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EP 256: Relaunching in Tech in the US and India after Three Career Breaks, with Shweta Sharma

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Episode Description

How does a technical professional prepare for relaunching her career in technical roles after career breaks of different lengths and in two countries? What kind of updating is required? How does the job search work? Did it get any easier after each career break? Did the strategies change?

A strong proponent for the benefits relaunchers can bring to an organization, and as part of her commitment to “paying it forward,” Shweta Sharma gives us the answers from her first hand experience. Shweta, a senior software engineer at Intuit in India, has had roles ranging from developing a digital marketing, product at a startup, to working on cloud technologies and architectures for a multinational company.

As part of this comprehensive discussion, Shwetha shares great advice on how to study for technical exams and why she looked forward to every interview no matter what her chances.

Read Transcript

Carol Fishman Cohen: Welcome to 3,2,1 iRelaunch, the podcast where we discuss career reentry advice, strategies, and success stories. I'm Carol Fishman Cohen, the CEO and co-founder of iRelaunch and your host. Before we get started, I want to remind our listeners to be sure to sign up for the iRelaunch job board, because that is where employers go when they specifically want to hire people who are coming off of a career break. So take a look at that on iRelaunch.Com. Alright, gonna move on to our conversation today. Today we welcome Shweta Sharma, a senior software engineer at Intuit. Shweta started her career at a startup, developing a product for digital marketing. Later, she joined Intel and focused on growing cloud technologies and architectures.

Shweta moved to the United States from India and worked with Microsoft and Pandora, and then joined Intuit before moving back to India in order to continue exploring different dimensions of software development. In today's episode, we speak with Shweta about her three career breaks and experiences job searching in both India and the US.

Shweta, welcome to 3,2,1 iRelaunch.

Shweta Sharma: Thank you for having me. I'm really excited.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Yes. Well, we're so thrilled to be speaking with you. You have such a unique experience in terms of your career path and working across two countries and we have a lot to learn. So let's start by talking about your career path and what prompted you to take your career breaks.

Shweta Sharma: So I have a long career path. I have gone through, like you explained very well, from a startup, I started my journey, then moved to Intel. I was there for a couple of years. Then I worked with the company, in a healthcare domain called NextGen that is also in the US. And then I took my first career break to move to US. And, then I worked for Microsoft for a short amount of time, not short, almost two years, and then I moved to California, and that's when my second break was. I was in Seattle before that . And after that I, I joined Pandora, there, I worked there for a while. I had my son, and that's when I took my third career break to raise my son, actually. And then, I was on that was the longest break I had. It was around two and half years, or more than that, almost three years. . And then I joined, another company, JFrog, for a very brief amount of time, like almost two months. But, and I joined Intuit full-time after that. And then I think, I've never looked back. I'm here.

Carol Fishman Cohen: So, you know, there were career breaks because of relocation, it sounds like once to a new country, once to a new state, and then your career break for childcare reasons. So again, underscoring that people take career breaks for a whole range of reasons and you, in your story, you have more than one reason yourself. So, thank you for pointing that out. Can you talk to us a little bit about how different it was to be job searching in India versus the United States?

Shweta Sharma: So I think it is a difficult question. There are two phases I would like to divide it.

One is you are on break. You are on a career break. And one is without career break. So I think without career break, the journey is same for everyone. But when we talk about getting back to work after a break, I think there's a specific difference I have seen in both the countries. Technology wise, it is same in at both the countries actually.

And you have to prepare, you have to have the technology, you have to crack the interview. And I think, in India earlier, it used to be very tech-centric interviews where they focus more on technology rather than the depth of algorithmic knowledge and problem solving skills. But that has changed over the period of time and changing now.

But, what I see distinguishing is the opportunities, opportunity wise, the US is better. I see that they're more open because I've seen it is there, as a culturally it is there. It is natural for people to take break to pursue some interest. They want to learn a guitar. They will take a break and they will come back to work, for childcare, for any various reason.

But it becomes very challenging in the US when you are on a break and you need visa to work. . Yes. That's when it makes a lot of difference and, so being in your home country, whether India or anywhere else, that really reduce the burden you have in your head that, okay, how to get the work visa.

I think, that's what I think is the bigger difference. But that being said, I believe that if you share your superpower in an interview, and that reflects in your resume, you can relaunch your career anywhere. That's what I have seen.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Interesting. So we want to get into that in a little bit more detail because I think that's such an important message, how you tell the story, how you talk about what your top skills are as you're saying your superpower.

Can you just give us a sense of how long it takes to get a work visa once you were in the US?

Shweta Sharma: So it's not, that is one question. That one part of this question, the work visa is specifically, every work visa is different. But the work visa for special skills, for example, for tech I would need is called H4, that is S1, sorry. That is a specialized work visa and that happens only once in a year in US, you file for it. The employer has to file for that work visa, so you have to get the job first. That was only in April. April, you'll get to know if you got the work visa or not, but you will be permitted to work in October that year.

So you see the difference, the journey a person has to go through. And again, the difficulty I have seen is when you are on a dependent visa, for example, like when I moved to US, I was on the dependent visa because I followed my spouse . . That time the judgment comes into the picture, people do judge you on, okay, if she's so capable, if she has all the skills, why she's on dependent visa. They really don't ask you the journey, the reason behind it. And, and that, that comes up into the interview directly or indirectly. So you have a hard time convincing a person that once you are there. So I think the difficulty is landing the interview. Showing that you are a dependent visa.

Carol Fishman Cohen: I see.

Shweta Sharma: I believe when you're there, you can crack it, but landing is the challenge.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Yes, for sure. So one thing I just wanted to clarify. You said the company has to sponsor you or engage. Then is there a different status later on where you can interview first independently before you have a company that you're connected with?

Shweta Sharma: Yes, there are lot of if and buts, the, you can, the visa I talked about, you can change your job. And you can find another employer as long as they are ready to sponsor you. There's no restriction from the company as such, but I've seen lot of people getting into this trap that, okay, if we are filing your visa, you have to work with us for certain period of time.

That's not the case with the all big companies, but there are commitments people do make, because, the visa fees are very high. It's like around $5,000. So companies, when they're investing in you, they do want you to stay with them.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Got it. All right. That we've never discussed that on our many interviews that we've had, so thank you for enlightening us on that piece of the process.

When you come here on a dependent visa, you're an expat, you're essentially a trailing spouse or partner, which is a reason that people take career breaks, and the complexity there that's involved with you ultimately being able to relaunch. So thank you, Shweta. Can you talk about how you approached the job search and picking whichever one you want to use as an example or maybe, more than one?

Did you use a different approach at different points, like after the third career break versus the first one and, Maybe just give us some more detail about what you think were milestone moments.

Shweta Sharma: I think, yes, I followed very different approaches, but I think I had some fundamental rules for myself, which worked out well for me.

But I think I can, it's a very good question, I must say, because many people don't realize that, what they are going through in different stages. So the first break when I moved to US, as I highlighted, I was on dependent visa. The priority for me was getting the visa. But I had no lack of confidence.

I never imagined, because I never took a break before. I never imagined that getting an interview, cracking an interview, getting a job is a difficulty for me. I was super confident that way in my mind that, okay, I just have to get the visa. I'll get the job. And I tell you, that did happen. I had difficulty finding a sponsor rather than finding a job. And as soon as I got my visa done, I was the one of the lucky ones.

Another complexity is even if you file the visa that gets picked up, it's a lottery system. You're never sure that you will get the visa. If you don't, you're again not working for another year. But I was a lucky one. My visa came out. And then, I had the job even before my visa was in my hand.

So the priority changed during my second change, second break actually. And, you'll be surprised to know how the tech works. Yes. I was with Seattle and Redmond area, and Microsoft is owning that area. I know Amazon is also there. So the tech stack heavily, which I worked since starting of my career, was .net.

So it was very easy for me to get to job in the Microsoft being there. The whole area is owned by them. I immediately got it. But when I moved to California, so I was confident this time I was confident, okay, first time, now there, there's no visa issue. , California, it is highly focused on Java.

They're tech agnostic. I will say the California is tech agnostic. All these big companies are there and the tech is tremendously changing, evolving. No, the difficulty for me was nobody was looking for my skills there. I had to regain the new skills. I was an experienced person. I knew how to do my job, so I, the tech stack changed, so I identified that I started working on that part.

But then the third career break, I think that is the challenge most of us go through because of any reason we take those breaks. You develop a lack of confidence. You feel you're technically obsolete because when you were on break, things have changed. The new generation is doing it very differently.

The interview pattern changed by the time I came back to the second inning I would say. And, then you start developing self-doubt. Can I do this? Will I be able to get a job? So that, that was a difficult time. But what kept me going in all three, all in different reasons and the phases is, the consistency I maintained for myself, I never let go of any opportunity.

It was either for the visa, either for the tech, either for the interview, whatever it is, I'm gonna, I have, I'm developing the self-doubt because I'm not getting selected. I never, dropped the ball, I would say. That consistency has to be there. That okay. No, I have to get it.

I will get it.

Carol Fishman Cohen: that's an interesting progression that you're talking about. When you start, you're starting out confident cause you weren't thinking there'd be any difference than before. And then over time that shifted and maybe that last career break being childcare focussed as opposed to relocation, also maybe changed your mindset a little bit. I have a couple of questions about the timeline that you just outlined. When you came to California and you said you needed to update your skills, you need to learn technology, a new part of technology, what did you, how did you do that?

Were there courses? Was it your own self-study? How did that work?.

Shweta Sharma: So yes, I started exploring internet. So there are a lot of website these days. So there is a Leetcode. There are couple of, the kata, I'm forgetting the exactly site name, but I can share the list. So I came across all these different practice sites.

You go there, you write code in a particular language. . So I knew how to solve the problem. I have to just practice how to solve the problem in this language. And I think that is a good part. I've seen in, in all the big tech firms, they are not looking at the tech as such right now they're not looking at, okay, Java.net.

They don't do that now anymore. They look at the problem solving skills. . And, if you're able to solve the problem in any of these language, it works. So, which is a very good progression I have seen. And I must say, I love Google that way. I have given interviews to Google also. They do, they take interview on the notepad or the Google doc.

Ah, so they're totally looking at your problem solving. They do want you to write the right piece of code, but they're not saying, okay, you have to write in a particular language, whatever you are good at, confident about, write in that. So that was a good thing.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Yeah, we have heard advice, pertaining to this situation you're describing where there might be a question and they ask about it in a particular, you, they want you to use a particular code, and if you don't know it, the advice is to say, I can solve the, I can show you in this other language.

And usually they'll say, yes, but you have to know that you can suggest that you can problem solve it, but it's gonna be in a different language.

Shweta Sharma: Yes. You have to ask. You have to express.

Carol Fishman Cohen: So technical relaunchers, make a note of that really important point. Now did you need to build professional connections in each place that you went or were you using connections from your prior location or employer? How did that part of it work? .

Shweta Sharma: So I definitely reached out to my old network when I was looking for the new job. I did reach out to, if they cannot help me with the job search, they can help me with recommendation, they can help me with references. So I definitely reached out to them. I wrote to them an email that I would need your reference if I'm applying there.

And they were all kind enough to provide those, even though they worked with me like a while ago. So as you said rightly, I have this as a keynote for me, always ask, and if you don't ask, other people don't know that you need help or they can support you and it's not help, it's a support from your allies, which you may need.

Carol Fishman Cohen: And so I just wanna highlight that you're saying you got references from people that you worked for sometime before that. What we hear is relaunchers being afraid to be in touch with people from years back because they think they're not gonna remember me, or, they will be upset because I'm not, I haven't been staying in touch in the interim.

But, we do hear that people are successful reconnecting with prior colleagues or people they reported to and they, years later, will write that reference for you. So it sounds like that happened in your case.

Shweta Sharma: Yes. And I would say, there are, if I reach out to 10 people, maybe four of them replied, but six of them, it could not be because they did not want it to give you a reference. They might be busy in something else. They did not really realize that, okay, you needed it right now. They're not active on LinkedIn. They're not using that email anymore. So I, what I figured out is that it's not always about that. It's our apprehensions. This is our scaredness. Your network is always there. You just have to reach out.

Carol Fishman Cohen: That's an important point because people won't get a response and they think, you take it personally, you think it must be me. And it's 99% of the time it's not you, it's what you're talking about.

The email went into spam or, there's some other circumstance that interfered as you're saying. They didn't know it was so urgent. They are gonna, they wanna wait till they can write a more complete response to you, all of those factors. So more likely than not, if you get a silence or a non-response, try to ping the person again.

Or maybe through a different way, if you try to email them, maybe try to look, connect with them through LinkedIn. Because all of these things happen all the time.

Shweta Sharma: Yeah. Or even, I, even if I have not got the response from few people, I remember their name. I thought they were very close to me. They supported me at that point of time when I needed them. They have not replied today, but it's not like, I still go get in touch with them. There might be some other reasons. Okay. So maybe the references you're asking for then they really don't know or they can't evaluate you. It, it could go, so everybody has their own thing. But the point here is, build that close circle, if not close circle, what approach I took when I went to, when I reached US is, it was very difficult for me to make friends In Seattle. It's always raining, drizzling. So I'm more of, a little bit religious, even you're not religious. I used to go to temple, social circuit, social activities and spend time with connecting with these people. And then talk, where are you working? Do you have any opportunities there? What kind of work do you do? What kind of questions do they ask in interviews? So get to know about things and then, you will come across something where they can recommend you. They say, okay, it's here, something is opening up. Maybe you reach out and talk to that person. And that really, really, really helped me.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Yes. that's such a key piece of it. And, we talk about how sometimes the connection ends up being like someone who's peripheral, who you know, or maybe may met by chance or as your friend's friend, and you never know what, which connection is gonna be the key connection.

So, a question about, the reference piece from people who you hadn't been in touch with or were writing references from a number of years ago. Did you draft it or did you give them some, like a summary of, here's some, here are things that I'm remembering from my time working for you, or did they come up with that on their own?

Because I'm just wondering, are people much more likely to say yes, and they might, they sometimes, I will say to people, can you do a first draft for me? Because I wanna see what they write up and then I can edit it any way I want, but, if it's been a while, you might get a yes quicker if you even offer that.

Shweta Sharma: Yes. So I have also seen both the approaches. There are some folks who are super busy or, they don't really know, maybe when I approach them, I did not provide the complete background. So they asked that, okay, what kind of reference you need? Because if, let's say if I worked with them for four years, I might have worked on backend, front end, SQL, somewhere.

So that may help them focus on the tech or the requirement you are approaching or you are trying with. And there are some folks who I have reached out every time I needed references or I have worked with them very closely, so they know me very closely. They just say, okay, yeah, sure, I'll do that.

I'll definitely provide it. And, I think that comes out really well because you can trust them, you can rely on them. But both of these approaches works in different ways. When you need something very specific, do provide a draft. Do tell them that this is what I'm trying, this is what I have communicated.

Can you provide me some feedback on these kind of focus areas? So that directly contributes.

Carol Fishman Cohen: I love this because that's such an important point. What kind of reference do you need? And to make sure that you are directing the person in a very specific way. Shweta, can you talk about hurdles that you ran into or, are there, is there some pointed advice that you have for relaunchers who are early in this process?

Because it's something that you learned because maybe you made the mistake and now how to proceed in a different way?

Shweta Sharma: So the first thing is for all the relaunchers, don't be afraid. Do not think about, so usually what we do is when we look at the job post, there are 10 things, and I see that only one thing is what I can understand out of those 10.

And then what I will do is, oh, I really don't know what to do. There's one thing I know really well. What about the 9 of those? Do apply. But I figured out over the period of time, 99 or 98% recruiters, they put or publish the job criteria in a very generalized way. They try to put more and more things, which may work, or may fit in for different orgs based on their needs. So if you are good at least one thing, and that is on the top of the list, when you reach out to the recruiter, they see your experience. They might call you or they will call you definitely, because that is the key skill they are looking for.

So you don't know what exactly they are looking for. So the first and very important advice is apply for every job you come across that matches your profile, even one percent. . That is very important. The second thing is, get prepared. Don't be scared of interviews. So when we go for relaunching, we are always waiting, No, I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I'm not ready. Even if the interview you get the, like you like, I'm not ready, can I get some more time? No, you will never, never be ready. What I learned over the period of time, I continuously gave interviews for around eight months. Front end, back end, everything. And I started loving giving interviews.

It was such a nice experience for me just to go there, interview and then I come back, I make a list. I still have the email where I started consolidating all those questions which was being asked one list for front end, one list for backend. And then learned what I didn't know. And that's how people ask, right?

What did you do to develop your skills? That's how you develop the skills which you have lost during the career break. It's how you get to know what is being asked in an interview. Because otherwise, without that personal experience, you never know what the other person will ask. And another very important thing, which we always miss.

When you go face to face that builds your confidence, that builds your, you get to get eye contact, you get to express yourself, you get to highlight, like I said, superpowers. I'm taking a while here, but what I saw in couple of interviews, and, I, I love those companies. I would like to highlight JFrog that way, even Intuit, Pandora, all these companies, when I went for interviews, I never on the tech stack or I didn't know anything about the tech stack they were working on at that point of time. And they still hired me, all of these people as a full-time employee. The reason being, they could see my journey.

That's my interpretation. I did ask them also, I asked my manager every time, why did you hire me based on the things I could see the gap, so that I can improve myself. Yeah. And the manager told me that, I could see the journey, I could see that you have every time experience with something new in every company and you were able to learn.

And an interview, if you show, like you said, if we do not show that, okay, I can't do this in Java, but I can do this in C#, I cannot do it in Note, but I can do it in Java script. They know that you can do this. Learning a new language is not difficult, so go face the interview, show them that you got this.

They will develop that trust and you will definitely be able to relaunch.

Carol Fishman Cohen: I just want to highlight this because, as you're saying, sometimes you just feel too nervous, but push yourself to do that interview, even though it very well result in you don't progress any further. But you're saying you learned from each interview because over and over the questions started to be in a certain category or asked in a certain way, and that's exactly how you knew what to do in terms of your upskilling.

Shweta Sharma: Yes.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Okay. So this is a really interesting and important point to actually use this interview process in order to improve yourself as a candidate for a role that you're gonna get a little bit later, not right now.

Shweta Sharma: Yes. And build your confidence back. So by the end of this journey, I think I started in May, by end of, by December, you won't believe I had five offer letters in my hand back to back. This looked like a journey to me when I was starting. I was like, okay, I get it. So the real interview started in July sometimes. And it's not like, I would not say, never think people say, okay, what will happen?

What will they see? Wait, you have to go prepared. I'm not saying you don't go prepared, right? But the interview, attending the interview in person, build your confidence back. You get your courage back, you get your skills back, you get your, the superpower back that, okay, no, I got this, dude.

I know how to handle it. Telling yourself.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Well, I also love that you asked after you got hired, why did you hire me? I think that's such a important thing to do and to learn. And thank you for sharing what you learned with all of us. Shweta, I wanna know if you can recap one more time in terms of the upskilling, you were listing some very specific websites.

I don't know if, are there coursework, categories? Are there certain types of sites that you think technical relaunchers should be spending time in?

Shweta Sharma: Yes, there are courses if you have been on a long break and you really think that you, that the tech stack you worked on a while back is not in the market anymore.

You can go for those crash courses. I've seen people doing that. Those are like three months, six months. I do not have firsthand experience with those, but I've heard from friends. What I did is I used these or leveraged these site like Leetcode. There's a Hacker, Hackathon, and there are a few more websites.

This one is for, front end. They call the programs there kata. I'm so sorry, but I will share this list offline if that is possible. But all these online sites, these are problem solving sites, which has lot of problems there. And you can start with the easy, medium, and hard problems.

And that's how I prepared for all the interviews. And not I, all the college pass out, all the new freshers, everybody in market is leveraging these sites to prepare for the interview. Leetcode is the most popular one I see. And, one more thing. I think I'm just telling stories.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Oh, we're all ears learning everything, anything that you want to talk about. It's been fantastic to hear too.

Shweta Sharma: There's a very interesting story. I was doing this Leetcode and I always start with problem one. So I came up with the top hundred problems, which is usually asked in interview and every time I start, I say when you are on break, you take, you work in phases, you are fully enthusiastic today you'll practice, then it's gone for two weeks. Then you're fully enthusiastic, I think that is with everybody. So I will always, in every two weeks gap, I will always start with problem number one. So my better half told me that, you're always starting from problem one. How many times will you do this problem one? It's my choice. I wanna do this. What is? But see what he did not realize, and I'm calling it out because when your husband tells you it doesn't hurt you, but if someone tells you it may hurt you, they, okay, what's wrong with me? Why am I doing it every time? But I could see I didn't reply to him.

But then when I thought about it, like how my mind is working and I want to share this with everyone. You are starting with problem number one, but you are not realizing the first time when we solved it, we took half a day to solve that very simple problem. The second time I solved it, I took two hours. The third time I wrote the same piece of code, I took 30 minutes. But when the last fourth time I'm writing it, it was done in 10 minutes. And where does it reflect? It reflects when you go to give interviews what you are doing when you're writing the problem, you know the solution in your mind because you have done it so many times. It's not the solution which you are practicing because you have been out of your touch, code, your speed, your writing power, you are putting your thought immediately, okay, I have to write main, print, system, cursive, oh, sorry, curly braces. All those things have gone out of touch for a while. Can you write that? The interviewer is asking you. Interviewer is asking you to solve the problem. You already know what to write before and what to write in the end, only the middle piece is what you have to think about. . So you see you're developing speed in the back of your mind. So I wanna tell everyone, do not ever think that you're doing something very repetitively. You are building the muscle to see how to do it more and more effectively because the interviews they ask, they have the limited time, 30 minutes to solve a problem.

And you have to utilize the time to think about solution, not about how to write main arcs and curly braces.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Wow. This is fantastic advice, and I am going to emphasize it and we'll probably even take an excerpt of you talking about this and put it out there, because this is specific advice that I think our technical relaunchers really need to hear about.

And, I have heard from them that they are getting stuck in the cycle and the starting over and gaps in between. But you pointing out about working, flexing that muscle, working on that skillset, bringing down the time is preparation in itself. So thank you.

Alright, Shweta, we are running out of time. It's been such an incredible opportunity to have this conversation with you. I wanted to end our conversation with the question that we ask all of our podcast guests, and that is what is your best piece of advice for our relauncher audience, even if it's something we've already talked about.

Shweta Sharma: Okay. The first one is, as I highlighted in my first answer, I believe identify and prioritize. Identify what is the need of this hour, and then work on the top priority for that. Is it something, like I said, visa? Is it something tech? Is it something completely preparing or building your confidence back? Because your approach is always changing to address that priority.

The second thing, as we both talked about, don't give up. Get out of your comfort zone. There are, there could be a technical reasons, there could be emotional things you are going through. We all go through that. Just do not give up. Be consistent in your approach. You take a break a day, go for a walk, do some yoga, meditation, but then come back and start.

Always go for interview prepared, but never say no. Do anything. Never say no. The most important thing which I have seen has contributed personally in my journey as a relauncher or non relauncher personally, professionally, ask for it. Always ask what you are looking for. Again, another small piece of story.

I know a friend who got into the relaunch program who, who joined Intuit as a relauncher through the Intuit Returnship program. She was really good. She was working so hard, but she did not ask for the work where she thought might excel. She was just continuously doing what was asked for her to do, where she was really not performing that well. But I knew her, so I could see that if she asked for it, she can do much better there.

And then in the end, they let her go. So people cannot really know what you need or what you can do better. You know yourself. So go ask for it. And then, there will be two things, either you will get it or you will get no. If it is a no, the next point I always emphasize on get the action items in.

You ask your manager, recruiter, the people who are saying, okay, yeah, so sorry, didn't work out. Can you please let me know why it didn't work out? I really wanna work on those things. And most of the time people are kind enough and not very diplomatic and, no, no, no, all good, they will give you specific action items.

If not, you work on getting those action items. Then build your network. Once you build your network, you will get to know about many things which is going on in and around you. It could be school, PTM, it could be, as I said, temple. It could be schools, or it could be any, anywhere. Like we said, reach out to your old network, it will help you.

These are the key things which I would think of.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Fantastic advice! Shweta, thank you so much. I want to just add that we will put in the podcast notes some of the resources that Shweta is going to follow up with about certain technical websites or other places to make sure that you can get yourself back up to speed. And so we'll get very specific about that. Shweta, thank you so much for spending this time with us.

Shweta Sharma: I really enjoyed talking to you. It was such a pleasure, Carol. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Thank you and thanks for listening to 3,2,1 iRelaunch, the podcast where we talk about return to work strategies, advice and success stories.

I'm Carol Fishman Cohen, CEO and co-founder of iRelaunch and your host. I hope that all of you who are listening who are relaunching will check out our resources on iRelaunch.Com and make sure that you sign up for our job board. Make sure you're on our mailing list, you will get our weekly return to work report, which is full of opportunities specifically for people who have taken career breaks.

Thanks for joining us.



Following are the links mentioned by Shweta in the podcast:

Coding prep:

- leetcode.com

- heckerrank.com

Preparation material:

Learn about all the data structure and their use cases

GeeksForGeeks to learn basics and concepts

System design - Grokking the System Design Interview | The #1 Online Course

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Grokking the System Design Interview | The #1 Online CourseLearn how to prepare for system design interviews and practice common system design questions. Trusted by 200K+ ...



Practice and practice and practice Algorithmic solutions

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