Now that the course is over, I have graduated, and my resume, portfolio, etc. is all up and running. I can officially start the search for my new career. Both the Mock Cultural and Mock Technical interviews I did with Flatiron were fantastic. Both gave me a bit of insight of what I should expect and what I should practice during this process.
Cultural Interview thoughts and next steps:
My Mock Cultural interview went great in my opinion. I was given a boat load of questions and needed to answer them clearly and quickly. Most of the ones I was given I was prepared for due to have experiencing with interviewing before. However, I was hit with a few that stumped me. Whacky ones like “What color would you be?” “What exact reason made you want to get into Web Development” made me think hard and long. You never know what to really expect during an interview. Overall Cultural questions are something that with some practice you can catch onto quickly. Also theirs a ton of articles and blogs you can find that have the exact questions you might be asked.
Technical Interview thoughts and next steps:
My Technical Interview (first time ever doing a tech one) was something I was completely new to. Flatiron gave us the opportunity to choose what language we wanted to do it in. I decided to go with JavaScript more specifically React.JS. The start was great just a few more cultural questions and then some technical ones. The technical ones I was able to answer very quickly and easily because I am such a recent student. All the vernacular is in my head and I use it daily. I’ve also continued to ask these questions to myself so I don’t forget and important vocabulary. However, it is something I feel that stays in your brain. Once you know the terms and how everything works it’s hard to forget even more so when you have been using those terms daily. However, I feel with the coding aspect if you don’t continue to practice day in and day out that you will most certainly forget. My tech challenge was very straight forward. It was a React component that had a few bugs that I had to go ahead and fix. My first reaction especially in a component so small is to sift through the whole entire thing. It’s just a reaction. I may even be reading through things that are correct and have nothing to do with the bug. However, I like to know over all what its doing. I learned however with bugs. Especially if you’re reading a huge component that is time wasting to sift through. Depending on what is wrong I should refer to the React life cycle and go through those steps accordingly. It might make more sense and might be quicker to get to an error that way instead of reading through unnecessary code. Overall I was able to finish all the challenges. My interviewer did steer me in the correct way once or twice. But I was very happy I was able to come to a conclusion and fix all by myself.
I believe the technical interview is very important if not the most important part. The job is coding. You should be able to code on the fly and in front of someone if needed. My way of practicing is doing personal projects. I always end up with bugs and need to fix them. I don’t like going through random challenges online because for me I like to not only expand my portfolio with independent projects. But also practice fundamental coding and de-bugging.
I’m excited to start a new independent project Museum-Of-Regular-React and get on the job hunt grind!