Selling Yourself

Applying for a job in technology means proving your technical proficiency. 0:00 There are many ways you can be asked to do this, 0:03 and we'll go over some of the common methods, depending on the role. 0:06 First, let's go over how you can be interviewed for a designer role. 0:09 A design job has very visual outcomes, 0:13 so expect the questions and tests to be weighted similarly. 0:17 If you are applying for a design job, you will have to showcase your work. 0:20 The most common way you will be asked to do this is by presenting your portfolio. 0:24 Things that employers could be looking for are visual weight, 0:29 does it look good; information hierarchy, are the most important things 0:32 on the page immediately visible; information organization, 0:37 are related ideas near one another; 0:40 intuitiveness, is it clear what you're supposed to do next; 0:43 and clarity of copy. 0:48 Once you show your portfolio, you can be asked to explain your design process. 0:50 If you don't know what this means, pick your three best pieces of work 0:54 and ask these questions about them. 0:59 What problems were you given? 1:01 How did you approach solving each problem? 1:03 How did you iterate from idea to final product? 1:06 How many concepts did you work on, and how did you decide on a final concept? 1:09 The goal here is to show that you have a rational, thoughtful process 1:14 that balances the requirements of the client with the end goals of the user. 1:18 Aside from presenting visual examples of your work, 1:22 you can be asked a variety of questions about your approach to being a designer. 1:25 You will be asked questions that show your initiative to learn. 1:29 Design, like everything in the tech industry, is constantly changing. 1:32 And you will have to keep with the trends, best practices, and new technologies. 1:36 Are you willing to learn this? 1:40 And how proactive are you at identifying these trends and changes? 1:42 Testing these initiatives can come in the form of questions like 1:46 What do you read? What is an example of good user experience and why? 1:50 How do you stay up to date on trends in the industry? 1:54 Finally, you could be asked to run through a quick project at the interview. 1:57 You could possibly be given a UI component to redesign 2:02 or a description of a problem and be asked to walk through a solution. 2:05 Carry these exercises out at home, so that you are best prepared. 2:09 Developer interviews are a bit hard to generalize, because jobs can vary by 2:15 language and other areas of expertise. 2:19 Let's go over different types of interview structures you can expect to run into, 2:22 and then we'll talk about different questions. 2:26 In addition to the general interview questions, you will run into situations 2:28 where you have to demonstrate your ability to code. 2:32 There are a couple different ways you can be asked to do this. 2:35 Whiteboard tests are a practice that many people have heard of 2:38 but not a lot of people, at least developers I know, have been through. 2:43 There is a general antagonistic trend towards whiteboard testing. 2:46 A lot of people see it as highly unrealistic and an ineffective way to test a candidate. 2:51 Nevertheless, it does happen, so you should be prepared. 2:56 With whiteboard tests, employers are testing a few different things. 2:59 A whiteboard is a finite space, so writing out some code 3:04 quickly and then backtracking to add another variable or loop will get messy. 3:08 They're testing your ability to think through a problem and how to solve it 3:12 given the finite space that you have. 3:16 Secondly, they're checking that you know your language without having an IDE 3:18 all to complete your stuff for you. 3:23 If you forget a colon, comma, or semicolon, it's not the end of the world. 3:25 But they're looking to see if you can remember language-specific stuff. 3:29 Finally, they want to see how you work. 3:32 Do you ask questions and clarify any assumptions? 3:35 Do you read over your code and check things? 3:39 Is coding a collaborative process to you? 3:41 Do you ask questions and explain your reasoning to the employer? 3:44 Or do you like to be left alone? 3:47 If you Google whiteboard coding, you will see a lot of people arguing against it. 3:49 Regardless of where you stand on the issue, 3:54 if there's a chance you might have to do a whiteboard test, 3:57 it is best to practice beforehand. 4:00 The second type of interview you can run into is a pair programming interview, 4:03 where you code with someone from the company. 4:08 Like whiteboard tests, pair programming has its own set of criteria 4:10 to test in an interview. 4:14 It is good at exposing an interviewee's programming style. 4:17 Coding with someone allows you to see if they're open to criticism 4:20 or are thoughtful and have the ability to express their ideas clearly. 4:23 It can also show you if they're aggressive or competitive and hard to work with. 4:27 Second, you get a very early glimpse of their creative skills. 4:32 A key part of a developer's job is to read an insufficient set of requirements 4:36 and come up with creative solutions to fulfill needs. 4:40 Finally, you see through their thought process as they work through complex problems 4:43 and get an idea of how they complement your team. 4:49 Pair programming doesn't test at all job levels, so it's not ubiquitous. 4:52 But for mid to higher level positions, you can expect to run into this kind of test. 4:57 Then there's also written tests on paper. 5:01 You could be handed code samples to review and identify errors. 5:04 This kind of test is looking to evaluate the same set of criteria 5:08 as a whiteboard test. 5:12 As to the type of questions you could be asked, there's lots of different topics. 5:14 You could be asked simple factual questions about a specific programming language 5:18 or questions regarding data structures or algorithms. 5:23 It just all depends on the positions you are applying for. 5:26 A great way to figure out questions you might be asked at a specific interview 5:29 is to check out websites like glassdoor.com or LinkedIn. 5:34 Glassdoor is a great website to get all sorts of information about a job, 5:38 from reviews, salary information, and most importantly interview questions 5:42 that people have been asked when they interviewed with that certain company. 5:47 I've included a document in the downloads with a list of potential interview questions 5:50 by topic, ranging from easy to hard. 5:55 The list probably only covers a tiny part of all the different questions 5:58 out there, but, hopefully, it's enough to give you an idea of what to prepare for. 6:01 Now that's all I have to add to the topic. 6:06 But to round it off, let's look at what some of our teachers 6:08 have to say about being interviewed for jobs they've done in the past. 6:11 >>So it's interesting. There's such demand for mobile development right now. 6:14 The moment I updated my online profiles to say I was doing mobile development, 6:18 I started to get requests and job offers. 6:23 I wasn't even looking for a new job, and people started to contact me, 6:26 through LinkedIn and other ways, to say, hey, I see you've got these skills. 6:30 Let me tell you about my company. 6:33 And I went on a couple interviews just to see what things were like. 6:36 And it's kind of an intense process. 6:40 It's one of those things where, in my experience and I think this is relatively general, 6:44 people want to know what you can do. 6:50 They don't care as much about your degree or— >>Right. 6:52 >>or what certifications you have. They want to see your code. 6:56 And they want to see you code. 6:59 So we mentioned having things available online for people to look at. 7:01 But one of the experiences I had was, with some small companies, 7:07 they wanted to—one company gave me an assignment to do. 7:11 And I had to write some code, send it back to them so that they could review it, 7:14 and do it within a certain period of time, 7:18 so they knew I could turn things around and meet a deadline. 7:20 And then another—a friend of mine had an experience where 7:23 he went, interviewed for the company. They really liked him. 7:26 They invited him back to do some pair programming, 7:29 because they wanted to pick apart his brain, give him something to solve, 7:32 and watch how he worked through it, and they ended up— 7:36 there was an iPhone application they were working on, 7:39 and they found some weird bug, and he was working through stack overflow 7:41 and navigating the documentation, and he really just impressed them 7:44 with how he could solve the problem and how he wrote the code. 7:47 >>So pair programming is essentially you're there, and there's someone else watching you code. 7:51 >>Yeah, he was working with a developer at the company for a couple of hours, 7:56 on a small project, just to see how he worked with a team 7:58 and how he thought about the problem. >>That could sometimes be nerve-wracking, too. 8:04 >>Oh, sure. >>Someone watching over your shoulder and watching you code. 8:08 >>Yeah, I didn't have that experience, but I imagine it was very nerve-wracking. 8:11 It was nerve-wracking enough just to put together the code and send it 8:16 away from somebody to evaluate, but it was also a good experience 8:18 in that I could make it pretty much how I wanted it. 8:23 I was putting my best out there, and it was up to them. 8:27 As opposed to a more traditional interview, where you feel like 8:32 you've got to answer the questions the right way, and you can leave the wrong impression. 8:36 When you're just sending a product for them, like this is what I can do— 8:40 it was a better experience for me. 8:44 >>Yeah, I think, more and more, when it comes to actually coding in dev positions, 8:47 the employers are asking you to send over code, 8:51 or they ask you to solve a little puzzle, or they ask you to build a little feature 8:54 that they could use in their app. 8:59 So that they can review your code, they can see that you deliver on time, 9:01 and they can see the depth of your knowledge, too. 9:05 I mean, having the breadth is good, but a lot of employers do look for depth, 9:08 especially when it comes to mobile dev. 9:13 Do you know the language, do you know the ins and outs of the language? 9:15 I think one of the craziest questions I got, which was totally unrelated 9:18 to the development aspect, but it was more—can you think on your feet kind of thing— 9:23 was, given two phones with both the airplane mode on, 9:28 there's text on one phone, how would you transfer that text to the other phone? 9:33 So it was just like it stumped me completely. 9:37 I was like, well, there's no airplane mode, there's no Bluetooth, 9:40 you can't have an accessory attached to the phone, like— 9:43 how would you do it? 9:46 I couldn't answer it, of course. (laughter) 9:48 >>You know, we're given these detailed answers, and that's— 9:51 this is for a more advanced senior-level developer position. 9:54 I think a lot of companies, because it's a—there's a lot of demand, 9:58 a lot of companies do realize that people are coming in as entry-level, 10:01 needing to learn the technology, so that's a different experience, too, 10:05 where I think, in that case, you just need to show that you have 10:08 an appetite and an ability to learn. 10:12 And that the culture and the fit with the team is important, too. 10:14 They want to just make sure—whether you're working remotely or on site, 10:19 just that you can communicate clearly 10:22 and that you'll have the same, a similar work ethic 10:25 as the rest of the people you're working with. 10:28 >>Being interviewed for a development position varies from company to company. 10:33 Sometimes there's maybe small entrance exams, sort of thing, so 10:38 the most technically capable person in that company, 10:49 which may be very technical or may be not that at all, 10:53 may ask you how to start something in JSS 10:56 or may ask you generic computer sciencey type things. 11:01 And depending on your performance, I've often found 11:07 even with a semi-okay performance, don't be too hard on yourself 11:14 because you're often more technically competent than the other entrants. 11:20 So always go in there with a positive attitude, and 11:24 brush up on the particular skills that you know that they'll be looking for. 11:30 >>It's been a very different interview process for every single job that I've had. 11:34 For example, my professor hired me in college during my sophomore year, 11:40 so that was the longest eleven-week interview I've ever had. 11:45 So there was that one, but I've also interviewed for a more traditional 11:48 advertising agency, where I had to come in with my computer 11:52 and show them my favorite pieces and explain what problems I solved 11:56 and really thoroughly go into them. 12:00 And then another interview I had was just literally through Twitter. 12:02 It was very casual. He mentioned that there was a job opening. 12:07 I tweeted that at him, and he called me and set up a more official interview. 12:11 But they've all kind of been very different experiences for me. 12:16