Notes on What I Learned from Interviewing at 7 Companies (4 Years of Experience)
I started preparing gradually the year before last and recently finished interviewing at 7 places. The result was 3 passes and 4 rejections. This is from the perspective of a developer with 4 years of experience.
The biggest takeaway was that "why you want to change jobs" matters more than technical questions. If you don't prepare for that, it's where you get caught. At my first two places, I honestly said, "Because of salary," and the mood got awkward lol.
Things that helped during preparation:
- Try the company's product for at least 10 minutes before the interview (this got really good reactions)
- Organize your project experience in STAR structure and practice saying it out loud beforehand
- Put off salary negotiation until as late as possible
- If you don't ask questions back, they seem to think you're not interested
And coding tests... honestly, cramming for 2 weeks didn't work. I'm curious how everyone else prepared.
7 answers
'Trying the company’s product for even 10 minutes'—I’m not so sure about this. These days, applicants all come prepared with this as a basic, so it’s surprising that it got such a good response. I feel like it’s just the basics.
Agreed, why you want to change jobs is really important. I half-assed preparing for that too and totally tripped over my words in my first interview.
Coding tests really can be crammed in two weeks lol. I just did 1–2 problems a day for three months, and eventually the problem types became familiar. I spent more time reviewing solutions and writing down "why this approach" than actually solving problems. That helped a lot more when I ran into variation problems in the actual test.