
Interviewing requires _a lot_ of time and energy. Maybe you need to study some technical topics ahead of time. You probably already have commitments that require a lot of your focus&mdash;like another job or children. That's why it's important to be selective where you can about companies you want to interview with.

Here are the ten questions I'm using to decide whether or not I'm interested in interviewing with a company:

1. How large is the engineering team?
2. What is the make-up of the engineering team? Such as, how many managers are there, who do they manage, etc.
3. How often are one-on-ones?
4. Who are the one-on-ones with?
5. Is there career coaching?
6. Are there performance reviews?
7. How have you handled performance reviews with the pandemic?
8. What's the development process like? For example, do you work in sprints?
9. How tasks are estimated and assigned?
10. Are there regular team retrospectives?


It's important to ask questions early to find out if you even want to work somewhere.

10 Questions I'm Asking All Companies Before Scheduling Any Interviews


I'm finishing up my degree at one of the top undergraduate engineering schools in the country. Applicants are typically at the very top of their high school class and have great SAT and ACT scores. I did pretty well during the last few years of high school and worked extremely hard to get into the school.

My first quarter, I took Calculus II (out of III), Rhetoric and Composition, General Chemistry I (I started out as a Chemical Engineering major _gasp_), and College and Life Skills. Calc II was a nightmare for me. I "skipped" Calc I because of my AP Calc score, and there seemed to be this insane assumption that I was a calculus expert at this point. I got lost so fast.

As for Rhetoric and Composition, I did fairly well for most of the class. The very last paper was supposed to be Wikipedia-style, but I honestly had no idea how to write a research paper. Small, country high schools don't really prepare you to write a college-level paper. 😳 Even after the professor questioned me about my ability to write the paper, he still reported me for plagiarism and I got a 0 on the paper.

Know what the next part of the story is? I failed both of those classes and got a D letter grade, meaning I had to retake them at some point. This was absolutely devasting at the time. My GPA was a 2.0 after only 1 quarter at this school where I was expected to perform much, MUCH higher. I questioned whether or not I should be there because who knew if I could even make the grades?

That was the fall of 2013. Since then, I've had internships every single summer and have also been working full-time since last summer while finishing up my last few classes. This isn't typical for graduates from my school. Most people finish "on time" (4 years), and some even do it in **_three years_** or with **_two majors_**. Bravo to y'all, there's no way I could have done that.

So, how did I manage to still lock-in great opportunities? First of all, I feel very fortunate for the number of companies that come to the fall career fair on campus&mdash;somewhere around 300 of them.

Second and most importantly, in my opinion, is that I've always been honest about my situation. For whatever reason, my personal life outside of classes was regularly a living hell. I'm mostly grateful for those times, because they led me to get help with my mental health and I would not be where I am today without the things I learned back then.

Anyways, I always made sure to be transparent with people about my life. I wouldn't go into every single detail, but just enough to let them know that I came from a different background than most of the other students and had to fight harder for what I wanted.

I also always emphasized the fact that I had a plan for correcting my path. When I failed a class (it happened quite a few times), I made sure to tell them exactly when I was taking it over again. This had a huge impact on how I got my third internship. The HR gentleman flat-out said, "Good, you have a plan for fixing this and you've already begun."

My GPA never even reached a 3.0. I tried _so hard_ to get it there. But things just kept happening. Life got in the way over and over again, but you know what? I'm almost there, and I'm doing just fine. GPA is not the only factor to the kind of person someone is, and if a company filters you out based on what that number is? Forget them. There's a 90% chance they aren't the kind of company you want to work for anyways.

You have a **story**. It is **important**. Anyone who isn't willing to listen to it before shrugging you off isn't **worth your time**.


Employers put far too much weight on GPA as an indicator of work ethic, intelligence, and capability when really, it has almost nothing to do with it.

GPA Isn't Everything


Rejection sucks, and for some reason, rejection from acquaintances and strangers _especially_ sucks. Maybe you submitted a proposal to give a talk at an event and weren't selected for it. Maybe you applied for a job and they didn't give you an interview. Maybe you asked for a promotion or salary raise and couldn't get what you needed. How do we move on from rejection like this?

First of all, don't immediately take it personally. You're definitely awesome, but let's take a breather and analyze the situation more closely. There are more than likely some good reasons for the rejection from the other person's perspective. Your talk topic may not have aligned closely enough for the event's purpose. Another applicant may have been more qualified for the job. Your company might not have an open position to promote you to or enough money to raise your salary.

Before you ask any follow-up questions, make sure you genuinely **thank** the person who rejected you for their time. Doing so will increase your chances of them keeping you mind for future opportunities.

Once you've thanked them, then consider some potential questions for feedback. You want to make sure they don't sound bitter, so if you want to double-check your wording and tone, see if you can find someone to review them before you move forward. You can ask what would have made your talk proposition more desirable, what skills or qualifications you were missing from your application, or what you can do at your job to be more seriously considered for a promotion/raise next time.

This is where you can take the answers to these questions and run with them. Hopefully, you receive positive, helpful feedback. Build on it and make yourself an even stronger candidate. If the feedback wasn't helpful or you get shrugged off, however, it might be time to look deeper into the situation. In this case, find an outside perspective to talk to about it. They may see something you don't.

Regardless, keep in mind that you are not alone in being rejected. It happens to everyone, every day. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there. You might come across the opportunity of a lifetime.


Rejection can be really painful, but there are a few things you can try to move forward in a healthy and positive direction.

How to Accept Rejection in Your Professional Life


I first heard the phrase "learn out loud" from the [Office Hours podcast](https://discoverpraxis.com/office-hours/). In [this article](https://discoverpraxis.com/3-reasons-learn-loud/), podcast co-host T.K. Coleman gives us three reasons to do so. I'd like to focus on the first reason he gives and show you how to apply it to the job search.

Say you're in an interview and they ask you a difficult question you're not sure of the answer to. The pressure to immediately respond and sound smart is on and it builds as the awkward silence grows between you and the interviewer. You get more and more uncomfortable and your mind goes blank. No answer is coming to mind.

It doesn't have to turn out like that. You can, and I believe most would interviewers appreciate it, think and learn out loud instead. T.K. made two key points relevant to this.

> Knowing what a person knows is very different from knowing what it’s like to work with that person when they don’t know. The latter is far more important to the people who have to work with you. And since everyone has things they need to learn, it’s highly valuable when you can signal your ability to do that very thing with patience and persistence.

> When people can watch you learn, they’ll still get to see how effective you can be when you’re in the know. But more importantly, they’ll get to see how consistent and composed you can be when you have no clue.

Some days, you're going to be visiting Google and Stack Overflow dozens of times. Others, you may only need to go there once or twice. Both are fine. No sensible person is going to expect you to have every single thing about your job memorized. There's just _too much_ information out there so we have to keep our minds tidy with only the most important bits.

Since learning is the expectation of any job, what _should_ be important to interviewers is how someone learns, not whether or not they have every Big O notation memorized. The best way for you to showcase your learning skills is by doing so out loud. When you get a difficult question during your whiteboard pseudocode test, step through your thought process. If you get stuck, say so! Then proceed by explaining what you would do next.

What will your search terms be? Have you seen this kind of problem before? What questions would you ask a fellow teammate? Answer these questions well by _doing_, and your chances of impressing the interviewer are huge.


You don't have to know all of the answers right now.

What it Means to Learn Out Loud


The vast knowledge of the tech world can be so overwhelming. People throw out buzzwords all the time on Twitter: Kubernetes, Rails, React, Angular, Elixir, etc. What are all of these things and how does everyone else know about them?

If you're like me and don't know that many people in your area who are part of the same industry, it can be hard to figure out what frameworks everyone is hyping up through regular discussion. It doesn't have to be that hard, though. The internet is _right here_! You might be wondering, "But how am I supposed to know what words to Google for results about things I have no clue about?"

It's so easy, you already have the answer in your head. Just go over to a job search site (I'm recommending [Glassdoor](www.glassdoor.com) because it helps you get a good idea of salaries and whether or not companies are credible), search for either your current job title or the one you're interested in getting, then grab some good job listings.

You'll want to look at listings for positions that are higher than your current one. For example, being a junior-level front-end web developer, I might look at some senior-level positions. As another example, I'm really interested in learning more about web UI/UX, but don't know any of the terminology or what jobs with that focus even look like. I might search for "UX Researcher", "UX Designer", or "UX Intern" in that case.

Use all of these flashy and intimidating job listings to your benefit. The more buzzwords, the better. Also, don't be afraid to dream big. Who knows what you may come across?


Whether you're looking to move up in your career or are simply interested in learning more about your field, finding the gaps in your knowledge is a lot easier than you think.

Posts Related to the "job-search" Tag