u/Aggressive-Gap8832

Hey everyone,

I am a final-year Mechanical Engineering student at a 3rd-generation IIT. I recently got placed at a service-based company with an offer of around 12 LPA. While I'm grateful for the baseline, my ultimate goal is to break into good product-based companies (PBCs) as a Software Engineer.

My Profile:

College: 3rd-gen IIT

Branch: Mechanical Engineering

CGPA: 6.6

Experience: No formal corporate/startup internship experience.

Upside: I have some really good, substantial open-source contributions that I am confident about.

I know my branch and CGPA are major bottlenecks for clearing the initial resume screening, so I have a few blunt questions regarding how to position my resume. I'm willing to put in whatever prep work is needed to back up my claims.

Can I rebrand my Open Source work as an internship? Since I don't have a formal internship, can I list my 3-month involvement with an open-source organization as a "Software Engineering Intern" role (even if it was mostly community-driven/contributions)? Will this fail background checks at tier-1 PBCs?

Should I hide my CGPA? Given it's a 6.6, is it standard practice to just omit it from the resume entirely?

Should I omit my branch? To avoid getting auto-rejected by ATS algorithms looking for CSE/IT degrees, can I just write "B.Tech - IIT [X]" and leave out the "Mechanical" part, or will that complicate things during background verification later?

How do PBCs view deep open-source work vs. standard projects? If I don't fake anything and just highlight my open-source contributions heavily, do recruiters at good product companies value that enough to overlook a non-CS branch and lower GPA?

Note: I am not looking to coast through. Whichever direction I take my resume, I am fully committed to preparing thoroughly for any technical, architectural, or situational questions thrown at me regarding my projects and code.

I would love some realistic guidance from folks working in PBCs on how to navigate this pivot. Thanks in advance!

Tldr: 3rd-Gen IIT Mech Grad (12 LPA Service Offer) | Need Advice to Pivot to Product Companies (CGPA & Branch Challenges)

Hey everyone,

I am a final-year(2026) Mechanical Engineering student at a 3rd-generation IIT. I recently got placed at a service-based company with an offer of around 12 LPA. While I'm grateful for the baseline, my ultimate goal is to break into good product-based companies (PBCs) as a Software Engineer.