DEV Community: Kyle McDonald

Developer interview tips that will put you ahead

Kyle McDonald — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 15:55:54 +0000

So you've either completed your Computer Science degree, finished a boot camp, or have been learning about the development world for a long time, and its time to find your first job—a big undertaking.

While many resources encourage candidates to rehearse anticipated questions, dress to impress, or master whiteboard problems, there are several facets of the interview process unique to the development world that are often overlooked.

As someone who has found themselves on both sides of the interviewing table, I can share that there are several invaluable, dev-specific practices that can set candidates apart. These practices are not always captured in the blanketed "best interview" paradigm and are often neglected by people searching for interview best practices online. Here are some things you might be missing!

Do what you're best at

A long list of desired skills are often outlined in posted job descriptions, and many people find themselves eager to show the interviewer that they can check all of the boxes. Unfortunately, it is easy for a candidate to become forgettable when they fail to dive deep into the experiences and skill sets that make them unique. Target those skills where your strengths lie. Show expertise. Do what makes you excited.

I used this very strategy during my take-home assignment from my last interview. I pride myself on working very closely with designers to create beautiful products, so I made the intentional decision to spend most of my time focusing on layout, micro-animations, and other design elements that would set me apart.

This approach can indicate that the company and candidate share common goals. Likewise, as an interviewer, knowing someone has a real passion in specific parts of the stack makes it easy to preemptively decide where they might fit into the team.

Highlight soft skills

Obviously, technical skills are an integral part of the developer job description, but they are not the sole factor influencing the candidate picked. In my book, non-technical skills can outweigh some technical pitfalls—especially in an entry-level candidate. Showing that a candidate is an excellent communicator, an avid learner, and a malleable team member puts them ahead of candidates who lack those skills.

Technical skills can be learned over time, but skills like these can't be taught. Soft skills can shine a light on the potential developers have to succeed in the workplace— despite their lack of experience. Companies seeking entry-level developers are particularly interested in the potential for growth for their employees.

As stated before, when the opportunity arises to show off the skills you are strongest in, don't shy away. If technical gaps exist, be sure to fill in the gaps with examples of experiences like working in a group, leading a project, or navigating obstacles. Offsetting any doubts there might be surrounding a lack of experience will put you ahead when searching for your first gig.

Have an informative personal site

When viewing someone's resumé, the first thing I tend to get excited about is if the candidate has a personal site, and more importantly, how it looks. It's pretty easy to conclude that candidates with creative sites will stand out from the rest, bonus points if the code is available on GitHub. You can use your site to play into your strengths. So from the get-go, the interviewer is already aware of how your strengths differ from others.

How do you make your site creative, though? Here are some great ones I've found, but search around for inspiration. (If you have sites that you think should be on this list Tweet at me)

In conclusion

Though your first position you accept may not be your "dream job" per se, making sure that you have a great place to grow your skills is paramount. If this means taking a lower salary to work at a company that fosters growth, I would recommend doing so. Doing so will pay dividends in the future for you.

If you've gotten this far in your career, you more than likely have built a solid network. Utilize that. You'd be surprised how willing people are to help out, or even better, hire you.

Remember, the people interviewing you are people. So talk to them, use them as a resource. Though they are sitting on the other side of the table, demonstrating that you are not above asking for help will put you ahead. Most importantly, though, do what's right for you.

Note: This article was originally written for my personal blog. I am republishing it here for the amazing DEV community.

Easy SEO Wins

Kyle McDonald — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 14:37:29 +0000

Over the last year, I've been putting a lot of time into learning the ins-and-outs of SEO. I see it as the best way to generate organic traffic and also one of the easiest. All it takes is a little behind the scenes work, and you're off to the races.

Meta Tags

When you think of SEO implementation, meta tags are usually the first thing that comes to mind. While they're not the essential factor in your SEO ranking, they're still crucial to have on your site. Depending on your site's content, you can implement a large number of different types of meta tags; see the MDN docs. The two I focus on the most, though, are the title and description. These are the two tags that will show up first on Google and will be the most significant factor in if the user chooses to click on your site.

I like to format titles like this: "[Name of page] | [Name of site]" so that way all relevant information is in the title. As for descriptions, this depends a lot on your site content. For e-commerce, I've put product descriptions, regional information, etc. into the description tag. See this recent example:

So it's safe to say that the description tag is more contextual, and you might have to get creative with the content for it.

An important note to point out about the title and description tags are that you should give your best effort to make these tags unique for each page. Google will flag duplicate tags as duplicate content, which will hurt your SEO performance.

Open Graph

Open Graph tags allow your site content to become "rich" when referenced on a social media site or the likes. The useful thing about Open Graph tags is there is an overlap between Meta Tags. The title and description content you used previously can also be used on Open Graph tags; see the Open Graph Docs for implementation details. The last tag I'd deem necessary for Open Graph is an image tag. This image needs to be super clicky so that it stands out amongst other content on a social media site. I generate these images dynamically so that they don't become stale every time I post a new article. So depending on the site you're building, dynamic images could be a good investment for you.

Document structuring

Structuring your document correctly to optimize for SEO is very important, yet one of the big misses by people building a site. This structuring can become complicated depending on the size of the site, but if you set out rules beforehand, you will succeed.

Rules I follow are, one "H1" tag per page, any other headings need to be proceeded by a parent, i.e., an "H3" tag should only exist if it's underneath and "H2" tag in the document. Make sure paragraphs are in "p" tags and not a "div". For you React folk, a link should be an "a" tag, not a "button" or "span". Use aria-labels for buttons or links that don't contain copy.

Using these rules will set you up for success, and as you build out more structure, you will discover new best practices to follow.

Schema Structures

Schema structures are less common and depend on if your site content makes sense to put into one. Here's a concise list from schema.org about different data types you can put into a schema: https://schema.org/docs/schemas.html.

One schema type I've used and had success with is product data. I'm able to feed Google pricing, stock, ratings, and more, which helps users get "richer" content in their search results. So, if you have content that fits into a schema type, use it, it will pay off immensely.

Finishing up

While these are some "easy wins" you can implement to increase your organic search traffic, at the end of the day, content is king. If you'd like to read more about this, I'd suggest checkout out Harry Dry's SEO Articles, the one about long tail keywords being the one I find the most revealing.

If you find yourself still struggling to gain organic search traffic, reach out to me on Twitter, where I'd be more than happy to help you out!

Note: This article was originally written for my personal blog. I am republishing it here for the amazing DEV community.