Interview Participation.md

#Interview Participation

Company

• Markit IHS (Boulder)

What happened in the interview?

I was interviewed over the phone by a Team Lead and a Senior Director for a a front-end role. Early in the interview, they asked a lot of questions about databases. Then, informed me that the need had changed slightly since the position was initially posted. They asked if I would be OK with a lot more back-end work than the job description included.

The Senior Developer then asked some questions about IIFE's (Immediately Invoked Function Expressions) to get a gauge on my understanding of javascript.

Next we discussed why I wanted to work for the company and where I wanted to grow my career in programming.

What are some best practices of technical interviews that you've discussed?

Off the top of my head in no particular order:

• Be honest, don't oversell or lie about skills you do not have
• When solving any problems, verbalize your thinking (and pseudo code!). They don't necessarily care if you can get the answer, they want to see how you think/problem solve.
• Come prepared with good questions, it's as much your opportunity to interview them as it is for them to interview you.

What did you excel at in the interview?

I made it clear that I was interested in learning anything new they wanted to throw at me. I asked lots of questions that showed I had really researched the company. I reinforced my ability to learn quickly by explaining how much I'd learned in just 7 months of dedicated learning. Lastly, I followed up with "Thank You" emails and talked through some of the research I had done on things that came up that I didn't know about in the interview.

What will you continue to practice as you prep for interviews in the future?

I will continue to improve my elevator pitch about myself and work on a variety of code challenges. Conduct practice interviews.

What surprised you about the interview?

The fact that the role had changed and I had to tweak my expectations and responses on the fly was definitely a surprise. The question about IIFE's was a bit of a curveball.