Learnings while interviewing
My own learnings after interviewing dozens of interns
1 year ago I was “just” a Computer Science student applying to internships that I was interested. I didn’t know how the interviews work, so I was not prepared for my first interviews. I did a little research about interview tips: Did it most on Quora. A lot of Gayle McDowell advices, Cracking the coding interview, Google interview advices, etc.
But I’m a Japanese-Brazilian here in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the software engineering market here is a little bit different than the US, so the interview is also a bit different. We don’t focus a lot on algorithms and data structures. The companies often measure the interns technical performance: if (s)he knows the technologies (that the company use — Android/iOS, web-frontend, web-backend, frameworks, databases), if (s)he has any project(s), and if (s)he can program a “simple” technical test in the interview or onsite.
Months ago I had a chance to interview some (future) interns for the company I work. I have a habit to write down almost everything that I learn (I wrote down my learnings in the Medium’s draft, so I could remember the most valuable learnings while interviewing ☺). Here are my tips for the (future) interns:
Be interested about what the company does
I think it is your first lesson! Get the company’s website, know what it does, which technologies it uses, understand its market, etc.
Yeah, you got it! Pretty basic! First lesson learnt!
Don’t lie in your CV. Be honest!
Yeah, this is pretty obvious, huh? But people usually write their CV telling they have some skills, did some projects, etc, and in the interview we know if (s)he was lying or telling the truth.
We had an interviewee, for a software engineering internship position, that wrote a CV that he did a project with his friend. I got excited, because it’s hard to find interns that build projects. When I started asking about the project: which technologies he used (programming languages, databases, frameworks, web, mobile) he couldn’t even answer that simple question. So I asked what part of the project he did. He answered that he just hired a person to develop his project. I was totally disappointed.
Be interested about programming
If you really like programming / software engineering, show it! It is simple:
- Make some projects: it shows that you have an experience, you learnt some technologies and you are interested about programming.
- Do hackathons / startup weekends: you gain experience in team work, build an application faster than ever (but maybe the code quality isn't that good).
- Do programming competitions: competitions like ACM ICPC. You practice your algorithms and data structures skills.
- Build your own website: you will understand HTML, CSS and maybe the basics of Javascript.
- Do some courses: the internet has a lot of resources — Udacity, Codecademy, CodeSchool, Coursera, etc.
Yeah, I sad it was simple. Not easy!
Be nice, be open, express yourself
Maybe you are a shy, introvert guy, but you need to express yourself. Programming is really important, but to be a better software engineer you need to improve your communication skills. So, be nice, express what are your goals about the internship, ask good questions, have a nice conversation. Your interviewer wants to work with a nice guy/girl (s)he likes. ☺
And that is it!
I hope you enjoyed those advices! See ya!
