Navigating Through Developer Interviews
Tags: career, beginners, mentoring
Published: 2019-11-29 11:50:37

# Introduction
![78082977 10157708179497229 2320061094720176128 o](//images.ctfassets.net/ly2f59p4unnn/79HqBkW6DtNymHQdHYClXt/dc572c56fef7c71a468dacefc5fd157c/78082977_10157708179497229_2320061094720176128_o.jpg)

Interviews are hard if anyone says it's **easy**. 

Has either **fully prepared** themselves before they go for an interview or has encountered multiple **rejections** through learning from their mistakes.

If you throw in interviewing for developers, that's another ball game. Which raise tons of eyebrows when you had gone through a technical interview process with a company.

This is one of the mentoring topics for [JuniorDev SG][1] for last Tuesday in WeWork Funan generously provided by [GovTech Open Government Products][2]. 

In this session, a **panel discussion** was created. 

With mentors who was part of the interview process to conduct interviews to hire developers for their company or organisations.

# Interview Processes
![78129392 10157708178607229 9093872845825507328 o](//images.ctfassets.net/ly2f59p4unnn/ERVuzkidEwyGIebUUlFiG/9a37d66459654756079c22899240ab09/78129392_10157708178607229_9093872845825507328_o.jpg) ![78389564 10157708206472229 7130946343421345792 o](//images.ctfassets.net/ly2f59p4unnn/5s8jl9tZnr5erKyW3E95um/96799a10c88ebed128145f925cbbbed4/78389564_10157708206472229_7130946343421345792_o.jpg)

Despite the differences in size for startups in different series stages and GovTech.

During the panel discussion, It was apparent to me that for these organisations. 

They place an **emphasis** in their **one** of their interview rounds. 

To look out for [soft skills][3] like the articulation of their one's ideas, asking questions and being **human** to gauge the suitability for their organisation. 

For technical assessment,  coding platforms like [Codility][4], [Hackerrank][5] are used for larger organisations.  

Whereas for one of the smaller company, the initial stage of the interview will be towards the phone interview, portfolios websites, GitHub profile, StackOverflow or even **referrals**.

# Things They Don't Look For a Candidate  
I will list down some of the common red flags that were pointed out during the panel discussion by the mentors.

* **Lying to the interviewer** - This is a significant red flag due to their **integrity** and **personal conduct** in their work.
 
* **Knowing the correct answer to a technical question** -  Don't give up when you could not answer it.

Instead, you could just say ""you do not know the answer for it"". 

List down the **steps** or the **different** approach to solving the problem even you have no idea on how to answer it.  

* **Thinking out loud on what you are thinking** -  It is not **compulsory** to voice out what you are **thinking** while solving a technical question.

* **Being a Jerk** - Every developer have a certain amount of pride and they do express themselves as a knowledgeable person in a specific area. But if they get a vibe that you are a jerk. It's an **instant rejection** for them since they do not want to deal with this type of **toxicity** in their working environment.
 
# It is Alright to Get Rejected
During the panel discussion, all of the panellists have listed out that their **success rate** for their interviews is not **100%**.

One of them said that he had a higher success rate as he picked his own battles when going for interviews.

He does this by avoiding companies with tougher technical interview questions.

Ultimately it comes down to having to go through **multiple interviews** to get the **flow** of it to land into a developer job if you are rusty for it.

Having **multiple** interview sessions scheduled helps a lot to **reduce** the impact a rejection means to you.

# Conclusion
I hope that these tips will be useful for your next interview as a developer. 

Lastly, there are tons of reasons to be rejected after an interview with a company. 

It might be a matter of **luck** or it could be totally [random][6]. 

As they might hate what you were wearing on the day. So please don't be **critical** about yourself and move on after reflecting on what could be improved on.

If you like my article, please **sign up** for Max [Adventurer's Newsletter](http://eepurl.com/dOUoUb) for awesome content I stumble across weekly in **Python**, **Startup** and **Web Development**.

You can also **follow** me to get the **latest** update of my article on **Dev**

This post was originally posted on Max's blog at [Navigating Through Developer Interviews](https://www.maxongzb.com/navigating-through-developer-interviews/) and [Photo by Charles 🇵🇭 on Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/rRWiVQzLm7k)


# References
* [JuniorDev SG][1]
* [GovTech Open Government Products][2]
* [Soft skills][3]
* [Codility][4]
* [Hackerrank][5]
* [Embrace How Random the Programming Interview Is][6]


[1]: https://www.meetup.com/Junior-Developers-Singapore/
[2]: https://open.gov.sg/
[3]: https://www.amazon.com/Soft-Skills-software-developers-manual/dp/1617292397
[4]: https://www.codility.com/
[5]: https://www.hackerrank.com/
[6]: https://dev.to/ben/embrace-how-random-the-programming-interview-is