The hunt is over
I’ve been tossing up over the past month whether to blog or not to blog during my job search. Well I chose not to blog primarily for the reason that after interviewing, writing applications and doing phone interviews most days, the last thing I feel like doing is writing about it!
I enjoyed writing about my learning process during the class, and now that the job hunt is over I can enjoy writing about (and actually doing, of course) my new job (which I will start at the end of June!).
The whole way through the immersive class at General Assembly NY I had no idea what to expect when it came to getting hired. We were well prepared by GA in terms of what to actually expect of technical interviews, but I still really didn’t know how potential employers would respond to someone who had come to web development from a different career and within a relatively short timeframe.
So I’m not surprised that I met with some skepticism, and even a little bit of ridicule at times from some who probably spent years doing a CS degree (I can totally understand the ridicule though – if someone told me they had just taken a three-month ‘immersive’ course in architecture, after I’d spent six years studying for it, I would feel ever so slightly insulted). Overall though, I would say that the developers and potential employers I spoke to were generally very encouraging and receptive, even if they didn’t offer me a job.
I suppose my situation is slightly different in that, for visa reasons, I couldn’t accept any job in the US that was less than a full-time role. So doing a contract role or an internship was not possible. I know that a lot of my classmates have found this to be a good avenue to take, particularly as a fresh-out-of-class, never-worked-a-day-as-a-developer junior. This gives the company a chance to see how good you’ll be in another three months.
Some companies made offers of internships, but as I said this was not possible for me. So as the weeks went by, and the interviews dried up I began to reassess my expectations. I guess I began to realize just how junior I must seem to developers who have been doing this for years. I presented my projects to two developers at one company, explaining my great use of JavaScript and AJAX here, or my fancy CSS skills there, feeling like they would at least be a little bit impressed, only to look up from the screen to see their faces less impressed than I was! They did end up offering me an internship, but they were originally looking for a junior, and as they said to me “you are very junior”. I started to feel like I needed a different word to describe my level – junior obviously had too senior connotations for most, maybe baby developer? Is that clear enough?
There were also the horribly embarrassing interviews, where I wished I could just get up and leave without them noticing. A bit hard though when the whiteboard marker is in your hands and your standing in front of the two lead developers who are asking you to write the code to the problem they have just told you. Note: it is less embarrassing to simply say you don’t know than to turn around hoping that in those few seconds before your pen hits the whiteboard that suddenly you’ll know the answer. And, asking them to repeat the question to stall for time only delays and compounds the inevitable embarrassment.
Other important things to avoid is to make sure you have thoroughly explored their website before attending the interview. Or, at the very least, sign up and login once.
Don’t argue with the 22 year old kid who’s been brought in last-minute, (because the others were apparently not answering their phones because they were enthralled in a highly skilled ping pong match) to conduct your technical interview, even though he just changed his question twice while you were in the middle of answering it. Turns out he had the wrong answer anyway. I know because I Googled it afterwards. Who would have known he’d have the final say in the hiring decision.
And, if you’re going for a job at an online dating company, don’t laugh awkwardly when they ask you about your online dating experiences. Saying “oh this is a funny thing to talk about in an interview…” , just to lighten the mood, will likely be met by blank stares and a hint of coolness... So online dating is fun and not to be made fun of ok! Fun! Got it?
So when an established and funded startup from back home in Sydney got in touch, and I heard about what they do, I was very interested. It’s funny how some things work out though, as this is a company that I initially heard about through General Assembly in Sydney. When I finished the course in NY, I went home for two weeks, not sure where I would find a job, but I started getting lots of good responses and invitations to interviews in NY. So, once again I booked a fairly last minute flight and came back to New York.
I didn’t want to get ahead of myself, but I thought with six interviews lined up, surely one of those will turn into an offer. Well, the potential jobs starting falling like dominoes until after the first fortnight of being back in NY, and completing lengthy coding assignments for each company, none of the original six had turned into a job.
There was a consistent theme in a lot of the feedback from the interviews. Most often they were very impressed with what I had learnt in three months, but for almost every company it was the same situation – they couldn’t commit to the time and resources required to take on a complete junior. Which is very understandable. But this helped me figure out that a huge part of my first developer role will be the capabilities of the company to help me keep learning as a developer. And that’s a huge factor in accepting the offer from the company in Sydney.
Now to enjoy a final two weeks in NY, no interviews to go to, no coding assignments. I can’t wait to start my baby developer role and I’ll hopefully have a little bit of time to blog about it too.