Day 15 — Your 30-Day Action Plan
You made it to the last day.
Over the past 15 days you have covered more ground than most students cover in a semester of placement prep. But information without action is just interesting reading. Today is about converting everything into a concrete plan you will actually execute.
What You Have Now
Let us take stock. After completing this course you should have:
Built:
- A personal portfolio website live at a real URL (Day 8)
- A RAG document Q&A system on GitHub (Day 9)
- A job search agent with 4 tools (Day 10)
- A GitHub MCP server for Claude (Day 11)
Understood:
- The real picture of AI and campus hiring (Day 1)
- Specific skills that differentiate you (Day 2)
- How to use AI as a study partner (Day 3)
- Why portfolios matter more than resumes now (Day 4)
- How to prepare for DSA in the AI era (Day 5)
- HR round strategy (Day 6)
- What top candidates do differently (Day 7)
- When to fine-tune vs prompt (Day 12)
- The 5 AI tools that matter (Day 13)
- Which roles are safe and which are at risk (Day 14)
Prepared:
- 8 STAR stories for HR rounds
- One technical interview explanation for each of your projects
- A clear picture of your target role and why
If any of the above is not done yet — do it before applying anywhere. The plan below assumes you have completed it.
The 30-Day Plan
This assumes placement season is approaching. Adjust the timing based on your actual situation.
Week 1 — Foundation Audit (Days 1-7)
Day 1-2: Portfolio and GitHub audit
Go through every project on your GitHub and portfolio. Apply the four-criteria filter from Day 4:
- Does it have a live URL?
- Does it have a clean README?
- Can you explain it in 30 seconds?
- Can you explain what was hard about building it?
Fix every project that fails. Delete any that cannot be fixed quickly. Quality over quantity.
Day 3-4: Resume audit
Read your resume as if you are a recruiter who has read 200 resumes today. Remove every generic claim. Replace with specific achievements and numbers. Every bullet point should answer "so what?" — what did this accomplish?
Run your resume through the ATS checker at resumeportfolio.in/ats-checker. Fix anything scoring below 70.
Day 5-6: Target company research
Pick your top 5 target companies. For each one, use Perplexity to find:
- Current eligibility criteria
- Typical interview process
- What they actually pay freshers
- Any recent news about their hiring
Write this down. You will use it in HR rounds.
Day 7: STAR story bank
Write all 8 STAR stories (from Day 6). Read each one out loud. Time it. Cut anything over 2 minutes. Practice until you can tell each story without reading it.
Week 2 — Technical Strength (Days 8-14)
Day 8-9: DSA pattern review
Pick the 5 DSA patterns you are weakest on. Do 2 LeetCode Easy problems per pattern using the approach from Day 5: explain approach out loud before writing code, state complexity before running.
10 problems total. No AI assistance during the timer.
Day 10-11: Technical concepts
Review the core CS fundamentals: OS (process vs thread, deadlock, memory management), DBMS (indexing, normalisation, transactions), Networking (TCP/IP, HTTP, DNS), OOPs concepts.
Use Claude to test yourself: "Ask me 10 questions on OS concepts for a service company technical interview. One question at a time. Tell me if I'm right."
Day 12-13: Project deep dive
Pick your two strongest projects. For each one, prepare:
- 30-second elevator pitch
- 5-minute detailed walkthrough
- Answer to "what was hardest?"
- Answer to "what would you change?"
- Answer to "how would you scale this?"
Practice until you can give all of these without hesitation.
Day 14: Mock aptitude test
Take one full-length aptitude test under timed conditions. Use the mock test on resumeportfolio.in or use IndiaBix or PrepInsta. Do not use AI assistance during the test. Review every wrong answer afterward.
Week 3 — Interview Simulation (Days 15-21)
Day 15-16: Full placement drive simulation
Use resumeportfolio.in to run a complete placement drive simulation for your target company — Aptitude, Technical, HR. Review the AI feedback. Identify the weakest round.
Day 17-18: Weak area intensive
Whatever the simulation identified as your weakest area — spend two focused days on it. If it was aptitude: 40 more timed questions. If it was technical: more concept review and one more mock. If it was HR: more STAR practice.
Day 19-20: Peer mock interviews
Find one or two classmates who are also preparing. Do mock technical interviews with each other. The person asking questions should have a list of common questions for your target company. The person answering should practice explaining their thinking out loud.
This is uncomfortable. That is the point. The discomfort in mock interviews is training for the real thing.
Day 21: LinkedIn update
Update your LinkedIn with your projects. Write three short posts about what you have built — the portfolio site, the RAG bot, the agent. These do not need to be long. "Built a RAG system this week. Here is what I learned in 3 points." Tag it #buildinpublic.
Week 4 — Application and Refinement (Days 22-30)
Day 22-24: Off-campus applications
Apply to 10-15 companies through their careers pages and LinkedIn. Personalise each application — one sentence specific to that company. Use the outreach templates from Day 10's agent as starting points.
Day 25-26: Second mock drive
Run another full simulation. Compare to the first one. The scores should be higher. If they are not — identify specifically what did not improve and address it.
Day 27-28: Stay current
Read three recent articles about AI developments using Perplexity. Specifically look for anything relevant to your target companies or role. Interviewers sometimes ask "what have you been following in tech recently?" Have a genuine answer.
Day 29: Rest and review
Do not cram. Read through your STAR stories once. Review your project explanations once. Sleep well.
Day 30: Final check
On the day before any drive or interview:
- Is your portfolio URL working?
- Is your GitHub updated?
- Do you know the company's details?
- Do you have two genuine questions to ask at the end?
- Have you reviewed your STAR stories today?
The Honest Expectation
Thirty days of consistent work will not guarantee placement. Nothing does. But students who complete this plan — genuinely, not skipping steps — are consistently better prepared than the average candidate.
The students who get placed are not necessarily smarter. They start earlier, they practice more deliberately, and they treat rejections as information rather than verdicts.
You have the knowledge. Now execute.
Your Next Step After Placement
Wherever you land — service company, product company, startup — the first six months are about learning how real systems work, building trust with your team, and identifying what you want to specialise in.
The AI tools in this course will continue to evolve. The fundamentals — strong communication, genuine building, treating every experience as information — will not.
Keep building. Keep sharing what you learn. The habit of learning in public that you started in Week 3 will compound over years in ways that are hard to predict but consistently positive.
🎓 Course Complete
You have finished the AI Survival Kit for Engineers.
What you covered: 15 days of structured preparation combining mindset, practical strategy, and technical building.
What you built: A portfolio site, a RAG system, an AI agent, and an MCP server — four real projects that demonstrate AI literacy at the code level.
What you are now: A fresher who understands not just how to use AI tools but how they work and how to build with them. That is genuinely rare in the 2025 placement market.
Your completion certificate is generated below. Download it, add it to your LinkedIn, and include it in your portfolio.
Thank you for going through this seriously. Build something real. Get placed. Then help the next batch.
Day 15 of 15 — AI Survival Kit for Engineers
Course Complete ✅