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Discussion on: Reflections on the Latest Round of Job Hunting

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travis-wentz

This sounds exactly like me and my situation. I don't go out of my way to claim credit for team projects and my interests are very broad. I view this as an asset; interviewers, however, seem to think I need more experience in just one specific area and often seem dissatisfied with my lack of rote memorization. I have two suggestions that might be helpful for you:

  1. Don't go to grad-school. Unless you want to go into academia or unless you have another really good reason, it's a massive waste of money. I got my master's degree and it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. It just left me with tons more debt. Learn on your own. Interviewers don't seem to care at all about my degree.

  2. If you don't have it already, get a copy of "Cracking the Coding Interview" by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. I treat the interview process like an exam and "Cracking the Coding Interview" is my textbook. Interviewing is a totally different set of skills which you will use for basically nothing else in your life ever and it's really stupid. I have found that, despite being probably more personable than most developers that I've worked with, I can't convince some one to give me a job without studying for the stupid interview as if it is an exam, albeit a frustratingly irrelevant exam.

I look forward to reading future posts to see if you have any breakthroughs that help us with the frustrating interview process, so let us know. Good luck to you!