As a final-year Computer Engineering student, I thought I had it all figured out. I had built complete websites and web apps — frontend, backend, database, and even deployed them. But everything changed after I underwent professional training in a completely new tech stack. That’s when I realized: building a functional project is one thing, but building it the way the industry expects is something else entirely.

Corporate-level development demands more than just "it works." It needs clean architecture, readable and maintainable code, strong security practices, scalability, proper data flow, and version control — standards that I had honestly never focused on before. This shift in perspective made me realize that what I had built before lacked real value in the eyes of the corporate world.

45+ Rejections, Endless Learning

My placement journey was not a smooth ride. I appeared for more than 20 on-campus and 30 off-campus drives. Yes — 45+ rejections. Each one taught me something new: how to talk about my projects, how to handle technical interviews, and more importantly — what not to say.

Not all rejections were fair. In one off-campus drive, I was rejected before even taking a test, just based on my appearance. A friend of mine was rejected in the final HR round because he “didn’t look fit” — apparently, they were hiring athletes, not developers. But we moved on.

Eventually, I cleared the recruitment process of a company that actually tested knowledge. I went through four technical rounds, including coding tests and real-time problem-solving. The final round was a face-to-face technical interview with a senior manager.

No HR talk, no vague questions — just straight to the point. He asked about my final-year project, the tech stack, the logic, and then challenged me to draw the ERD (Entity-Relationship Diagram) of my system. I had 45 tables in my project. It took me 25 minutes to sketch the relationships and structure on a whiteboard, but by the end, he was genuinely impressed. That’s how I finally landed my internship.

Adapting to a New Tech Stack

The real learning started after I joined the training. We had 45 days to learn a new stack — Spring Boot (Java), Angular, and MySQL. I was already familiar with MySQL, and since I had React experience, Angular wasn’t too tough. But as a Python developer, shifting to Java was no joke.

It took me about one and a half months to really become comfortable with Java. Thankfully, my basics — like OOP concepts and Data Structures — were solid, which helped me speed up the process. Once I got the hang of Java, we moved to Spring Boot.

I found Spring MVC a bit more complex than Spring Boot, mostly because Spring Boot simplifies a lot of things using annotations. But that also meant I had less control over the flow, so I had to learn about using DTOs (Data Transfer Objects) and Mappers to manage data between layers. It was a lot — but it was worth it.

Project Development – Applying What I Learned

After the training, we were asked to develop a project within one week. But by that time, I had already started building projects to get comfortable with the stack. Instead of starting with small-scale apps like To-Do Lists or Calculators, I challenged myself with mid-level applications like a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system and an LMS (Learning Management System).

These projects were practical and gave me real-world development experience. They involved authentication, CRUD operations, user roles, dashboards, API integration — everything that mattered. By the time the actual project started, I was already familiar with service layers, controllers, routing in Angular, and backend logic in Spring Boot. That practice made the final project feel much easier and more enjoyable.

Wrapping Up

This internship wasn’t just about adding a line to my resume — it was a complete reset. It changed how I think about software development. I realized that being a developer is not about writing code that works; it’s about writing code that lasts, scales, and is readable by a team.

If you’re someone struggling through rejections or trying to break into the tech industry, just know — keep going. Learn from every mistake, keep your fundamentals strong, and always be ready to unlearn and relearn.

Because that’s what growth looks like.

In my ongoing blog series. Coming up:

• Building side projects that stand out