I'm currently looking for jobs abroad while living here. Since I hadn't had any interviews in English, it was very overwhelming. As time went on, it turned out that it was worrying for nothing. I didn't even get a chance to take interviews. I thought It may indicated that I wouldn't get many changes later on since I had to go back to my country in a few months due to visa problems. It meant that when the chance came to me I had to grab them.
I started to search for people who were willing to practice programming in English together. I wrote a post on Reddit and Discord. However, the time difference between countries made keeping in touch with them hard. Although I met a couple of friends, I didn't practice as much as I wanted as practicing interviews was not what they were mainly looking for.
I ended up watching Youtube videos and reading articles online to practice interviews. One day, I came across a Youtube video. In the video, the guy introduced a way to practice interviews. That was mock interview platforms. I thought it would be good to try. I googled to find the platforms, and I chose one Pramp.
I used the platform 5 times. It was not many times though, actually, there was a specific reason I stopped using the platform. You will know the reason if you keep reading this article.
Okay, now I am going to share the pros and cons of Pramp from my view.
What is Pramp
Pramp provides the complete tech interview practice you need, for free. Hone your interviewing skills, learn from your peers, and become comfortable performing under pressure within an interview setting.
Pros and Cons
Let's get right to the point!
Pros
1. Free to Use
I think this is the best thing about the pros. I started with 5 credits, which you can get when you sign up, and now I have 8 now. I spent one credit every time I did the mock interview and I got one credit after the interview(maybe because I wrote a review for my peer, I'm not sure), which means you can take mock interviews for free forever. I received some credits for rewards whenever people didn't show up for the interview, that's why I have 8 credits at the moment.
If you're currently preparing interviews, I recommend you to try this platform. It's free, what can you lose?
2. Shared Code Editor with Video Call
Once you connect with your peer, you share the code editor with the peer, and also, you guys can talk via a video call. Of course, if you don't want to, you can just turn off the video or audio. It's all up to you. This feature adds reality to the mock interview.
3. Different Types of Mock Interviews
As you see in the picture, there are different types of mock interviews such as DS and algorithms, behavioral, and so on.
Initially, the behavioral mock interview was my intention to join the platform, however, I wasn't confident with just speaking English, so I decided to start with frontend mock interviews. I thought the code editor would make me comfortable in some way. I ended up going with only frontend mock interviews though.
Anyway, the way I see it, providing behavioral questions is a unique feature of the platform. You can practice coding on Leetcode or some other platforms, but it is not easy to practice behavioral interviews. Basically, to prepare for this kind of interview, you need to practice with actual people, right?
Different types of mock interviews are what make the platform stand out among the other platforms.
4. Review System
After the mock interview, you can give feedback to your peer. In other words, you may get feedback from your peers as well. You may get some ideas about what you need to improve to be better at the interview.
Actually, it's up to you. If you don't want to give any feedback, you don't need to write feedback.
Even though, I recommend you to give feedback. It may give you an opportunity to rethink the past interview and organize your thoughts.
I'm the type of person who believes that no matter how small contributions are, they have the power to make the community better.
Your contribution may be something really needed for someone else.
5. Practice with Expert
I haven't tried to practice with experts though, it would be a good thing that you can get to practice with experts. Of course, it needs some cost and it's different depending on the expert.
There is a membership plan. It may be good for you. I was actually planning to join the membership because I wanted to keep going with mock interviews. As I noticed that I didn't need to charge the credits, I didn't need to join the membership.
Cons
1. Questionable Frontend Questions
This is one of the frontend questions. You need to create a clock that turns over each number like a paper calendar. I really don't know what the point is of the question. Of course, if I take this as a task from my company, I'll be able to make it. But I don't think this is a good example of a frontend question to measure your frontend ability.
There was a question that asked to implement the event emitter. I think it was a good question. I got to use a lot of JS knowledge such as prototype, closure, and something like that.
Unfortunately, once a user gets a question from the question, they can't change it. There is a way you can change your question, rescheduling. But I don't think others do this. You will get a task from your peer.
I was thinking of asking another question by myself in the session instead of the question assigned to me. it wouldn't be convenient as it was out of the platform, so I didn't. I hope there are more diverse questions on the platform and maybe more focused on Javascript.
There was one thing more, there was a question that needed to use an API to solve the question, but the API in the description didn't work. I told my peer to use the JSON placeholder instead. Seemingly, the questions need to be updated.
2. Absence of Runtime Environment
In the interview session, you share the code editor and the question with your peer. But there is no way to run the code and see the result together.
As you can see in the picture, it suggests you use other collaborative renders to see the result together with your peer.
I guess that they don't provide the environment because of the budget and a lack of people. Email on the footer of the webpage is only the way to contact them, I had to report via email for the question with the wrong API.
3. Bad Connection (Finding Peers and Call Quality)
This is the reason why I stopped using the platform. In the last tries, it failed to find the peer for me three times, and I couldn't do the interview two times because of the bad connection. Maybe it's because they didn't show up but one time, the peer started to write code then the session was finished in a minute.
Sometimes, there were problems with audio or video. As I wasn't fully comfortable with English, craking audio sound was quite a problem for communication.
Wrap up
I made good connections with some people and I practiced out of the platform a couple of times. They also gave me some good advice. Overall, my experience with the platform was worth it. I think I got more confidence after practicing here. If you're in preparation for interviews, I strongly recommend you give it a try. It's free. There is nothing to lose.
I hope you found it useful,
Good Luck with your job search!
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