The First Interview
A few weeks ago, I received an email from a potential employer. At this point, I’ve sent out close to 150 applications for various software engineering roles and I’ve gotten almost adapted to getting the notorious “Thank you for your application. Unfortunately…” or hearing crickets. Imagine my surprise and excitement when I finally got noticed. I was finally on my way to my first technical interview!
The Experience
As I entered the group chat and configured everything for the code challenge, the overwhelming feeling of anxiousness entered the chat with me. My hands started to sweat and my heart was racing.
To my surprise, it was a code review and not about data structures or algorithms. I had submitted a code challenge a week prior that I thought was relatively simple. Although I was grateful for it, I also grew a bit skeptical of its difficulty level. Nonetheless, we ensued with our journey and I was asked to refine my code. Some tasks were simple while others required experience from something I knew little about. Other questions were in between the two were they garnered 20/20 hindsight as you think to yourself “ I KNEW THAT, WHY DIDN’T I THINK ABOUT IT LIKE THAT!!!”.
Finally, it was my time to ask questions. I like to take this opportunity to ask software engineers what their experience has been as a junior developer so that I can become a stronger candidate. Here’s what I gathered:
Tips from Software Engineers to Junior Engineers at a new Job
1.Always ask questions. Regardless of your position/role, questions are always better asked sooner than later. It avoids any unnecessary time spent doing something that could have been done much earlier.
2.Check your ego. Regardless of how unorganized code may seem, it’s always best to move along. If it isn’t broken, don’t touch it and if it does need to be fixed, you’ll know.
3.Learning on the job. I always ask interviewers if the job offers training for the first couple of days or if employees are expected to learn as they go. It is incredibly important to understand that you won’t know everything there is about programming but your ability to learn quickly is valuable.
I’m not sure how I did to be honest, but regardless I’m grateful for the experience. My interviewers were pretty lenient with me, but I get into my head. I start thinking about how my word choices may effect my application or if my thought process was verbalized clearly. I definitely felt the pressure in the room as I was coding and sometimes instead of thinking about a solution, I thought about the people staring at me. It’s important to get use to the that environment so use pramp.com as a resource to get over those fears.
I’m really excited to see what comes about this regardless of the outcome. If I get the job, great! If I don’t, I’ll take the time to reflect on it and try to ask my interviewers what areas I can improve on. Plan A is always to get the job but Plan B is to become a stronger candidate than you once were before the interview. As always, happy coding!
