If you want to find your dream a job as a programmer, I am here to help. Let me tell you how I got the programming job of my dreams by improving my interviewing skills.
I was at a programming job I did not like. Everyone was negative people were getting laid off left and right. I was not doing the programming I wanted to do. I knew something had to change because I could not stay there forever. I was a C++ and Matlab developer but I wanted to be a Web Developer.
So, I quit my job and followed my dream of becoming a web developer.
One problem: I still could not get a job. Even with all the technical skills I had, I had trouble getting past interviews?
I was so confused as that's to me is the hardest part of the interviews was the tech questions but why was I not getting a job?
In this video, I'll show you why improving my coding interview skills made a HUGE difference in landing my programming job.
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Transcript Of The Video
Antonio Cucciniello: I got the job? Finally, the programming job I always wanted. Hey guys. Antonio here. If you want to find your dream job as a programmer, I'm here to help. Let me tell you how I got the programming job of my dreams by improving my interview skills.
If you saw my last video, then you know a little bit about my story. I was at a programming job that I didn't like. Everyone was negative. People were getting laid off left and right. I was not doing the programming that I wanted to do. I knew something had to change because I could not be there forever. I was programming C++ and MATLAB, and it's not what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a web developer. So I was faced with this difficult situation. A tough decision had to be made. I had to quit my job. I was applying to web developer jobs, but I wasn't getting any at the time because I had zero experience. It made complete sense. Also my computer engineering degree didn't look as good as a computer science degree, so it didn't really help me get one either.
I did the thing that 99% of people are scared to do. Just get up and quit. I followed my dream of becoming a web developer. Now, if you watched the last video, you know that I started doing things like creating web applications using Node. Or how I picked up cracking the code interview, and I started doing problems every single day. All to fortify my technical knowledge, which I had a huge lack in. But that wasn't the only thing I did. They helped me, in the tech portion of all the interviews, don't get me wrong. But I was still doing something else wrong that I couldn't see at the moment. So I had a friend, who was a developer who mentored me. He knew exactly what I was going for and would guide me each step of the way.
One problem? Still couldn't get a job. Didn't know why. I thought I had the technical skills to get the job, but something was still up. So thank God for my mentor. He came in and helped me out. I was so frustrated, and I needed help. So what did we do? We scheduled a mock interview together. One on the phone and one in person. The questions he would ask me were stuff that I would actually get in a normal interview. And he actually interviews people, so he pulled from questions that he actually had. He asked me technical questions. He asked me questions about my job history, about why I wanted to become a programmer. And he found something interesting. He noticed that every time I was talking about my previous job, I was talking about it in a negative light. He said that it would make the interviewer think, which in this case was him, that I'm going to talk negatively about this job as soon as I get it.
Also it would make them think that I was a negative person. And no one wants a negative person on their team if you really think about it. I was also sounding not confident at all in these interviews. In the technical skills I had just acquired, I felt like I was not confident in them, and that came out through the interviews. So that's the first thing you can take away here. Make sure to act just like a real one. Have a whiteboard there, like any other technical interview would have. Ask relevant, real questions that you would also be asked for the position you want. Then, I need you to get some feedback from your friend to find out exactly what you've been doing wrong in the interviews because otherwise, if you weren't doing anything wrong, chances are you would have a job. Once you have that feedback, you have action steps to take right then and there. This is what you can go, take action, and go make improvements.
Second, you want to make sure that you are not talking negatively in the interviews. You also want to have high levels of confidence. You want everything to have the tone of, I'm positive, I'm confident, I love learning and growing as a programmer, and I'm passionate about this. You want to be a passionate developer because people want passionate people on their team who will help solve challenging problems. They don't want people who are there just for the money.
So what did I do once I got this feedback? I started to do a small thing here, which was to take notes after every single interview to figure out and give myself analysis on how I actually performed. That led me to a few small things I needed to change. Now that was not enough. I started to notice that in tons of interviews, they were asking me the same questions over and over and over and over again. I wanted to be absolutely prepared for these questions. So I wrote down the top questions that I was given in all these interviews. And then I wrote out positive, confident answers to each question that made me seem like a developer who cares about learning and growing, and is passionate about the field. Then once I had them all written out, I practiced my delivery on all of them to make sure that I was saying them with enthusiasm and confidence and in a positive way.
What can you do then? For whatever programming job you want, you can go write out the questions that you will be asked. Write out the positive confident answers that will show that you are a passionate developer who cares about learning and growing. Then practice your delivery every single day. Go take action. Now, at the end, I was in the middle of my 31st interview. I was so ready with the answers because I had been practicing them for the last 10, 15 interviews that I had started nailing them easily. I knew exactly what they wanted to hear, and I was saying it to them. That led me to become a developer at NBC Universal as an Alexa and Google Assistant developer. Where at the time, I had made more money than I wanted, it all paid off in the end.
Ultimately, I took action every single day towards my goal of getting my dream job as a programmer. You can do the exact same. Now that was not the only thing that I did to get my job. Click on the screen right now to see the other videos in this playlist of where I talk about all the other things I did, like improving my technical skills or changing my mindset. Let's hang out here on Simple Programmer, where we make the complex simple. Have a great day, everyone.