Gonna keep this as brief and direct as possible.
I am trying to create a presentation on the subject of How To Ace Your Very First Software Engineering interview for the seminar which I'll be conducting in my former college. The target audience will mostly be students of senior year. The purpose behind all of this activity is guide students in about the whole process without facing the extra grind. Because this my first intance where I'll be delivering any sort of seminar, I want to avoid as many mistakes as possible. Hence, I need the help from the awesome community of Dev.to.
I've already compiled a list of topics which I want to cover in the seminar. Here's the list.
Besides this, I also want to share your stories within the context of following questions:
- Which steps did you take for interview prepping in terms of technical and soft skills?
- What sort of challenges did you while giving interviews at run time?
- How did you cope with failures after getting rejected by the companies?
- Tips for effective writing resume/CV
- Any type of discrimination you faced during the hiring process ** in the form of sexism/racism/ something else? (For this, input from people of color, LGBT community and women will be really appreciated**).
- How to effectively engage with recruiters and HR managers?
- How much does networking impact on the whole job hunting process? Was it helpful in your case
By covering your experiences, I'll be able to reduce tunnel vision of my own and deliver maximum objectivity.
P.S: Feel free to add anything which I haven't mentioned yet you it find important
Top comments (3)
I’ma senior year student currently in the middle of my job hunt right now! I’m graduating in spring so this is a really important time for me to be applying to companies.
Personally I’ve found networking to be really important. I haven’t heard back / been given an interview from hardly _any _ online applications I’ve sent out through job sites. But I’m currently in second round interview with a company whose recruiters came to my school. Turns out that they had even forgotten to send me my second round interview invite, but I emailed the recruiter I met directly to ask about it and she fixed it within the hour. Without that connection I probably would’ve been lost in their recruiting system.
I definitely found studying leetcode to be helpful in passing some coding challenges. I was really proud to have finished a pretty difficult one with the optimal solution in one challenge. However there’s definitely some I haven’t done so well on 😂 and it’s always good to keep practicing.
I’m also working on my personal website taloranderson.com, and hopefully that will be a good conversation starter in interviews. It’s built with Jekyll and all the styling was hand done in Sass by me, and it also features auto light & dark mode.
I think the worst part of the applications process as I sort of mentioned is sending your resume into the black hole of online job portals. When each job gets hundreds of applicants (you can see the numbers on LinkedIn and they’re very high), you statistically will have to apply for hundreds of jobs to get picked, assuming you’re of equal skill to the rest of the applicants.
That’s why I would much rather find a job through someone I have met in person or online, and you can also get an inside review of the company that way and determine if it’s a place you really want to work rather than relying on Glassdoor reviews.
On that note, anyone looking at this who might know of some entry level dev positions check out my resume on my website or reach out on Twitter :)
I can understand the agony of sending your resume into the black hole of online job portals. Reality is that, HRs and recruiters get tonnes of resumes for a junior positions. In case of senior positions, it's opposite because finding experienced engineers is really hard. Another reason could be that the company focuses more on hiring referrals than pursuing candidates directly.
It's also true that you need to apply to hundreds of companies in order to get call from couple of them in the end.
My suggestion would be to maintain regular follow-ups with HRs of the companies where you've applied.
Always ask the recruiter as to when will they update you about the application status.
If you forgot to ask then wait for referral business days and then sent a follow up email/message. This figure may vary depending on your city and culture so adjust it accordingly.
And finally, good luck with your hunting :)
Hello Mirza, please DM me, I have a lot to say on those topics.