Mock Interviews

[00:00:00]
>> Jerome Hardaway: Mock Interviews, your friends, your user groups with platforms like Pramp, Interview.io, they're good, great simulating real interview conditions. If you're in that front-end master's discord ask them want to hey, do some mock on me. Ask Mark, hey, Mark, is there a way we could do like a mock interview Mondays and you can, we can all practice mocking reviews, maybe that'd be a thing that your instructors would like to come and do with us as well something like that.

[00:00:27]
Community engagement, you mark, if you see this mocking interview, Mondays I'm down. And I'm pretty sure other instructors should be down for that too, right? So, but you have to, I cannot stress this enough. The market's too wild out here. It's too volatile to go in these jobs, blind and unprepared on any level, especially the technical level.

[00:00:53]
The technical level is we see this as where the cortisol levels of the of people spike the most because this is the part people drill the least, right? Everyone, even today how many probably know times I've been asked about and are brought up in the chat about the projects, but no one talks about the interview prep component?

[00:01:17]
Or they don't talk enough about it or they're afraid to drill that come component because this is not the fun part. This is not the cute part. This is the stressful part where somebody you don't know is essentially judging the things that are coming out and other your fingers then you have that, right?

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And that's nerve-racking, right? I don't know this person. My anxieties are high or high level of probably should have took a shot before this. I don't know what, how to handle this. But now this person, I just had this person make an audible grunt when I did a wrote a line of code.

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I don't like that, right? [LAUGH] they just sighed. Are you rolling your eyes while I'm writing code? No, don't do that. I need positive reinforcement right now, right? So it's scary. And people don't do that enough, but we have to. We have to do mock interviews. We have to do the, especially now.

[00:02:09]
You have to practice that calling to the HR cuz you have to practice controlling those inflections and those us and owns. Because there are things, like I said, false positives, those tools they might not always pick up if something that's just like a lapse of judgment or you say normal, it's a space for your brain to think.

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Stuff like that. They might say, you don't know the subject based on how many times you say, or something like that. We have to practice these things. It's scary. You have to start practicing that. You have to start practicing. The interview prep when it comes to the technical, a lot more, 'cuz we have to start thinking about performance now.

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Not just solving for X. You have to solve for X in a manner that while it's still readable, it's also performant. And you're that sucks because performing code usually isn't readable. [LAUGH] So now I got to figure out where to do the trade offs at. And you gotta be able to explain your trade offs.

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So you have to practice that stuff.
>> Jerome Hardaway: Feedback, now, legally, they tend to not give you feedback at companies cuz they don't want you to go come back and say, you were discriminated against. So they don't tend to get feedback on there, but practice sessions, you get feedback, you get so much feedback till it hurts.

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I want you when it comes to the goal of being better, feedback is a gift. When it comes to practice, I like getting feedback and practice. Work not so much. This is a good job I don't like feedback at work. But if it's practice, I love feedback at during practice, right?

[00:03:49]
Because you learn a lot. Well, when I was boxing, we had a saying about easy training, hard fight, hard training easy fight. It's the same way. If you make the experience of getting the job hard on yourself, the actual getting the job is gonna be easy. If you make the experience of getting the job easy on yourself, the actual experience is gonna be hard, right?

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You have to do these things. You have to get this feedback. You have to start in-boxing was pretty easy you get the feedback pretty immediately a punch in the face, your hand was down. I hit you in the nose cuz you didn't have your hands up. Take it's not so much so you have to do these you have to be intentional getting your feedback, right?

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And add it to, I'm sorry, Excel sheet. I don't know what I was about to say express, excel combined. I use notion, I don't use the word I don't know why I said that in all and I had my feedback there I keep and I'm like, how do I improve my game.

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Consistency, you don't have do the staff everyday, but you need to be doing at least every week. I spent 90 minutes a week doing just code challenges. I spend 90 minutes a week drilling down my verbal interview prep. I have one of my friends no ill or I have somebody one of my board members if you have a troop hey I want to go through my verbal interview prep here's, know some questions.

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We're gonna generate these questions on a ChatGPT, here you go, you ask these and we'll go from there, right? I do this because I wanna practice what I preach, right? And like I say, I'm obsessive with the training of getting a job cuz of how, I know that part is the second most stressful part is the 9030 to 3060 90 F the job.

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But the most stressful part is getting to the job right, getting that getting through the interview. So we have to be the only way you mitigate that stress those cortisol levels is by practice is about being consistent with your practice the same way. If I go out there and I try to run a mile with Mark today, I'm gonna die.

[00:06:07]
I'm just gonna be honest. Y'all might not ever see me again. This will be the last [LAUGH] get the software engineer job course ever. However, if I practice running a mile three times a week and I run with Mark. After six weeks of it, you know what, we'll have a version five.

[00:06:26]
It'll be cool. So that is the same we do working out. It's the same level you got to practice being consistent. So by doing this, focusing on company specific problems, when I say that, I think one of the things that we're having right now is people are just applying for jobs and they're not being intentional with the application.

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So they're just, I'm applying all these jobs and I get it, all right? Once you get that application, are you focusing on what CS fundamental would apply to that job? That is what I want you to really look at, all right? Now that I'm here, what are the CS fundamentals that will apply to this job to that job to this job over here that I'm gonna be gonna code challenges.

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Let me start there and then work my way backwards on code challenges, right? Let me find through CS fundamentals. They matter in this type of company in this industry, then work my way back, right? This approach, it's cuts down time. That's the first thing that I picked up.

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It helps me focus on the things that matter to this company fast, right, when it comes to performance. And then it helps me get the practical application concepts. I'm a very practical person. I don't like theory at all, I think military drill that out of me. Theory, bad things happen when you theorize in the military, right?

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So you're always thinking about the practicality of it. The same concept when it comes to learning how to code. I've always been practical when it comes to color, I hate theory. Let me put this on the screen and let's see this thing work in action. It actually works.

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Cool, now I'm gonna use this, right? So adding that practical application to computer science gonna help it stick more, right? But it also will demonstrate to interviewers that you know that you actually you care about their business. You're looking to have the skills that be relative to their business, you're thinking.

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One thing I always think about when I would go into a job or going to interview is what is the line of business? What is the business revenue lie of this company and what skills do I have, how do I apply that directly to that, right? I don't talk about artificial Intelligence I'm gonna see how can I apply this to that?

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How can I apply this to get out the way, right? No one wants any more gen AI things. This is all played out. This is cool. Well, can we do a predictive analytics? Can we do sentiment analysis? Can we do computer vision? Can we do I-C-R-O-C-R? Can we do any of that?

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Right, that is what I started thinking about, right? How do I help with the business revenue lie? And that's what I want you to start thinking of when you're going through these processes of getting a job.