This installment is going to be the least technically demanding thus far however these questions are a more realistic reflection on what a junior developer could be asked by a company with reasonable hiring practicesâŠ
**⊠Speaking of which ⊠stay tuned till the end of the article or skip down to it for a list of web development companies with reportedly fair hiring practices!**
Hereâs parts one and two; theyâre both much more technical in nature than this one!
đđ» Behavioral & Cultural Interview Questions
Software engineer interviewers ask behavioral/cultural questions to evaluate intervieweeâs soft skills, and also to decide whether the candidate is a cultural fit. Make sure youâve prepared great answers to these interview questions.
_â«_Tell me about yourself
â«====>âTell me about yourselfâ is one of the most common and important interview questions. However, it can be daunting, as itâs one you need to get right. After all, not only is it your first impression on the interviewer, but you also need to be simultaneously professional and authentic when answering it.
_â«_So how can you give a good answer without oversharing? To help you structure your answer, weâll give you a rough guideline: start with a short introduction, talk about the present, recount the past, and mention your future goals.
What are some side projects youâre currently working on?
Current Experience
â«**Outline the role youâre currently in, your responsibilities, and your achievements (without reciting your resume)
â«**Highlight what youâre most passionate about (i.e. working with PMs to perfect product specs, discussing with colleagues about different tech stacks, helping others excel in their jobs and career)
â«**Recount one or two job-related projects and/or situations that map onto the job youâre applying to (i.e. collaborating with designers, working with legacy code, implementing best-practices, introducing new tech stacks, mentoring your colleagues)
Past Experience
Now itâs time to highlight your skills a little:
_â«_Selectively highlight one high-impact (preferably quantifiable) project you were involved with for each job
_â«_Highlight the hard and soft skills you learned from your past working experiences
_â«_Emphasize the initiatives you took to improve the companyâs work flow (i.e. propose new flow to streamline sprints) or your own skillsets (i.e. engaging in hackathon with colleagues or friends)
Future Expectations
_â«_Convey what you hope to achieve and learn from the new job
_â«_Detail products, projects, features, or initiatives you can imagine yourself help kick off and lead in the company
_â«_Tell me what a productive day at work looks like to you
_â«_This question may not appear in every interview, but when they do, itâs important for you to highlight your organizational and prioritization skills. When hiring managers ask this question, they want to know:
_â«_Whether youâre a proactive communicator and a good planner of your time
How you strike a balance between multiple ongoing projects
D_escribe one or two instances where you had several projects running simultaneously and how you managed to prioritize different tasks, make progress, meet milestones, and work on iterations based on feedback._
_â«_How you deliver quality work with limited time
_â«_When thereâs limited time and multiple projects going on, you may not be able to give 100% to the projects at hand. Let the interviewers know:
_â«_How you decide which tasks should be prioritized
_â«_How you negotiate deadlines and milestones with stakeholders
_â«_How you ensure all projects will be delivered with acceptable quality
_â«_At what milestones you believe itâs ok to deliver something âless than perfectâ
_â«_How you decide when to go back and improve the âminimum viable projectsâ delivered earlier in the projectâs timeline
Professional Skills
_â«_Will you excel in this job? Are you passionate about this job? Itâs time to show how. For the first question, highlight some of your professional abilities:
_â«_Industry experience
_â«_Technical skills
_â«_Soft skills
_â«_Key accomplishments
For the second question, showcase your excitement for the job. Hiring managers want to see your excitement for these reasons:
***â«1>***Excitement will fuel your performance
***â«2>***Passion will confirm that youâre interested in this job
_â«_Eagerness will help you get through challenges at work
_â«_Company culture and shared values
_â«_Do you know the companyâs culture and will you be a good fit? Here are some culture-related points you could cover in your answer:
_â«_Youâre attracted to the companyâs general reputation
_â«_Youâre inspired by a specific leader in the company
_â«_Youâre passionate about the companyâs products and services
_â«_Youâre onboard with the companyâs initiatives (community engagement, public endorsements, etc.)
_â«_You admire the companyâs culture. Here are some specific examples:
Commitment to the company
â«Are you passionate about the company and will you stay committed to this company? If the interviewer already asked you âWhere do you see yourself in 5 years?â then you donât have to stress too much about showing your long-term commitment when answering this question. However, if you havenât had the opportunity to show your commitment to the company, the most organic way to show your commitment is to talk about your long term plans in the company. Here are some things you can talk about:
_â«_Projects you want to start
_â«_Potential directions you think the company can go in
_â«_The different products/teams you want to contribute to
_â«_Processes youâd like to participate in improving
Why should we hire you?
_â«_Ultimately, every single question interviewers ask you is related to this overarching question: âWhy should we hire you?â Interviewers want to know, as confidently as possible, that you will be a good hire. Therefore, your answer should confirm that youâll be a good hire.
_â«_Unlike the more specific questions weâve outlined above, this question is a generic question that requires a concise but powerful answer. Think about this as your elevator pitchâââyou should be able to sell yourself to the interview within a matter of minutes.
_â«_To come up with your elevator pitch, youâll need to do some planning and consolidation.
_â«_Here are some guiding questions for you to kickoff your brainstorming sessions:
_â«_What are the most important qualifications for this position from the companyâs perspective?
_â«_What are my strong suits and how do they set me apart from others?
_â«_What are my most monumental accomplishments?
_â«_Why are you the best person for this job?
_â«_Consolidate and practice your pitch
_â«_Combine your answers in prose form to make sure each point flows to the next smoothly
_â«_Check to make sure your answer sets you apart from other candidates
***â«!!!!!!!***Practice, practice, and practice, but DO NOT TRY TO MEMORIZE YOUR PITCH!!!!!!!!!
đ Interview Etiquette & Other Tips
Nailing an interview takes more than just knowing how to answer common interview questions. Youâll also need to prepare questions of your own, think about salary, and get your communications right. Hereâs how.
Questions to ask in an interview
âźAs the job seeker, itâs normal to feel like youâre being interrogated during interviews. However, at its core, an interview is a conversation, and should be a two-way interaction. As the interviewee, you need to stay engaged and ask thoughtful questions.
âźBy asking questions, youâre expressing your genuine curiosity towards the company. This helps companies know that youâre serious about them. Additionally, it also helps you evaluate whether the job and/or the company is really what youâre looking for.
âźThere are fantastic resources out there with more than a dozen questions you can ask interviewers. Here, weâll provide a few that we think are essential to help you gain deeper understandings about the role, company, and your future within the company:
âźThe job and cross-team communication
âźThe companyâs values and working culture
âźWhat are some shared qualities and characteristics among your employees?
âźWhatâs your favorite part about working at the company?
âźWhatâs your least favorite part about working at the company?
Professional growth opportunities
âźAre there multiple product/service teams in the company? Can engineers apply to join a different team? What does the process look like?
âźAre there professional development courses and training available?
âźDo senior engineers and engineering leads usually get promoted from within the company?
Closing questions and next steps
_â«_Is there anything unclear or concerning about my background that I can help clarify?
_â«_What are the next steps in the interview process?
_â«_Is there anything else I can provide you with that would be helpful?
_â«_How to answer salary expectations?
â«âWhat are you salary expectations?â can be a daunting question. If talking about money wasnât uncomfortable enough already, most job seekers worry that proposing the âwrong numberâ would cost them the jobâââor land them a job offer with a disappointing salary. Not great.
Follow up ?????
_â«_Depending on how many rounds of interviews youâve gone through, you may feel differently about how close you are to getting the job. The closer you get to the end of the hiring process, the more likely it is for you to start feeling anxious due to higher expectations. As a result, you may be eager to follow up with the hiring manager regarding your interview results. With that said, thereâs a fine line between showing your eager attitude and coming off as desperate.
_â«_Before we get to the types of follow up emails you should send out, make sure to ask the hiring manager about when you can expect to hear back from them about next steps. This information will help you decide when itâs appropriate to follow up down the line.
_â«_There are four types of follow up emails you should send at different times after the interview: Thank you email, checking-in email, second follow up email, final follow up email.
Thank you email
A thank you email should be sent out on the same day of the interview or one day after your interview. The main purpose of this email is to show your excitement and appreciation. This email should be short and sweet and should include:
A thank you note for their time
âźA brief mention of the specific job you interviewed for
âźA brief note of what you found most impressive about the company
âźOne or two things you learned about the organization
âźOne sentence about how youâre excited you are to contribute in a specific way
Technical interview :
âź_questions examine a candidateâs thought processes and assess what approaches they adopt to solve problems. The most common end-to-end software development questions are listed below._
Hereâs the repo that I use to practice my technical chops for interviews:
â«Describe the process you used for a recent project, from requirements to delivery. Does your team prefer using Agile or Waterfall? Any pros and cons?
â« In answering this question, you need to show your planning, process, and communication/collaboration skills. Think in advance about a suitable project where your contributions cover all these bases.
â«If you can, itâs best to choose to describe an Agile project you worked on, as organizations whether they use a Waterfall or Agile methodology, are keen to work with developers experienced in Agile.
â« Ideally, share a project in which you worked with a bigger team.
â« Outline the components of the project and what role you played.
â« Highlight any interactions with other teams and the process for handover and collaboration.
â«Highlight any interactions with other teams and the process for handover and collaboration.
2. Based on your experience in this project, specify your favorite and least favorite part of this type of collaboration.
R_emember to keep positive because the interviewers are always looking for constructive answers._
â«You can specify cutting edge collaboration tools and techniques and/or methodologies that you already know the company employs in their own workflows.
â«For the least favorite parts, donât just list the downsides and failures, but also mention what youâve learned from it and how you would improve.
â« Ensure that you come across humbled from the failures, not exasperated and that you know better than everyone elseâââeven if you truly feel this way! Explain how you tried to positively encourage your team to correct the course rather than staying silent and going with a consensus majority.
3. Based on the project, what programming languages / tools / services did you use? And why did you choose them?
â« Questions like this are designed to allow you to showcase your way of thinking. The interviewer is looking to hear your ability to make choices based on rational decisionsâââso make sure that you show that you can do this!
To begin with, give an example of a project in which you had the most ownership or you had the greatest sense of achievement/efficiency/effectiveness from the toolchain used.
â« Next, describe the goal of the project, and briefly go through your responsibilities when it came to the toolchain decision-making process. Within Agile work practices, itâs usually a team effort to decide the best programming languages/tools/services are the best fit for the project, within customer requirements. Outline the consultation process you went through with both the customer and your team to arrive at the best solutions.
4. Describe the biggest toolchain-related challenge you encountered in the project:
â«Outline the situation, the goal you expected, and the reason why there was a challenge.
â«Share the toolchain you used when you encountered the problem, then other technologies and tools you applied to help solve it, if applicable. Ensure to note whether there was a full tool pivot or you managed to build onto an existing library (or something similar) to achieve the end goal.
â«Remember: the most important thing is not what you ultimately used, but how many options you referred to during the process, and which metrics you adopted to decide which tech to go for. Remember to share the pros and cons of your decision, and if, looking back now, whether you would do it differently.
5. How would you design this system for scale?
â«First of all, the interviewer would like to know the traffic level weâre expecting: 1,000, 100,000, or 10 million users per second? Think about the data expectations for each system user, database connections (blocking/nonblocking actions), downtime specifics, and cloud considerations (if any).
â«List the potential problems that might occur when trying to scale. Different traffic levels may have different problems, so make sure you think this through, and decide the priorities of the problems that you should solve. Many codebases are not built for scale, so note code changes that might need to occur, rather than just infrastructure expectations.
â«Different traffic levels may have different system architectures. List the options you think best fit your scenario and explain why you choose them. Many apps utilize a stripped-back product (which can be achieved through system architecture) when high traffic levels affect systems, rather than crashing the product completely or users experiencing unacceptable wait times.
6. Testing: What is your process to test a code when developing a software or application? How do you decide the scope of your test case?
â«First, do your groundwork to ensure that you thoroughly understand the different testing types. Do you know your unit testing from your regression testing from your user acceptance testing? If you need to brush up, check out this great resource.
â«Once youâve got that on lock, itâs time to share a project that youâve tested thoroughly before.
â«Remember to separate the project into different sections. Each section should apply the testing type that fits its characteristics. Describe the goals of different testing types, and also introduce the library/service you used for the test. (For bonus points: explain the pros and cons of the library/service and whether it was your decision to choose that particular suite.)
â«It makes sense at this point to include documentation (and particularly inline documentation) you use that helps clarify functions/issues so that testing goes smoothly.
â«You may also mention a project you were involved in where testing was not well conducted and how you wouldâââor didâââgo about fixing the issues.
Monitoring
7. What kind of tools / services do you use for logging? What kind of data will you log? And whatâs the next step when you get the log?
â«Time for some details! When answering this question, give an example of a project that youâve monitored before.
â«Explain what information you logged and what questions it answered.
â«Please do not just describe the data format but also give the reason why you decided to extract this data.
â«Describe the reporting process and any associated tools used.
â«Some questions to think about to help you structure your answer, and nail your response:
What to avoid
_â«_Complaining about having to handle the problem
_â«_Showing how annoyed you were at the problem
_â«_Pointing fingers at others for the problem
_â«_Talking ill of your bosses or coworkers
â«Keep in mind that your interviewer is not only trying to get a glimpse of your past, but to gain an understanding of how you might react to challenges should they hire you. Therefore, when youâre choosing your scenario, try to pick one that may be applicable in your new work setting as well.
NOW; Hereâs some for you guys to answer in the comments!
8. Which logging services have you researched and used before?
9. Why did you choose or look into each particular logging service?
10. Was your decision because of the scale, the features, or the size of the community?
11. In what scenarios did you check these logs? Was it scheduled daily/weekly/monthly or as an on-demand activity?
12. What information would the data be transformed into? Was it for development, business, or customer decision-making?
13. What information would the data be transformed into? Was it for development, business, or customer decision-making?
If you found this guide helpful feel free to checkout my GitHub/gists where I host similar content:
**⊠Speaking of which ⊠stay tuned till the end of the article or skip down to it for a list of web development companies with reportedly fair hiring practices!**