I've decided to write some posts about my experiences interviewing and doing cover letters and the journey and I'll post them when I want to.I was looking for a new job and came across this company that creates data management systems for large companies. The company also focuses on helping the community and bettering their employees. This sounded amazing to me so I applied for the job and put a lot of effort into my cover letter and application.
I heard back a couple days later to schedule a phone interview.I scheduled one and woke up an hour early each day to do CodeWars and LeetCode problems. After work all that week I did either that or looked into the company more.
The more I researched the company the more I wanted to work there. Seriously. This place is amazing. I also hung out with friends and still went to the gym so don't worry. I didn't burn out that much.The time for my interview came and I was nervous. They had sent me a link for a live coding exercise so I knew it was going to be a code-based interview. I was asked two questions:
Tell me about yourself.
What was your favorite project in your portfolio?
The super easy questions. Then came the programming part. The reason for these is to see how you think. It doesn't mean I like them, but I get why they do them.I had two different exercises and the first one took the majority of the time. I created for loops and if/else statements and then I walked him through my logic and made changes to make it work properly. Then we did the same thing with a second problem.
Overall I think it was good? They didn't run it through to see if it actually would work which really threw me off.I did send a thank you note later, but I ended up not getting the job. It was actually really cool to be able to talk about programming with someone who understands what I'm talking about. I don't really have that in my life.
Do you get nervous before interviews? How do you handle the nerves?
Original article here: https://jkimexploring.wordpress.com/2019/12/07/my-first-programming-interview/
Top comments (3)
Keep up the good work. I've learned much more from my mistakes and failed interviews than I have from the ones I succeeded in. While the money from a job is nice, it will come and go, but the knowledge gained will be there for life. I think that's priceless. I used to get nervous on interviews, but now, the mood has shifted more towards excitement, because I get a chance to learn something new and talk to a new person. If I end up with the job, cool, but if not, I get to learn something else the next time.
I always feel like I learn more about what I need to improve upon when I get done with interviews. Like this one I knew I had to spend more time with the array methods.
That's a good way to look at things!
Interviewers usually use the same question over and over, and it is a great delight to see someone see it for the first time, develop the insights and gawk at the brilliance of their design.