Your interview process with tech companies will comprise of two main components: the technical interivew and the behavioral interview. Below you can find lots of resources to help you prepare for both components.
Storytelling, Experience, and Career Goals Questions:
Tell me about yourself. Why do you want to be a software developer?
Tell me about your journey into tech. How did you get interested in coding, and why was software development a good fit for you? How is that applicable to our _____ role or company goals?
What made you switch from your prior career into programming?
Describe your background. How did you get to where you are now? What was your previous career field? What did you like about it? What didn’t you like about it? Why coding?
Describe your coding experience and why you wish to continue.
What are you looking for in a company? Why would you want to work here?
Describe your time at Turing. How did it prepare you for this career?
What is your 100% ideal role for your first web development job?
Have you ever worked directly with clients or have been in a customer-facing role in the past? If not, would you like to?
Talk about your preferred development environment.
How are you keeping up with the latest developments in web development?
Project, Problem-Solving, & Team Contribution Questions:
Describe a successful idea or project you worked on. What are some of the challenges you had to overcome? What made it a success?
Describe a project that failed, a project you had to give up on, or a time you worked really hard on a project and it just didn’t pan out as expected. What happened? How did you make the decisions that you made?
When have you solved a problem that didn’t involve you coding?
Please describe to me the difference between waterfall and agile approaches to software.
How have you implemented or adapted agile practices in your projects?
What is your approach to working on a team?
A lot of this job will be full-stack. Your experience is largely ____ (Back End, Front End). How do you feel like you’d be able to contribute to the team with only that experience? How comfortable are you with getting uncomfortable with a new language?
Describe an example of how you have handled a stressful situation.
In what types of environments/projects is it best to use pair programming? Why? In what cases would you not use pair programming? Why?
Describe your teamwork experience in a coding environment. How big of a team did you work with?
Have you ever had to switch gears in the middle of a project to get something fixed immediately? How did you react?
What project of yours are you most proud of and why?
You can’t work out how to solve a coding problem. What do you do to find the answer?
Tell me about a challenge or conflict you've faced at work and how you dealt with it.
How do you approach testing? And what do you think about this? How would you improve QA?
When have you exercised leadership and what was the result?
Describe a time when you took a risk that paid off for you. What was your process for pushing yourself further? How did you assess risk and try something new?
Communication & Feedback Questions:
Describe to me the steps you would take to build out a product.
Tell me how you solve a problem.
Explain one of the most difficult code problems you’ve had to solve, either on your own authored code, or in contributing to someone else’s.
Tell me about a time you had a disagreement with a colleague and how you resolved it.
Describe a time when you received feedback that you were surprised by. What did you do with that feedback?
When you disagree with a decision your team makes, how do you handle it?
Personal Growth & Self-Awareness Questions:
What is an area of growth for you?
What’s hard about programming?
What are some of your best professional/soft skills?
Describe your strengths. How have you seen these in practice as a developer?
How do you deal with failure?
What is your biggest weakness?
What is your greatest professional achievement/achievement at Turing so far? Why?
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
How would your former boss/current classmates/instructors describe you?
When have you taken accountability for something even when it could have proven detrimental for you?
Practice
Schedule a mock behavioral interview with one of the following people:
Allison Reu Singer: DM her on Slack @allison_reu_singer