My husband and I have recently moved to British Columbia from the Seattle area. The move has been amazing so far – we get to stay in the beautiful PNW and get to be closer to his family in Vancouver. The only detractor has been that I’m unable to take advantage of the job offer that resulted from my internship at Expedia. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, my experience at Expedia was wonderful and I’m certainly saddened by the fact that I can’t just roll into a good job in January.
Instead, I’m back on the hunt for a job in software development. In previous careers, I loved interviewing – I can ace a behavioral interview in my sleep (thank you acting training!). I’ve really struggled with technical interviews, though. On a few occasions I have completely choked – I’ve reached a dead end in a coding challenge and I could feel the panic shutting down my ability to think. Meditating before interviews helped significantly and saying “I need a minute to think” and taking a few moments to gather myself when I have gotten stuck have helped even more.
I try to keep it low pressure for myself and even have fun with the process – the interviewer is an important part of this – but I also know preparation is a big part of preventing future choking. My goal is not to memorize solutions but really to build my confidence and reinforce language syntax so basic things don’t hang me up. So, my plan for once the chaos of my capstone project dies down is to do the following:
- Complete a LeetCode Medium/Hard problem once a day
- Take the CodeSignal General Coding Assessment once a week
- Start work on a personal project to keep my skills sharp (and remind me of why I love to code!)
