Going through the Flatiron School’s career prep milestones after graduating was definitely interesting. From learning how to build up a resume fit for a software engineer, creating your own “personal brand”, establishing a network within this career field and scheduling mock interviews. I found myself feeling excited and nervous at the same time about finally taking the next step towards this career transition.
I was not too worried about my mock HR/cultural interview as I have had experience with interviewing before. I knew that I would be able to figure out answers to behavioral questions, but I still made sure to study and review the prework so that I knew what I was talking about in this new career. The main thing about this career prep that was making me feel extremely nervous and worried was my mock techincal interview. Before I finished the Flatiron School SE program, I had already applied to two apprenticeships, Twitter and Asana, and I made it to the second round technical interview with Asana. So I did have some real experience going through an actual technical interview, however I did not do so well and ended up not making it past the second round of interviews.
By not doing so well in the Asana interview, coupled with both crazy impostor syndrome and not feeling as prepared as I would have liked. I was dreading going through the mock technical interview with Skilled. But just as I took the leap to start this coding journey, I decided the only way to get better and learn was to go through with it.
I scheduled a React mock techincal interview with Skilled and tried my best to prepare by going through freeCodeCamp’s React section and the React section of Flatiron’s curriculum. Although I had just recently finished my React final project and passed the final assessment in October, I was worried about what type of questions I would be asked. I knew that I understood the concepts of React, but actually implementing them was a different story. I also knew that data structures and algorithms were definitely something that I had minimal exposure to and would most likely struggle with if asked during the interview.
So the day finally comes and as nervous as I was, my interviewer made me feel comfortable throughout the interview and I could definitely tell he is looking to help people learn. The interview started with a couple of basic React knowledge questions:
- What is React?
- What is the virtual DOM?
- What is the difference between props & state?
- What are keys in React?
- What is Redux?
My interviewer actually gave feedback right then and there and let me know that I was answering the questions correctly. So I was starting to feel more confident, but then the coding challenge portion began and this is where I struggled. My interviewer was very nice and helped guide me through the process but I felt that he was helping me more than a real interviewer would.
The coding challenge was not too difficult, but during the interview I could not figure out how to implement things without looking up the React docs. Although the interviewer said it was alright to do so, after the interview was over he let me know that some interviewers won’t allow that. A lot of what I struggled with was basic React syntax and although I was able to explain to him my thought process going forward, I was not able to implement it without help.
The coding challenge was to take an array of ids, names and emails and first display the list on the page with only the names and emails. Then he wanted me to implement an input field, which allowed the user to input a new name and in turn display that name, in the same format of (name, name@email.com) below the list of names & emails already on the page. Then he asked me to implement a way to edit each individual name & email. The last part, which I wasn’t able to get to was to sort the names by alphabetical order.
I was able to display the list of names with help of looking up the React docs and after was able to create the input field and submit button without any help needed. After the interview, I realized I needed to practice more and my interviewer did give me some helpful feedback to guide me on what I needed to do.
I plan on contiuning my learning each day and sharpening my skills that I learned during my time at Flatiron. Things will only get better from here!