How to Get a Job at Your Target Company in 2026

For most engineering freshers, the gap between which companies visit campus and which company you actually want is real. It’s also closeable. The difference between students who close it and those who don’t usually comes down to one thing: specificity.

Name the Company and Role First

Most placement advice starts with “prepare well.” That’s true but not actionable as a first step. Your actual first move is picking a target company and a target role within it, because everything else in your preparation flows from that decision.

Indian tech hiring splits into two main tracks with different preparation requirements:

Track	Example companies	Fresher CTC range	Primary hiring filter
IT services	TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, Capgemini	3.5–9 LPA	Aptitude + verbal + basic coding
Product	Zoho, Freshworks, Adobe India, Microsoft India	12–30 LPA	DSA depth + project portfolio

Pick a track first, then a company within that track. The preparation for TCS NQT looks nothing like the preparation for a Freshworks engineering round. Treating them as variations on the same task is an expensive mistake.

Some engineering freshers also evaluate the banking sector as a third track, where aptitude and reasoning skills from placement prep transfer directly and eligibility is open to any graduate. Why engineers choose banking careers in India covers that path in full.

Name the role too, not just the company. “I want to work at Zoho” is a weaker plan than “I want to work at Zoho as a software development engineer, targeting the on-campus drive in August.” The second version tells you exactly what skills to build, what timeline to work to, and what eligibility criteria to watch.

Build the Profile That Passes the First Filter

Most large companies filter applications before a human reviews a resume. The filter depends on the track.

For IT services drives, the first screen is usually a standardised test (AMCAT, TCS NQT, CoCubes, or a company’s proprietary assessment) that processes hundreds of applicants before any resume review. For product companies, the first filter is the resume itself, read by a screener who spends roughly 6 to 10 seconds on the top half before deciding to read further.

Three things that consistently move a fresher resume past the first screen:

• Keywords that match the job description. ATS systems filter by phrase matches before a human sees the application. If the JD says “REST APIs” and your resume says “web services,” a keyword filter may not match the two. Take the exact language from the JD and use it in your skills and project description sections.
• Quantified results rather than activity descriptions. “Reduced page load time by 35% by switching to server-side rendering” is checkable. “Worked on performance optimisation” is not. Any project deliverable you can express as a number should be expressed that way.
• Two working projects rather than ten certificates. A deployed project on GitHub shows a screener that you can finish something. Certificates show you started something.

The third point is gaining weight in 2026 fresher hiring. In FY26, AI-skilled graduates made up 60% of TCS’s fresher hires, up from 10 to 15% three years earlier, per TCS CHRO Sudeep Kunnumal. Product companies and analytics firms are applying similar filters. If your target is above the service-tier, an AI or ML project on GitHub has become expected evidence, not a bonus.

Your online presence matters too. LinkedIn with 500+ connections and skills endorsed by peers signals an active professional; screeners at product companies check profiles before the first interview. Clean up anything on public social media that reads as unprofessional. A recruiter who looks you up should land on evidence of your work, not evidence of your weekends.

Enter Through the High-Conversion Doors

Cold applications through a company’s careers page are the lowest-conversion entry point for freshers. The higher-conversion paths, roughly in order:

Referrals

Formal referral programs exist at most large IT companies. An employee who refers a candidate often receives a cash bonus if that candidate is hired, which means they have a genuine incentive to vet your profile before forwarding it. For freshers with no industry connections, LinkedIn alumni search is the starting point.

A referral approach that works:

• Search your target company on LinkedIn
• Filter for people who attended the same college
• Send a short, specific message: which role you are applying for, one reason your profile fits, and your resume

Response rates drop sharply on long messages. Two short paragraphs is the right length. Do not ask a connection to refer you before you have explained why your profile is worth referring.

Internships and PPOs

If your target company runs a summer internship program, an internship is the highest-probability path to a full-time offer. Pre-placement offers (PPOs) convert at high rates when interns complete the program satisfactorily. The realistic timeline is applying for internships 12 to 18 months before your target full-time placement window.

Campus and Off-Campus Drives

Campus recruitment gives you a structured timeline and a placement cell point of contact. Know the eligibility gates before the drive is announced:

• CGPA cutoff (most IT services companies require 6 to 7 CGPA or above; product companies set the bar by role)
• Active backlogs policy (most IT services firms require zero active backlogs at the time of application)
• Graduation year eligibility window

If your target company does not visit your campus, off-campus hiring through the company’s careers page or third-party platforms (HirePro, AMCAT) is a real and well-documented path. Both IT services and product companies publish off-campus cycles on their LinkedIn pages and careers portals.

Prepare for Their Specific Process, Not a Generic One

Every company has a documented hiring process, and finding it is a 15-minute job. Glassdoor, LinkedIn reviews, and preparation community forums carry real process details from candidates who completed recent drives. Use those sources before you plan which sections to prioritise.

Company track	Typical stages	Where most candidates get filtered
IT services (TCS, Infosys, Wipro)	Aptitude + verbal + coding, then technical round and HR	Aptitude and verbal sections
Product (Zoho, Freshworks)	Aptitude then coding rounds 1 to 3 then technical interview	DSA depth in coding rounds
Analytics (Mu Sigma, ZS Associates)	Case study then aptitude then personal interview	Case study and analytical reasoning

For the aptitude sections across any test, calculation speed is the constraint. Quantitative sections in AMCAT and TCS NQT give roughly 60 seconds per question. Shortcut techniques for common arithmetic patterns (like mental math shortcuts for squaring numbers between 40 and 60) consistently cut calculation time below 20 seconds per question for the patterns they cover.

Follow up after applying. A short email or LinkedIn message to a recruiter confirming your application is appropriate, one paragraph and no more. It signals seriousness without being intrusive.

The gap between service-tier and product-tier offers (the 3.5 to 9 LPA versus 12 to 30 LPA spread from the track table above) comes down largely to what you can demonstrate technically. NASSCOM’s Future of Work India research identifies growing AI skill demand as one of the fastest-accelerating filters in India’s tech hiring market. Building that first AI project before your placement window is achievable at ₹299 on TinkerLLM, and it gives you the kind of GitHub entry that this article’s profile section says outweighs a certificate stack in current shortlisting decisions.