My experience after attending the Flatiron School’s on-campus recruiting event.
The school matches students with hiring companies and arranges interviews for them. It had been a while since I had interviewed, but the last time I had done so was for a few biotech companies, so I wondered if it would be similar.
I was told the interviews would be mostly behavioral, but that some previous interviewers had asked technical questions or even to whiteboard. Looking back on it, it definitely depends on their background. I heard from others at the event who interviewed with recruiters or HR personnel that they had little to no technical questions
My interviews happened to be with tech directors of their respective companies, and they all asked me technical questions. Most were conceptual questions about react or sql for example, and one interviewer gave me a hypothetical problem to solve. 2 out of my 3 interviewers also asked to see my final project, which I had up and running on my computer already.
I think I had the most trouble with the hypothetical question, one of those “How would you solve security issue X?” or “How many gas stations are in this city?” types. If I could go back in time, the advice I would give myself would be to just say whatever comes into your mind. Even if it seems like a ‘dumb’ solution that doesn’t cover all the bases. You can go over your answer and offer a few different solutions, or comments on why those solutions have problems and how to improve on them. It’s not a multiple-choice question where you have to pick one answer and stick with it.
I also think I may have been stuck a bit in a teacher-student mentality. At school or during a tutoring session when I wasn’t confident in my answer, I would ask the other person outright for help or a hint. I would confirm that what I was thinking was the right answer, instead of offering my solution in the first place. While this is fine with a teacher, who wants to tell you the answer anyway, an interviewer is looking for the best person out of the candidates available. Acting like you don’t have any idea what to do with a problem isn’t going to leave a good impression.
Overall I think it was a really good experience to see what interviews for software developers were like. Going through more interviews makes them less nervewracking and helps you understand where you could improve and communicate better.