I took part in a selection process in a company that I was really interested in working with.
The process till the last interview was smooth and pretty nice. The end I was a little bit frustrated because was not selected to continue in the process but in the end it was very important for me in a way and I will explain why.
Prologue
I think it is important to point out that I am a Quereinsteiger and came from the chemical Engineering area, so I am probably not the profile you search if you want someone with fluent IT theoretical and algorithmy knowledge.
I am really trying to improve myself on the theoretical part of the IT but the way I entered the area made me ‘care’ more in solving real life problems.
The Interview
On the interview they gave me a task and said to solve in a programming language that I felt comfortable. In the moment I was studying elixir and it seemed to me that I would be able to solve the first task easily even with a language that was not my strongest one.
I chose elixir because of the test approach of the language. I really want to improve myself in testing.
- I did it! Solved the first task.
The second task was a little bit harder and I was really keen to change to python. One of the evaluators said
‘Try in elixir! No, do what you think it is better’
I thought they really found valuable that I was not on my comfort zone and kept trying with Elixir.
In this task I was a little bit confused with some Enum functions and could not deliver the complete solution. We discussed a little bit and at the end, my test suite passed successfully.
And the last task was some very algorithmy question that I was naturally not able to answer because my lack of deep Algorithm knowledge.
Feedback
- They didn’t pick me because I am very fresh.(They had My CV obviously I am fresh)
- They said that I should use a more common language in selection Process. (Again they insisted for to use it during interview)
- They said that my German was pretty amazing. (I don’t even care and asked for this FB. I had a similar feeling as here)
Conclusion
- Don’t listen to evaluators in interviews. In the end they will make it look like you did wrong choices when they supported you onto choosing that.
- If you are going to a company where a lot of people are working with the same technologies for decades and have no interest into bleeding edge tech, do the task with commonly used technologies. Otherwise you could scare those people.
- Stick to your learning plan and make sure to not listen to people that are in they comfort zone since they were born.
IN SUMMARY
