1598475600
Software Engineer Interview Preparation Strategies for College Students
Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash
Placement Season is here and there are a lot of students confused over how they should start preparing for Job Interviews. In this article, I provide a step by step preparation guide for students to tackle job interviews.
Step 1: Develop your Skills
Find the skills that interest’s you the most and a job role that you would love doing. For example, if you are aiming for a Software Engineering job learn skills like Web Development, Android Development, etc. Check the job description of the company and that particular role to check whether your skill set matches the job description.
Step 2: Prepare a list of Target Companies you wish to work for
Create a list of 10–15 Companies who are looking for people with your skillset and you think would be good for your career growth. Start Connecting with employees of those companies on Linkedin and find guidance from them.
Networking is a very important part of job search and Linkedin is a great platform that helps you get connected with potential recruiters of that Company. Linkedin can also help someone to connect to like-minded people, be part of a community, create and share resources, etc.
Step 3: Create a Resume
A Resume is an important part of any job interview process which tells the interviewer about your skills, achievements, experience, and career highlights. It is very important to match your resume with the job description of the Company you are applying for. A resume should consist of a Summary or Objective, Education Details, Work Experience, Projects, Skills and Achievements, Extra circular activities, and your contact details.
Companies nowadays use an Applicant Tracking System to filter candidates and make Recruiter’s job easy. The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a software application that finds keywords from a resume and matches it with the job description. Many free Resume templates can be found online and there are many websites that can create a resume online, for example, novoresume.com, canva.com, resumebuild.com, etc.
Step 4: Start Applying
Go to the Careers page or search for the Company’s Career page on Google and check for Fresher’s position and apply. Or else you can reach out to Hiring Managers on Linkedin and get a referral. There are other job portals like indeed.com, naukri.com, instahyre.com, etc. where candidates can register with their details and resume and start applying.
So these were the general steps that students should follow while preparing for Job Interviews. Now let me provide you a detailed way of how the Interview Process takes place in College Placements and how students should prepare.
College Students can get a job in their Dream Company in these ways:
- Pre Placement Offer through Internships
- On-Campus Placements
- Off-Campus Placements
#interview #coding #interview-preparation #job-interview #programming
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1598475600
Software Engineer Interview Preparation Strategies for College Students
Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash
Placement Season is here and there are a lot of students confused over how they should start preparing for Job Interviews. In this article, I provide a step by step preparation guide for students to tackle job interviews.
Step 1: Develop your Skills
Find the skills that interest’s you the most and a job role that you would love doing. For example, if you are aiming for a Software Engineering job learn skills like Web Development, Android Development, etc. Check the job description of the company and that particular role to check whether your skill set matches the job description.
Step 2: Prepare a list of Target Companies you wish to work for
Create a list of 10–15 Companies who are looking for people with your skillset and you think would be good for your career growth. Start Connecting with employees of those companies on Linkedin and find guidance from them.
Networking is a very important part of job search and Linkedin is a great platform that helps you get connected with potential recruiters of that Company. Linkedin can also help someone to connect to like-minded people, be part of a community, create and share resources, etc.
Step 3: Create a Resume
A Resume is an important part of any job interview process which tells the interviewer about your skills, achievements, experience, and career highlights. It is very important to match your resume with the job description of the Company you are applying for. A resume should consist of a Summary or Objective, Education Details, Work Experience, Projects, Skills and Achievements, Extra circular activities, and your contact details.
Companies nowadays use an Applicant Tracking System to filter candidates and make Recruiter’s job easy. The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a software application that finds keywords from a resume and matches it with the job description. Many free Resume templates can be found online and there are many websites that can create a resume online, for example, novoresume.com, canva.com, resumebuild.com, etc.
Step 4: Start Applying
Go to the Careers page or search for the Company’s Career page on Google and check for Fresher’s position and apply. Or else you can reach out to Hiring Managers on Linkedin and get a referral. There are other job portals like indeed.com, naukri.com, instahyre.com, etc. where candidates can register with their details and resume and start applying.
So these were the general steps that students should follow while preparing for Job Interviews. Now let me provide you a detailed way of how the Interview Process takes place in College Placements and how students should prepare.
College Students can get a job in their Dream Company in these ways:
- Pre Placement Offer through Internships
- On-Campus Placements
- Off-Campus Placements
#interview #coding #interview-preparation #job-interview #programming
1598751120
Software Developer vs Software Engineer — Differences: Bogus or Real?
Software Developers vs Software Engineers
Personally, it pisses me off. Every time I see an article on this topic, my emotional bank account gets robbed. They are all about SEO. Inappropriate keywords squeezed into tiny sentences just to get better rankings. No intent to entertain or enlighten the reader whatsoever. Sometimes, such articles can even be outright wrong.
And even though the purpose of this blog post can be to generate traffic, I tried to make it more of a meaningful rant than a lifeless academic essay.
So, let’s see how you feel by the time you are done reading this paper.
Without further ado:
Since there are no proper interpretations of both terms, a lot of people use them interchangeably.
However, some companies consider these terms as job titles.
The general “programmer-developer-engineer” trend goes along the lines of:
- A programmer is someone who knows how to code, understands algorithms and can follow instructions. Yet, it doesn’t go further in regards to responsibilities.
- A developer is someone superior to the programmer. Except for coding, they also do design, architecture, and technical documentation of the software component they are building. They might be referred to as leaders, but not necessarily.
- Finally, an engineer implies that you are the real deal. You’ve graduated with a degree, have some tech knowledge, and preferably experience… and you are capable of designing a software system (a combination of software components your peons, the programmers, have built). You’re like an overseer. You can see the bigger picture. And it’s your responsibility to clearly explain that “picture” to your team.
#devops #software development #programming #software engineering #software developer #programmer #software engineer #software engineering career
1597741200
My Advice After Interviewing 100+ Software Engineers
This awkward and stressful thing between emerging a hero after completing the 12 labors of Hercules and the pointless successive hula hoops jumps of a circus trained animal, which we lightly call job interviews. We all hate them, yet they are an unavoidable fact of our professional lives.
When for the first time I ventured naively into the uncomfortable and inhospitable world of software engineering technical interviews, it didn’t take long for me to feel that judging a software engineer’s ability in 2 or 3 hours is as accurate as cruentation.
However, I always wondered how it was to be like the one sitting on the other side, what it takes to understand if an engineer is a good fit for the role. For the last couple of years, I conducted over 100+ software engineering technical interviews, and although each company has its unique process, there are common pitfalls people tend to fall. Here is my honest advice on how to avoid them.
The good software engineer
“The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.”
– Colin R. Davis
There isn’t a unique definition for a good software engineer. It relates to the needs of the role and the diversity and maturity of the company. A recent startup would undoubtedly need a short time to market, while a more mature company that grew to a large customer base would probably be facing some scaling and architectural challenges. Building product while understanding what makes sense to the business is different than solving complex technical challenges. A detailed perfectionist engineer is different from a fast iterating one. You need to understand what the company is looking for and frame your behavior and discourse into that mindset. Don’t do a one fits all CV, instead adapt it to that reality. If you have to do a pitch (in a way, you always do one formally or otherwise), frame it in a way that you show how you will be an asset to that specific company. You should understand the necessity the role is trying to fill and ask yourself if that motivates you if it does then embrace it. You should figure what the “good” definition looks like for the company’s context and show how your knowledge, experience, and attitude fits in that definition.
Do your homework
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
- Benjamin Franklin
Going on an interview without having a clue about the company it’s like going on a date and talking only about yourself, doesn’t mean there won’t be a second date but doesn’t give a good impression. Put in the effort to learn about the business, its objectives, it’s mission, strategy, and results. I would never fail someone for not knowing anything about it, but it is a hint of the candidate’s motivation. Also, it is a standard criterion HR tends to evaluate. Besides business goals, be sure to check the company’s tech blog if they have one and know their tech stack. Not very often candidates show legitimate interest for the company, but when they do, it is an excellent way to stand out.
Have a critical sense
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
- Aristotle
I’ve met exceptional technical experts throughout my career and they were all kinds of different people. Still, all of them had at least one thing in common; they were the ones who defied the status quo and made the processes and technologies improve. So many candidates, when asked if they have questions, have nothing to add. Avoiding asking questions is a wasted opportunity, grab that moment to ask about the technical decisions the company made and the challenges they are facing and discuss the tradeoffs of each technology.
Examples:
Are they considering moving to HTTP/3 yet?
Are they moving to an event-driven microservice architecture? What kind of message broker are they using? Why not use Kafka instead of RabbitMQ?
What kind of database technology are they using? What was the use case? Would ElasticSearch be a good alternative to SQL in that use case?
And so on. Questioning the technical decisions will show that not only you know these technologies and can argue when they should be used but also that you can think critically and ultimately care about improving whatever applications you work with.
#interview #software-engineering #interview-questions #software-development #interview-tips
1596623122
How to Build a Pipeline of Software Engineering Interviews Without Relying on Referrals
The best way to get hired by a company is always with a warm introduction. But what if you’re new to software engineering (I have less than 2 years of professional experience) and don’t have a large network of people who can refer you into the company? Or, what if there’s a pandemic on and your job search just got infinitely harder?
My job search overlapped with the pandemic, but I recently got hired as a software engineer at a company called Solv, working as a software engineer on software to book same-day doctor’s appointments and urgent care visits. Below, I’ve compiled the resources I used and the processes I created to maximize the chance of getting hired as a software engineer during the pandemic.
If you are interested in learning about the types of software engineering interviews and how to technically prep for them, refer to my previous post, Post-Bootcamp Software Engineering Job Types and How to Hopefully Get One.
How to Build Your Interview Pipeline
Let me start off by saying it is MUCH easier to get into a company’s technical interview pipeline with a referral source than it is applying cold. If you have multiple referral sources for multiple companies and you feel confident with your technical interview skills, then I hope your job search goes quickly. But with more software engineers getting laid off and looking for work and the economy shifting quickly, things just got even more competitive. If you are in a position where you are transitioning careers in this uncertain economy and don’t have +10K followers to help spread the word, then keep reading!
My Application Process
Congrats! You recently started your software engineering career and are on the hunt for a new job. Or maybe you want to start interviewing, just in case. Just remember the old accounting method for cutting costs during challenging times: last in, first out. If you’re like me and have less than two years of experience, your job is potentially at-risk during a down economic period, so it’s a good idea learn the skills to build up an interview pipeline.
How do you build a software engineering interview pipeline from scratch?
Everyone points you to those resources above and says, “Go get ’em, Tiger!” and you sit there wondering “How do I possibly differentiate myself from everyone else?” Building a software engineering interview pipeline takes work, it’s literally a full-time job if you are doing it right.
Make Your Resume Unique
To optimize your chances of getting noticed, you need a polished, unique resume.
Build a resume so unique and readable, that it catches the eye of the recruiter or hiring manager and makes them want to learn more about you.
What do I mean by unique?
- Overall: Resumes should be typo-free, simple and fun to read.
- Different Design: I was looking for software engineering and back-end engineering roles, so I converted the resume to include command line arguments to display experiences, projects, etc. I also colored it to mimic my zsh shell. You should try to tailor the design based on the position you are applying for.
- Content: It’s also pretty standard now to have a personal website. As a developer, you should have one and include the link on your resume. In addition to work experience, you should also include links to technical projects that have working URLs with well documented READMEs (getting a 404 error doesn’t set a good impression about your engineering skills). If you don’t have much work experience or projects, do more projects that you can add to your resume!
- Consistency: If you are linking social profiles (a personal website, LinkedIn, Angel, Medium, etc.), it helps if you have a similar brand (profile pictures, copy and design) across all of your profiles for consistency. Feel free to checkout out my profiles as examples:
Refactoring your resume is a very important part of the job application process. Please do not overlook this step. If you haven’t gone through multiple iterations of your resume or haven’t had someone else review it, do these things first.
After about four iterations of my resume, I landed on this one as my favorite:
4th iteration of my resume
Apply to Job Boards
I recommend picking a few main job boards and investing time in those boards, rather than trying to monitor 100 different boards. I found I got a higher ROI on my effort by spending time regularly on a few boards.
With under two years of professional software engineering experience, I found the job boards below very useful for engineers at all levels:
What worked best for me was applying to postings on LinkedIn and Angel.co. I actually found my first engineering job at Wyre through Angel.co and my second engineering job at Solv through LinkedIn. Cold applications work, you just have to put in the time of building a good resume and a clean personal website and writing a personal note (each person’s own secret sauce). To prove my point even more, the job posting at Solv was for a Senior Engineering role, and the recruiter said I got an opportunity to interview because she liked my resume and saw potential.
I can already hear all the different opinions of people yelling in my ear: “But you shouldn’t apply to applications on job boards online. You won’t get noticed so it’s a waste of time. No one looks at them, you have to go through someone you know.” But once you’ve tapped your network and can’t go out to meet people because of stay-at-home orders, it’s time to make job boards work for you.
My goal was to apply to at least 100 companies a week or ~15 companies per day. To make that process more efficient, I tried to reduce context switching by grouping related tasks into one day. For example, I would do all of my initial applications on Sunday and Monday for the week. It didn’t matter if it was a workday application process where I had to sign up for an account for every company I was interviewing for and then going through their 1990’s style application process, I pushed through it and applied anyway.
Lastly, there use to be a script that would allow you to post to literally 1000’s of applications on Angel.co, but it doesn’t work anymore because Angel.co changed their front-end code. If any front-end engineer wants to update/create a new script to batch apply to jobs, that would be awesome!
#software-development #software #interview #software-engineering
1589872003
College Football Betting Software Development | College Football Betting Solutions
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We develop unbeatable software solutions to increase the user-experience and reduce the risk of fraud and insecurity.
#college football betting software #college football betting app development #college football betting app developers #college football betting software developers #college football betting website developers