software Engineer

Medpace · Navi Mumbai

Jan 2026Apply →

Jr. QA Engineer

Sciative — We Price Right · Navi Mumbai

Feb 2026Apply →

Trainee Engineer

Sysnet Global Technologies · Maharashtra

Dec 2025Apply →

07 · Action Plan

Your 90-Day Roadmap to an Offer

Stop improvising. Here's the month-by-month breakdown. Commit, track daily, and adjust based on feedback.

Month 1

Build Skills & Lay the Foundation

Complete Phase 1 DSA — Arrays, Strings, Hashing, Linked Lists, Stacks
Build or polish 2 GitHub projects with clean, documented READMEs
Write your resume using Jake's Overleaf LaTeX template
Set up LinkedIn (headline, about, featured) and Naukri profiles fully
Start aptitude practice — 30 minutes daily on IndiaBix

Month 2

Practice Intensively & Start Applying

Complete Phase 2 DSA — Trees, Graphs, DP, Binary Search
Solve 150+ LeetCode problems (Easy + Medium mix)
Apply to 10–15 roles daily, track status in a spreadsheet
Revise OS, DBMS, CN, OOP — one topic per day
Network on LinkedIn — connect with engineers at target companies

Month 3

Interview Season — Convert to Offers

Complete Phase 3 DSA — Tries, Greedy, Segment Trees, Bit Manipulation
Mock interviews on Pramp.com or with peers — 2 to 3 per week
Follow up on applications with no response after 7 days
Ask for referrals from LinkedIn connections at target companies
Research market salaries and negotiate — don't accept the first number blindly

🏆

Final word: Landing a job is a numbers and consistency game. Apply broadly, iterate fast on feedback, and don't spiral on rejections — every interview is practice for the next. Your 6 LPA offer is closer than it feels. Stay consistent. 🍀

Fix your career, Now!

Find jobs, internships, freelance gigs and more with better preparations.

🇮🇳 Astra Fresher's Handbook · MAY 2026

Crack Your First 10 LPA Job

The complete, no-fluff guide for 2024–26 graduates — from your first LeetCode problem to your offer letter. Everything in one place.

10Weeks DSA

50+Interview Qs

10Job Boards

10Live Jobs

90Day Plan

01 · DSA Roadmap

10-Week DSA Study Plan

Structure matters more than hustle. Work through these three phases in order — each one builds the mental models you need for the next.

Phase 01

Foundations

Weeks 1 – 3

Arrays & Strings
Sliding Window & Two Pointers
Linked Lists — reversal, cycles
Stacks & Queues
Hashing & Frequency Maps
Basic Recursion

Phase 02

Core DSA

Weeks 4 – 7

Binary Search (& on answer)
Trees — BFS, DFS, LCA
Graphs — Dijkstra, Union-Find
Dynamic Programming
Heaps & Priority Queues
Backtracking

Phase 03

Advanced

Weeks 8 – 10

Tries & Prefix Trees
Segment Trees / BIT
Topological Sort
Greedy Algorithms
Bit Manipulation
System Design Basics

📚

Resources: LeetCode Top 150 · Striver's A2Z Sheet · NeetCode.io · GeeksforGeeks Practice. Target 150–200 problems before your first interview loop.

Must-Solve Problems

Two Sum — hash map approach, O(n) time
Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters — sliding window
Merge Intervals — sort + greedy merge
Maximum Subarray — Kadane's Algorithm
Number of Islands — BFS / DFS grid traversal
Valid Parentheses — stack-based matching
Climbing Stairs — classic 1D DP
Reverse a Linked List — iterative & recursive
Binary Search on Rotated Sorted Array
LRU Cache — HashMap + Doubly Linked List

02 · Core CS

Interview Questions You Must Know Cold

Every technical round pulls from these four pillars. Understand the concepts — don't just memorise answers.

Operating Systems

What is the difference between a process and a thread?

What are deadlocks? How do you prevent them?

Explain virtual memory and paging.

Mutex vs. semaphore — what's the difference?

DBMS

What are ACID properties?

Atomicity — all or nothing. Consistency — DB moves between valid states. Isolation — concurrent transactions don't interfere. Durability — committed data survives failures.

Explain 1NF, 2NF, and 3NF normalization.

1NF: atomic values, no repeating groups. 2NF: 1NF + no partial dependency on a composite key. 3NF: 2NF + no transitive dependency (non-key attributes depend only on the primary key).

Clustered vs. non-clustered index?

A clustered index defines the physical storage order of rows — one per table. A non-clustered index is a separate B-tree with row pointers, requiring an extra I/O hop to fetch actual data.

Explain INNER, LEFT, and FULL OUTER JOIN.

INNER: only matching rows from both tables. LEFT: all rows from left table, NULLs for non-matches on the right. FULL OUTER: all rows from both, NULLs wherever there's no match.

Computer Networks

What happens when you type a URL into a browser?

DNS resolution → TCP 3-way handshake → TLS handshake (HTTPS) → HTTP request → Server responds → Browser parses HTML, fetches sub-resources → Layout and paint.

TCP vs. UDP — when do you use each?

TCP: reliable, ordered, error-checked — use for web, email, file transfer. UDP: connectionless, low overhead — use for video calls, gaming, DNS where speed beats guaranteed delivery.

Name the 7 OSI model layers.

Physical → Data Link → Network → Transport → Session → Presentation → Application. Mnemonic: Please Do Not Throw Sausage Pizza Away.

OOP Concepts

Encapsulation — bundle data and methods; hide internal state via access modifiers
Abstraction — expose only essential behaviour through interfaces or abstract classes
Inheritance — child class reuses and extends parent behaviour; enables code reuse
Polymorphism — overloading (compile-time) vs. overriding (runtime)
SOLID — Single Responsibility · Open/Closed · Liskov · Interface Segregation · Dependency Inversion
Design Patterns — Singleton, Factory, Observer, Strategy — know at least 2 with examples

03 · Aptitude

Beat the Online Assessment Round

Most Indian tech companies open with a timed online test — 30–45 minutes. Accuracy matters more than speed. A wrong answer may carry a penalty.

Topics to Cover

Time & Work — pipe & cistern, combined efficiency
Time, Speed & Distance — relative speed, boats & streams, trains
Percentages, Profit & Loss, Simple & Compound Interest
Permutations, Combinations & Probability
Number Series — arithmetic, geometric, mixed patterns
Ratio & Proportion, Mixtures & Alligations
Logical Reasoning — syllogisms, blood relations, directions
Verbal Ability — reading comprehension, sentence correction

Fix your career, Now!

Find jobs, internships, freelance gigs and more with better preparations.

Sample Questions

#	Question	Answer
01	A finishes work in 10 days, B in 15 days. How long together?	6 days
02	A 120 m train crosses a pole in 12 seconds. Speed in km/h?	36 km/h
03	30% of x = 45. Find x.	x = 150
04	Missing number: 2, 6, 12, 20, 30, __?	42
05	Bag: 4 red + 5 blue balls. P(picking blue) = ?	5/9 ≈ 0.556

🎯

Practice sites: IndiaBix.com · PrepInsta · Examveda · Freshersworld. Aim for 85%+ accuracy in timed practice. Do at least one full mock test per day in month 2.

04 · Resume

Write a Resume That Gets Opened

Recruiters spend 6–8 seconds on a resume. You need to pass the ATS filter first, then survive the human skim. One page. No exceptions.

Sections to Include

Header — Name · Phone · Email · LinkedIn · GitHub · Portfolio
Summary — 2–3 lines tailored to the role; mention your stack and what you build
Skills — Languages, frameworks, databases, tools. Cut the fluff.
Projects — 2–3 projects with tech stack + a one-line impact statement each
Education — Degree, college, CGPA (include only if ≥ 7.0)
Internships / Certifications — Cloud certs (AWS, GCP), relevant MOOCs, open source

✓ Do These

Use action verbs: Built, Reduced, Implemented, Optimised
Quantify — "Reduced API latency by 40%"
Keep it to exactly 1 page
ATS-safe fonts: Calibri, Georgia, Garamond
GitHub with active, documented repos
Tailor keywords to each JD
Add LeetCode profile if rating is strong

✗ Avoid These

Photos, DOB, gender, or full address
Graphic templates — they break ATS
Generic lines like "hardworking team player"
Projects with no problem statement
Every skill you've vaguely touched
Tables or columns — ATS can't read them
Spelling or grammatical errors

🛠️

Free tools: Jake's Resume Template on Overleaf (LaTeX, ATS-safe) · Novoresume · Resume.io · Canva (single-column only)

05 · Job Boards

Where to Apply Every Day

Set up daily alerts on at least three platforms. Apply to 10–15 roles every day. Track every application in a spreadsheet — company, role, date, status.

LinkedIn Jobs

Set daily alerts → Easy Apply

Naukri.com

India's #1 portal — update weekly

Indeed India

Custom resume per application

Instahyre

Tech-focused, great for startups

Wellfound

Startups & equity-stage companies

Internshala

Internships that convert to FTE