The Essential Guide to a Post-COVID Developer Interview

Written by Jordin Gardner and Jared Gray

Despite the chaos that the world has faced in 2020, it’s hard to think of a better time to be a developer. Demand for our skillset is higher than ever, and we’re capable of providing value to businesses across the world from the convenience of a home office.

However, our industry has certainly seen its own share of damage due to the devastating global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Jobs have been lost, careers have been throttled, and many people are unsure about what the future holds.

It can be tricky to navigate this new world — hiring happens remotely and job offers are extended without ever seeing inside of an office. Some things are very different, and other things haven’t changed. Nevertheless, with the right amount of preparation, you can still nail a developer interview in 2020.

The following is a compilation of tips and tricks to help you be fully prepared for your next remote developer interview.

Research the companies you’re interviewing with

Phone screens or culture assessments are a common first step in many engineering interview processes. Before you can show off your technical chops, you might have to woo the interviewer to put you through past the first stage.

With that being said, it is critical that you have some baseline knowledge regarding the company that you’re interviewing with. Thankfully, the internet has plenty of tools and resources to help investigate your new potential career prospects.

• Review their online presence. Google their name and educate yourself on their business. As a bonus, can you find any bugs or point out improvements that could be made to their website or app? These should only be brought up with tact, but when done correctly, they can be a great conversation starter to help you stand out from other applicants.
• Keep track of what you’ve learned. Take notes or use a tool like Trello to store the information. Prior to an interview, you can review the things that you’ve learned about the hiring company to make sure the info is fresh and top of mind.
• Don’t overdo it. Company research can be a fruitful part of your interview preparation, but you’ve got plenty of other important things to do and it’s too easy to get carried away. Time-box yourself to make sure you don’t spend more time than necessary learning about a company that you may or may not end up actually working for.

Working with a recruiter? Treat them well

Many of us encounter frustrations with recruiters. Some of them seem to have difficulty connecting with the developers they so frequently pitch to, incessantly spamming invitations to apply to job postings filled with buzzwords and hot air. However, if you find the right one to work with, having a recruiter by your side can be tremendously helpful.

Recruiters don’t get paid unless you do; it’s almost always in their best interest to help you land the job. If you treat them well and communicate your competence as a candidate, they’ll almost always go above and beyond in helping the hiring company to see that you’re the best applicant for the position.

• Be upfront about your requirements. Don’t be afraid to clearly outline what you’re looking for, including your salary range, the type of culture you’re seeking, and anything else important to you.
• Be prompt about responding to their messages or emails. The more quickly that you can get back to them, the more quickly that they can get back to the hiring company on your behalf.
• Let them know if you realize this job is not for you. Even if this position just doesn’t fit, it’s possible that this recruiter can help connect you with one that does.

Establish expectations ahead of time

Although many companies had already adopted the practice of interviewing and hiring remotely prior to the pandemic, COVID-19 has forced many others to quickly jump into a world of remoteness that they’re still learning to navigate. As a result, numerous businesses are just as unsure about their interview processes as the candidates are that they’re interviewing.

Setting up accurate expectations of what your remote interview(s) will entail is an essential part of being properly prepared.

• Ask direct questions. Don’t be afraid to be bold in asking questions to ensure that you’re fully aware of what is to come. Who will be interviewing you? What is their role in the company? What medium will be used (phone, Skype, Zoom, etc.)? How long will it be? Will it be technical or non-technical? If technical, will there be live coding?
• It’s okay to be unsure/nervous. We’re living in unprecedented times where most people are at least a little bit unsure about what the future holds. Take each interview a single step at a time and you’ll make it through!

Every company is different and has their own interview standards. Typically, there will be a phone screen to start things off. After that, expect to have at least 1–2 more interviews that might include a variety of things depending on the position you’re interviewing for:

• coding solutions to real world business problems
• coding solutions focused on data structures and algorithms
• solving problems focused on database design and system architecture
• take-home coding projects to demonstrate real-life aptitude

If a company gives you a take-home exercise, they may offer to pay you for your time. If they don’t, and if the exercise you’re asked to complete appears particularly time consuming, don’t be afraid to ask for compensation; your personal time is valuable, and you’re shouldn’t be obligated to spend an unreasonable amount of it to prove your competence.

Prepare to talk about your projects

For an interviewer who knows what they’re doing, one of the most surefire ways to gauge the competence of candidates to ask about projects that they’ve worked on in the past.

When all is said and done, the projects you’ve previously completed are concrete examples of what you’re capable of, and your capability as a developer speaks louder and carries more weight than the length of your experience or the formality of most academic credentials; now is your chance to talk about what you can do!

You have little experience / you’re applying for an entry-level role

Talk about side projects that you’ve worked on in which you’ve exercised technical skills that are relevant to the role that you’re interviewing for. For a given project, explain why you chose it, what you learned while doing it, the trade-offs that you had to make while designing it, how did you overcome any struggles, and further improvements that you could make upon it. Ideally, the projects that you talk about will be listed on your resume and/or included in your portfolio.

You have significant experience / you’re applying for a senior-level role

Reinforce confidence in your expertise by focusing on projects that you’ve worked on professionally. For a given project, talk about the way in which you overcame technical hurdles, how you designed solutions to fit the business’s needs, and how you managed or mentored other members on your team. Everything is contextual to the position you’re applying for, but talking points such as these can illustrate positive characteristics that interviewers will look for in a potential fit for high-level positions; highlighting them can help bolster your seniority.

Get ready to live code

We’ve got some great news! Although the practice of interview live-coding is somewhat controversial, we can guarantee that you won’t have to write on a physical whiteboard when you’re interviewing virtually. However, live coding is a common practice despite the controversy, and it’s an eventuality that would be wise to prepare for.

This has the potential to actually be an enormous boon to the interview process. If the company is requiring live coding for a remote interview, it’s probable that they’d otherwise have required actual whiteboarding if the same interview was taking place in person. For those that struggle with the contrast between whiteboard coding and actual development, getting to code on your home setup is an enormous step in the right direction.

• Have your computer ready to go. Setup your local environment for coding in a language that is relevant to the position you’ve applied for. You might not need it — there might not be any live coding at all, or the interviewer might direct you to use a tool that they’ve pre-configured for their candidates — but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
• Communicate through the exercise. The interviewer might leave the problem intentionally vague, so it’s important to ask questions if something doesn’t make sense. Talk about your thought process in solving the given problem. If you don’t have time to finish, verbally walk the interviewer through how you would solve the rest of the problem if you were given additional time.

Don’t let imposter syndrome get the best of you

Unfortunately, many developers are well-acquainted with feelings of inadequacy. Disaster can strike when you start feeling this way during the technical portion of a job interview, as it can scramble your thoughts and negatively affect your performance.

Dealing with imposter syndrome can be tough. However, by keeping a few critical things in mind, you can weather the storm and ensure that you come out the other side having nailed the technical portion of the interview.

• You’re not alone. Everybody experiences imposter syndrome at some point — even industry veterans who seem like they have it all together. Remember: your interviewer has been in your shoes before, so they’re almost certainly empathetic to what you’re going through.
• Perfection is not required. If a company expects you to write flawless, production-ready code during the interview, they’ve got another thing coming. Treat the code you write as a tool to express your thought process and showcase your critical thinking; don’t worry about it being perfect.
• Preparation begets confidence. Studying for an interview that you’re particularly nervous about can be a game changer for your confidence levels. When scheduling your interview, ask what the technical portion will look like, and study accordingly.

After the technical interview

You made it! Whether you just did a code quiz, remote pairing assignment, take home project, or all of the above; Congratulations! Sometimes these interviews can be stressful, but it’s something you overcame. This is an excellent time to ask when you should expect to hear back. Is there another interview? What else is next in the process?

• Get feedback about your interview. This will say a lot about a company if they take the time to give feedback about your technical interview. If you are responding to feedback from a take home project, be sure to respond with clear answers. This in itself can be a test to see how you respond back to feedback and even criticism.
• Give thanks to the interviewers for their time. You can do this with a known email or LinkedIn message. It’s a nice human touch to close out the interview, regardless of how it went.
• Interview didn’t go as you expected? It happens. Never give up, get better, and keep trying. Check out Rejected.us (https://rejected.us/), it’s full of engineers highlighting being rejected by companies.

Additional Reading

• How to talk about side projects: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-talk-about-your-side-projects-18b96f192817
• Curated list of companies that don’t whiteboard: https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards
• Remote working resources: https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job
• How To Ace Your Video Chat Interview: https://medium.com/happymondayinc/how-to-ace-your-video-call-job-interview-6fed50fdccef