Reflections after my first 2 interviews

I have interviewed numerous times for my current employer to move up into better positions as well as companies outside, but all within the IT or Finance field. I spent 2 years in a data entry job and had a lot of time to practice my basic interview skills. One interview that I remember completely failing at when I was 23 which helped me to realize that I needed to practice and how to go into an interview prepared. That interview was for Financial Analyst position and I completely failed by not having questions prepared and even brought up salary after the discussion was not going well.

"Why are manhole covers round?" That was asked during the interview. I googled that right when I got to my desk.

I now do not go into an interview without doing extensive research on the company and position. I did the same when interviewing recently.

I complete two interview for 2 separate companies and wanted to share my experiences. I prefer not to share the names in order to not sway any decisions. I am not sure if this is a good practice or not, but my experience is that the hiring managers are pretty down to earth and would be surprise if they read this post. Despite if I get the job or not, I would never do anything to tarnish the name of either company. Just in case you guys are reading.

Company 1:

This company is actually out of state for me and is Agile Web Dev Shop where they work on applications for other medium to large businesses (side note: one of the companies they work with is a company I work with in my current sales role. Well, I thought that was cool ). My initial interview was with the Director of HR/Recruiting, I applied via Glassdoor.com, which I have done numerous times for sales position and have never heard back. This application however receive a response within less than a day.

I am currently in sales and have learned how to read individuals during a sale, and I can do a fare job reading people in person. On the phone is little more difficult, but once I connected with the recruiter on the phone we had a great conversation about the company in general. Everything she explained about it, excited me about the moving to the new city and working/living downtown next to a major MLB stadium, during baseball season. The conversation was great and from what I read into this process was definitely moving forward, but not quite the hard part.

She left me an exercise to complete Conway's Game of Life, which I unfortunately did not complete, well I completed but not on my own and it seemed to be a mess. While trying to use TDD start to finish it took me initially 5 hours just to make the game board. I did not reach out for help after a couple days of realizing I could figure out how to count the live cells and test it. I chose to submit what I had with an explanation on what I did and where my shortfalls are. Working sales you tend to fake it till you make it, but I felt faking it in this instance was not the right option. I did however submit links to my Rails projects, the irony that a of Rails Dev learn is that we know Rails well but hardly know Ruby. I realize this is a shortfall and will be working harder on this.

The recruiter is off on vacation this week, so I will not learn if they would like to proceed until next week. The next step will be interview with the head of developers.

Company 2:

This company is actually in state but about 3.5 hours away from where I live. So it will require me to move if the decision is made to go with me as a candidate. This interview was also over the phone and was with an individual I met at the Ancient City Ruby Conference. The company is smaller and subsidiary of another. All together I was old that they have 12 employees and are working on a sole Rails project. The legacy product was made in .NET and now being restructure into Rails. I had a long conversation about my background and my desire to switch to development. Most of the questions were the same I got while networking at the Ruby conf.

1. Why are looking to switch from Sales to Developing?
2. What interested you in Ruby over other languages to start?
3. Any experience with TDD and Agile development?

I left the phone call confident that I had chance at the second stage, which is Google Hangout with the team. I look forward to the experience it will allow me.

What now:

The easy answer would be wait, but not me. I have already reached out via email keeping them informed of my presence. I have also begun researching the topics I was unsure of with attempting Conways Game of Life and will be following a tutorial this weekend on how to build it to catch the steps I missed.

In another effort to gain more practical Ruby experience I am planning leading the Ruby Newbies group through the Odin Curriculum. The curriculum will help me get to where I need to be, which is a better understanding of Ruby without Rails.

Please join me if you are interest in a weekly study group. It will be a deep dive into Ruby.