| Time | Item |
|---|---|
| :00 - :05 | Intro |
| :05 - :10 | My Interview Experience |
| :10 - :30 | The Hidden Job Market |
| :30 - :40 | Resume |
| :40 - :50 | Advice |
| :50 - :00 | Q&A |
I'm Kaylah Rose Mitchell. I am a coding bootcamp graduate. I graduated from the Turing School of Software and Design in April of 2023, and I landed my first engineering role 4 months later at Romeo Engineering Inc, a small engineering firm in Fort Worth, TX. I currently am a privacy software engineer at Ibotta, a cash back for shopping app in Denver, CO. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. I have 2 pet roommates, they have 2 dogs that I love deerly, and currently live in Denver, Colorado ☀️ 🏔️.
Interviewing is a hard skill. By the time you get in the door and are speaking to another engineer or manager, you most likely have the skills to do the job. Interveiwers are largely evaluating your soft skills. The questions they have during your interview goes beyond "Does this person have technical competencies", they want to know "Is this a person I want to work with day in and day out?". Some other questions are "How do you respond under pressure?", "What do you do when you're stuck on a problem?", "How do you communicate when you work?".
Anecdotally, I underwent hours of technical interviews with 4 engineers at various levels tog et my position with my current company. About the code challenges, none of them were particularly difficult. However, there was one SQL challenge without an interactive environment where I had to speak to the code I would write given some real world examples. This was incredibly challenging as I rely heavily on error messages to guide my code, and that feedback was not available to me. With this surprising environment, I immediately became flustered, and in reaching for my toolbox to navigate the problem, recalling that interviewers are looking for "How do you communicate under pressure?", I took the opportunity to be vulnerable. I acknowledged that I was dealing with relatively simple problem, and that I was experiencing some text anxiety and coming up blank. I then asked the interviewers if this could be a more collaborative problem and asked them for their input on where I should start.
I waited to gauge their response, and they seemed delighted that I articulated my issue, advocated for myself, and use them as an available resource. After all, you don't code on a team of 1. After we worked together on the first problem, I quickly found my footing and the rest of the interview went smoothly. Spoiler alert, I got the job.
I haven't gone through all of this content. You do not have to go through all / any of this to get your first gig. These are resources to help prepare for tech interviews.
- Confessions from a Big Tech Hiring Manager
- Big Tech Hiring is Conservative - But Why?
- Minaswan Interview
The Hidden Job Market
We all know about the public job boards with hundereds of applicants to one position, but what is the hidden job market?
- Networking (even if you're an introvert)
- Conferences
- Coffee chats
- Communities
Here's my resume
Talks I Like
- Minaswan::Interview
- All the Little Things
- Get a Whiff of This
- Breaking up with your test suite
- Primitive Obsessions
- Humble Hash
- The Selfish Programmer
- F*ck You, Pay Me
Newsletters I like
Podcasts I Like
Books I like
- The Dream Machine
- Managing Humans
- Clean Code
- Rework
- It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy At Work
- Remote
- Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track
- Rejection = redirection
- Prioritize resting
Job Hunt Content
Please let me know what questions you have. Thanks!