Zoho is known to have a peculiar process and criteria than the other typical companies who visit the college campus during the placement drives. One thing about Zoho which people love is that they value talent and knowledge more than degree and qualifications. If you have the skills, you are in no matter the number of backlogs you hold. Apart from that, their reputation of running a world-class SAAS product company with its HQ in Tamil Nadu has made them one of the dream companies for an average Engineer in South India.
I will describe the steps it took me to get into Zoho, why I love Zoho and when I left, why did I do it.
Intern Hiring
During the pre-placements at the end of 3rd year while I was doing my B.E., Zoho came to my college campus – Rajalakshmi Engineering College for hiring interns. As usual like everyone else in the batch of 800+ engineers, we took up the initial round where they checked our logical skills with coding questions and flow charts. Nearly 100 out of 800 were selected for the next round.
From the next round, it was all coding rounds. Zoho likes to do the basic coding, sometimes playing around the data structures but most importantly testing the logical skills of a person , their understanding and writing efficient piece of code. In the 2nd round, I solved nearly 4 problems and qualified for the next round.
The third round posed some more complex programs which I was able to solve to a satisfactory extend and move on to the final round.
The fourth round was supposed to be held the next day. In the fourth round, there were a series of questions which finally formed a part of a famous game (at base level trying to cover edge cases). Nearly 9 of us qualified and after a basic HR around, we were selected for internship at Zoho!
One sad thing was I couldn’t attend Zoho’s internship due to medical issues. When I checked with my friends (who were selected as interns), they said that Zoho does have a world class building, amazing food for its employees and a free environment with no dress code or strict timings. Safe to say that Zoho is still in the startup mood and not forcing employees to become corporate employees.
3 of the 9 people selected for internship were given the placement offers by Zoho.
Full Time Hiring
On the very first day of our college placements, Zoho was the first company which visited the campus to hire for full time. Again, nearly 850 students appeared for the first round which was an aptitude round. Since I was selected for intern, I could skip the initial round and directly take part from the 2nd round. With Zoho’s tough evaluation, less than 50 people could enter the 2nd round.
The 2nd round was a coding round and I could solve it and proceed further. The third round was again a coding round. In the 4th round, we were given few complex problems and asked to find the optimal solution. Few of them were based on Data Structures and rest on your logical thinking. I could solve most of it and finally 6 of us out of 850+ were selected for Technical HR round.
In the technical HR round, we were asked a lot of technical questions around DBMS concept, on our projects and few aptitude questions. 3 of us moved forward to General HR round and all 3 of us were handed the offer letters by Zoho!
Experience At Zoho
We received our internship call a day before Christmas when we were in our 8th semester. When I first stepped into Zoho, I found it to be different. It wasn’t like the companies who decides what an employee should wear or track their timings dedicated to work. They value the quality of the work. And, they take good care of their employees. Free food, Shuttle services from stations and points, Playing areas – the perks at Zoho are too good.
I met my team members that day and I was placed under a manager who reviewed me during the 3rd round of the campus placement. I was given a MacBook Pro (Fun fact – I did not use to like Mac till then) on the initial day. I started to get to know the Zoho campus, about the product – I became a part of Zoho Finance team.
The initial few weeks, I spent trying to get to know the products (Zoho Finance is a suite of 7 different SAAS products), a bit of codebase, timelines and the team. It was quite a fascinating experience. To the outside world, they see it as a SAAS product but when we are a part of the team, we get to know 1000s of stuffs going inside. Inside every single day, every release – bugs, features, timelines etc.
Zoho, I can say is a self-sufficient technical company. They have so many internal frameworks that they never have to look at AWS or any providers to sustain. They have their own cloud farm to support all their applications and nearly everything is built from scratch. As a result, it has formed the base for them and now coming up with a new fresh SAAS product is quicker for them than a startup. We can definitely see that with their 45+ products spread across different streams.
Initially, it was all overwhelming. First, the travel time I had to spend (4+ hours daily) form my home to reach Zoho and come back. Then with trying to gain domain knowledge – Zoho Finance is a proper finance suite which enables users to file their taxes. Hailing from Science background and haven’t stepped into the business field ever, I did not understand Invoices, Estimates, Sales Order, Purchase Order, Ledgers and such things. It took some time to get to know them and work with it. Apart from this, eyeing for technical growth, there were so many products and internal framework to know, learn their workings, it was nearly impossible to not get overwhelmed with the opportunity.
I was into production nearly after a month I joined Zoho. Due to the pandemic, I could attend office only for 2 months post which I shifted to WFH. Our conversion were delayed but Zoho being Zoho, they did not wait for us to graduate and converted us to full-time employees by July.
What I love about Zoho?
- Free and amazing food. I did gain weight because of that.
- Open culture. Open townhalls.
- No dress code.
- Technologically sound and advanced.
- Self-sufficient.
- Open code access to various frameworks and products to learn.
- Open ended discussions even with the CEO, VP of a 9000+ employee company.
- Voices heard. Even if you are an intern.
- Flat hierarchy and everyone are easily approachable.
Why did I leave Zoho?
So to the toughest part of this journey – I left Zoho in February, 2021. After nearly 1 year and 2 months, I decided to move onto my next role. I get to hear a lot that I left pretty soon. But I think I made a wise decision.
First, it was incredibly difficult to start from home at 7 AM in the morning and come back by 10 PM in the night. There was always an option to shift nearby but I couldn’t come to terms with doing that while staying in the same city.
Secondly, I thought I started exhausting my time. I spent a quarter trying to understand lots of Zoho internal frameworks and other products, team structure, collaboration etc and I did gain a lot of knowledge. But at the end, I was a small part of a piece of one product. Yes, it was quite important to the whole product but I wanted to explore more in terms of contributing on a bigger scale.
I was working as a Backend Engineer at Zoho in the Zoho Finance – Integrations Team (handling integrations with internal Zoho products). I have had keen interest in Android development and have been trying to equip myself with the latest trends and understanding for quite some time. I decided to move to an Android dedicated role to explore different products (products which has a huge role of hardware too).
Conclusion
To anyone thinking of joining Zoho or have the offer letter in your hand, do it. Zoho is one of the best SAAS product based companies you could join. Their virtue and aim is too clear and open for anyone to related with and when you know the company cares a lot about you, it is definitely going to be a lot more easier.