So my interview was last Friday, 5/16. I was nervous and scared. But at the same time, I HAD to do well. I never wanted anything so badly. I had read through tons and tons of blogs and forums for tips on how to prepare. I consulted a friend who had gone through the program himself. Basically, be confident and be passionate. The rest will follow.
From the day I was notified that I was getting an interview with Dev to the actual interview day, I studied Ruby like a maniac. I wasn’t GOOD at it, I just STUDIED it. Keep in mind that Ruby was all new to me, but the Java fundamentals helped. I went through Codecademy up to the Refactoring level, as suggested by Dev. Another friend of mine, who was a CS major and is a software engineer suggested writing code on paper. Forget the editor. This helped a lot as well. When I did use the editor, I ran the code that I wrote in Codecademy through the terminal to see if it worked. This helped with my understanding as well. It makes a world of difference. It also makes you learn terminal commands if you don’t already know it.
Ok, so the interview itself:
– Jumped straight to a logic problem (5-10 mins). I probably can’t tell you exactly what it is, but Google some logic problems and practice them. It’s OK that you don’t get it right in the interview as long as you “talk out” your logic process. After the interview, I thought about the logic problem some more and had the biggest DUH moment ever. It’s ok, I let it go.
– 2 Ruby coding questions. The interviewer takes you to a collaborative real-time coding platform. They ask you 2 simple questions. Again, if you do the Codecademy track, you really should be fine. But be over-prepared, just in case.
– They’ll ask you why you want to do Dev over all the other schools. If you watched the youtube video that they told you to watch, and reflected on it, you should know the answer. Be passionate about why you want this.
The very next day, I got an email with the subject line “Congratulations!” I don’t think it hit me at that moment. But I realized that this could change my life forever. I’m so freaking happy. I’m still happy. But there’s more work to be done. Hope this post helps you guys!
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