So I wrote two technical assessments tests yesterday to apply for a Fullstack role and a Backend role at two different organizations and I honestly feel I did not do well. In fact, I think I was terrible!
The first of the assessments requires building a simple full-stack application (Frontend: React; Backend: ASP.NET Core web API) for simple bank transactions and I was required to do that in less than an hour! Sounds crazy right? it is not actually that difficult as it sounds and even though I was able to build a simple frontend user interface and create a database from the generated migration script using Entity Framework Core at the backend, I was unable to actually write a controller to perform these basic operations for the frontend to consume. I did feel bad, like really bad but then in retrospect, I begin to see a lot of areas I needed to improve upon such as;
Critical and fast thinking: I used a monolithic clean architecture as I forgot I have not had the job (even if I had the job I rather used microservice architectures instead), I just need to get something to work and I was way too ahead of myself and that wasted my time and slowed me down. Also, I didn't come up with how my databases schema should look like in time.
Working under pressure: Everyone says they work well under pressure until the pressure comes in. The best way to handle pressure is to make sure you prevent the conditions that would create the pressure in the first place from ever happening. This is also tied to the first point, if I had critical had my thought process I would have handled the pressure much better.
The second assessment put my data structure and algorithm knowledge to a test in ways I have not prepared for yet. This made me realize that even know I understand those concepts, It is more important to understand how they are implemented. This reinforced my knowledge that my goal to be one of the best Software Engineers, the journey is a marathon and not a sprint which in turn gives me confidence that I may have lost that battle but I can and will still win the war.
Top comments (1)
Well done for having the self awareness to identify areas you want to improve in. With that positive attitude you will continue learning and growing as a software engineer.
All the best in your journey!