My First Tech interview
Hello To Whomever Is Reading This !
Today I am going to talk about my first tech interview experience. Out of respect to the company and its privacy I am not going to share their name. With that being said, lets call this company, Company A.
I received a phone call about an month ago from a recruiter, speaking about a possible interview with a tech company. As you may assume, I was very happy to talk about this opportunity because I am in the middle of a career change and fresh off a coding bootcamp with Flatiron(or it seems likes its been fresh with two months passing by very quickly).
After the phone call, i set up an interview time and date for the phone screen. Preparing with Leetcode and grokking the coding interview, reviewing data structures day in and day out. The day finally came for my first tech interview.
Do you remember the first time doing something? The first time riding a bike, kicking a soccer ball, writing your first letter in kindergarten. How was it ? Was it uncomfortable, did you fall a few times? Well this is exactly how i felt, nervousness kicked in on another level. The coding language i used was JavaScript, I would call myself an intermediate in JavaScript so i didn't panic about that.
Interview
Here we go, after a small chat about what brought me into tech, The question was asked. Out of respect to the company I am not going to tell you the question asked but the Data Structure I used involved Hash Tables and Arrays. Thinking things would go smoothly, because the question was not really hard in my opinion, I had an syntax error that stopped me from going through the problem quickly which also stopped me from answering the other questions. 45 minutes seemed like 10 mins.
I solved the problem but with one small bug, which was a bracket in my code.The interviewer was really nice with helping me with the code as well but i didn’t think i got brownie points for that. The interview gave me feedback about what i can do better and tips for the future. I don’t know how to feel as a result of the phone screen because I am very hard on myself and don’t know what would happen. However, I can be positive because this is more experience under my belt.
It can seem disheartening when you don’t do well, but I also know i shouldn’t be too hard on myself because I am believer of following the right path and everything being apart of a journey. I felt a little down after that fact because I’ve solved harder problems then what i was asked. However, just like riding a bike, kicking a soccer ball, or writing your first letter. You may stumble, fall down, and make mistakes. However, inevitably with practice you will get better. The job process can be hard and frustrating especially in times like this where money and job security are very important. It is easy to start thinking negatively. However, I am going to keep pushing, keep practicing, and keep interviewing. I don’t have time for a pity party, with another interview with a big company coming up.
If anybody is going for the first tech interview, here are some tips that you can learn from my mistakes.
Tips For Coding Interviews
1. Understand concepts and techniques. I was to focused on just tunneling through data structures and algorithms to solve problems without really understanding how they worked in depth.
2. Use LeetCode if you can get the premium which is cost effective in my opinion or algo expert to solidify DS & Algos. It is helping me alot
3.Phone screens or virtual interviews, get headphones, I think apart of the problem was not being able to talk without putting the interviewer on speaker because my headphones didn’t work hindered me. It is better when you can talk through your problems which i think the interview really was looking for.
4. Whatever language your are using, get to know the syntax inside and out. The last thing you want is syntax errors holding you back, which was the case in my situation
5. Lastly, don’t over work yourself, take breaks! My head would start to hurt because of over working my brain. Just like a big game day or big night. You want to be fresh and give 100%
Good Luck to all my techies ! I’m rooting for you.