The Worst Software Engineering Interview Experience EVER!
Channel: Jamie Hush
Date: 08/04/2020

I was in my last semester of school and spending a lot of my time doing phone screens and interviews. During this time I failed a lot of phone screens on the tech side. Like every single “traditional” algorithm phone screen I failed due to nerves. There’s a million people online telling y’all their positive stories, making it sound like you’re a stupid failure if you don’t pass the Google Interview on your first try after paying for their online course. When in reality only an Ex-Facebook, Ex-Google Techlead is that amazing. I thought I’d share this one to show you I practice what I preach when I say “If you’re not failing 80% of your job interviews you’re not applying for cool enough jobs”.

I’ll start with how I found this job. Fresh out of school, the strategy that worked best for me to get phone screens was to check Hacker News’s monthy “Who’s Hiring” section. Remember I had already failed every top tier company’s phone screen, so I was really just optimizing to try to move to San Francisco and work anywhere that would handle my immigration process. Instead of applying for 20 jobs a day, I’d apply for two, three max. But I’d spend the same time writing really well thought out cover emails, and emailing the hiring manager directly, skipping HR entirely. This job was no different. I spent an hour scouring their company blog, found little things I liked about their culture, and crafted the ultimate, charming email cover letter.


Links:



My FAVOURITE Interview Prep Course: https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-the-coding-interview?aff=xjgd


The MOST PRACTICAL web dev tutorial out there: https://www.railstutorial.org/


Social Media Accounts:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameshush/