Hashnode recently started some writing challenges and series to encourage developer writers to share knowledge, define their writing goals, understand writing standards, become consistent at writing, and build their career.
This week's challenge is the #MyFirstInterviewExperience where developers get to share their first interview experience and lessons learned from it. While this is my own story, I look forward to reading yours and hope developers preparing for interviews will learn from these stories.
The Beginning
My first interview experience was for an internship role at Upnepa NG, a company in Lagos, Nigeria. Upnepa is a data-driven platform that gives real-time (On/Off) information and total hours of electricity supply in selected areas, communities, and homes across Nigeria.
I saw the advert for the role of Web Developer Intern in October 2018 posted on Facebook by one of Upnepa's co-founders. As of then, Upnepa just got started and just joined an acceleration program in collaboration with Facebook and CCHUB at NG_HUB from Facebook.
I so much loved their mission to monitor, aggregate, and analyze power supply, power outages, and power distribution in order to improve productivity in young people and students, provide power supply rates insight for SMEs, and foresight for governmental institutions, energy distribution companies, and energy solution projects.
I prepared my resume and applied for the job. This was my first time applying for a job, I was very inexperienced and wasn't sure how it all works. I just kept calm and waited for whatever comes next ๐ง๐พโโ๏ธ.
The Interview
Eventually, I got an email that my application was accepted and it was interview time.
The interview was to evaluate my:
- Communication skill
- Personal Development
- Commitment
- Level of expertise in web development
I prepared, read tons of resources online around preparing for interviews and hoped I was ready for it. Fast forward to the interview day, I joined the call (I can't remember all the details now ๐ฌ) and answered tons of technical and non-technical questions alongside some test web projects.
After some more time and patiently waiting, I got another email after the interview.
Yayy, I got the job and was super excited! ๐คฉ
Lessons Learned
- Build a killer brand for yourself. Check out Gift's guide on personal branding for developers.
- Prepare a good resume before applying. Here's a great guide for this.
- You don't need to "know it all", you just need to "know it and know-how and where to find more knowledge."
- Ensure you have good people-skills aside from technical skills.
- Do some research about the company before applying and interviewing.
- Get a good internet connection before joining the interview.
- Invest in quality webcams, microphones, or noise cancellation headphones.
Conclusion
Don't spend your entire life waiting for the best time making that move, write that article, build that side-project, apply for that job, or ask that question today. The best time is always now!
Join Hashnode's writing challenges like the #2Articles1Week and #MyFirstInterviewExperience to write, share knowledge, become a better writer, learn in public and win some Hashnode badges.