Hello World! I decided to make this week’s post about job hunt woes because my team and I are just starting to learn C#, AWS, and containerization in preparation for our capstone. We’ve also signed an NDA so there are limited details we can share about the project.

I’ve been looking for new grad FT roles since the quarter started without much luck. There has never been a shortage of junior devs, but the tech sector is suffering mass layoffs and hiring freezes. A company my friend worked at had 2 pages of entry-level software development jobs back in March and now there isn’t a single one listed. Compounding that with my lack of internship (I didn’t feel ready until April to apply which is far too late for Summer), leads to many more rejections than I would like. But at the very least, I am getting further into the interview process than before and I can get almost all LC Easy and some LC Mediums done within ~25 minutes each so I am confident that I would do well on an interview when I get them.

I was banking a lot of my hopes on CodePath‘s virtual career fair (VCF) since it was reported that many OSU students received offers through companies they met there. CodePath, if you haven’t heard, is a non-profit for CS students that offers weekly courses on subjects such as mobile development and interview strategies/algorithm patterns. The VCF provides an opportunity to meet with a recruiter or engineer in a 1-on-1 or group setting to kickstart your interview process as kind of a light phone screen. I was able to secure a first-round technical with Bloomberg this way. Unfortunately, I did not get past GAP’s OA and RBI has yet to issue an official response to my application.

Unfortunately, I had to reschedule my interview with Bloomberg to the upcoming week so I’ve been preparing by specifically trying frequent LC problems. On the cscareers Discord, there is a LC bot that links frequently asked questions by specific large and medium-sized companies.

I also have an upcoming phone interview with EPIC Systems which has a very different process than most places. They place a lot of emphasis on logic and reasoning. They have you take something called a Rembrandt personality test which is used to measure 10 relatively unrelated metrics about your personality. And their skills assessment supposedly has SAT-style math problems and English portions. They have stated upfront that this assessment is not something you can really study for and it is a proctored exam with a time limit of 4 hours so that is nerve wracking. That said, EPIC is known as a great place to start your career because they are know to hire new grads so I am really hoping I get this. I do have years of part-time experience as an end-user of their software which I feel gives me an advantage.

Lastly, I have an OA with IBM for a backend role so I am trying to prepare for that as well. Balancing the algorithm grind while retaining your knowledge of frontend and backend development through personal projects is a tough task, but that is the state of software interviews at the moment.

I wanted to share some resources that have helped me get to this point:

• Grokking the Coding Interview – covers common algorithm patterns and problems with explanations and solutions in Python, JS, Java, and C++
• CodeSignal Practice Assessment – daily scored practice assessment that provides ~ 2 LC easy and 2 LC mediums; general assessment is used by companies such as Square, Pintrest, and RobinHood
• CodePath – free courses for CS students taught by industry professionals in subjects such as webdev, mobile dev, cybersec, etc.
• Grind 75 – from the creator of Blind 75; an organized list of LC problems that are frequently asked at decently sized companies