It’s been a while - 2 months to be exact. This post is just an update about my interview process. Last time I wrote, I disclosed that I had been contacted by a company to interview for a Software Engineering Role. I actually requested an additional 2 weeks to prepare for the technical phone interview because of the many appointments and the medication that I had to take after having my surgery. I found that blogging took a lot of time away from studying, so I decided to hold off posting blogs about my preparation until the end of my interview process. At that time, I will discuss what resources I found best for the various topics I had to cover.

The Phone Interview

Man, I was so nervous for this interview. I first had a couple of questions about my background, then had to write code on a google doc. Be sure to practice answering questions on a google doc if you ever have to use such platform for the interview. I really thought that I was not going to advance to the next round. I thought my nerves were so shot, that it affected my performance. I know what may have saved me is that I talked all the way through my steps. I also ran test cases that enabled me to fix some bugs in the syntax. At one point, I had to restart my test, because I realized that was going through the code that I had in my head, as opposed to the code that I had written on the doc. Please, please test against the code that you have actually written. Overall, the interviewer was very pleasant, and although I was quite nervous, I was able to calm down a bit because of how cool he was.

I made it to the next round!

So as you may have guessed, I received the good news from my recruiter, that I made it to the next round. At this point I was transferred to a new recruiter who is responsible for assisting me with the onsite interviews. My onsite interview will consist of 5 interviews in one day at the end of November. I purchased a large whiteboard so that I can practice writing questions by hand before the big day.

I was given the option to attend an onsite coaching session, where about 20 candidates were in attendance. A software engineer representative from the company described the process, how we should tackle questions on the whiteboard, and we worked through an example as a group, to help us figure out what kind of questions we should be asking the interviewer. This session was quite valuable, since we were able to ask questions we had about the process. All in all, the experience so far has been wonderful, and I enjoy the time that this company puts into candidates to assist them in being the best that they can be on the interview day.