CPSC 436I

Making the Most of Your Career

Jeremy Goh

So how's the job search going?

Agenda

• Mindset and Approach
• Getting an interview
• Passing your interview
• Making the most of your job

Mindset and Approach

Getting a job is hard work

• But it's worth investing in
• You spend most of your life doing it! At least try and make it bearable
• Co-ops are a unique opportunity to try different things out
• It's not the same as school
• Only some companies care about grades
• I spent 25% of my time on career stuff while at school and 75% during the terms I was actively interviewing
• It's not the end of the world
• Success is subjective

Rejections Happen

That's ok

Getting your first job is hard

• http://rejected.us

It's a process

• Wicked problems
• These are ones which you can't sit in a room and figure out
• You need to get out there and try things
• Designing Your Life by Burnett & Evans
• Trial and Error
• Resumes, time spent on different parts of the funnel

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Be Strategic

• Time your applications
• Deadlines
• You want to put your best foot forward
• Companies have a cooling off period if you fail an interview
• Internships are one of the best ways to get a full-time job
• Don't wait for perfect. It's a numbers game and there's variance

Getting an interview

Standing Out

• Finding the right jobs
• Who are the decision makers?
• Referrals and Networking
• Building a great resume

Finding the right jobs

• Apply for things even if you're not qualified (but strategize)
• You don't need to meet all the requirements but be realistic
• Events
• Hackathons
• On-campus
• Keep up with the industry
• Hacker News, TechCrunch
• Talk to people
• Google hacking

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Who are the decision makers?

• In general, recruiters are the ones selecting who to interview from resumes
• They are non-technical
• You need to communicate your ability in high signal and non-complex ways
• For on-campus events, alumni who work at the company might do the screening

The goal of a resume

• A clear, concise way of demonstrating your suitability for the job

Common Mistakes

• Too long - 1 PAGE ONLY
• Overly complicated and technical
• Generic
• Don't call your class project a side project
• Not selling enough
• Doesn't call out relevant info
• Graduation date, immigration status (for international positions)
• Poorly formatted
• Needs to be parseable by an ATS
• https://pushthatcode.substack.com/p/writing-a-resume-for-robots

How do you make your resume stand out?

• Use proactive language
• Numbers/metrics
• Draw attention to your achievements
• Call out relevant professional experience
• Internships, Open Source contributions, Volunteering
• Demonstrate your passion
• You don't need to love coding but people who code more are probably better at it

But what do you do for your first position?

• Chicken and egg problem
• Anything extra you do will help you stand out
• Go to meetups, join clubs, work on open source projects
• Google Summer of Code
• Volunteer
• Hackathons
• Build something, learn something, network
• Go to conferences
• Grace Hopper

What about side projects?

• Choose a tutorial and riff on it
• Some examples
• A reddit bot that follows your around and upvotes your stuff
• An app that swaps people's faces
• A social networking app with built in content moderation
• A clone of <insert latest cool app>
• Just start somewhere

My resume back in the day

Referrals and Networking

• Want a job? Don't apply
• Networking 101

Want a job? Don't apply

• When you submit an application, your resume goes into a large stack and there's no guarantee someone will ever look at it
• Referrals are a way to flag your application as something a recruiter should prioritize
• Friends or friends of friends who are full-time or interning at a company can refer you
• A referral can get you an interview or tip the scales if you're borderline in your interviews

Networking - Where do I start?

• You're already halfway there. Your friends!
• Events
• Hackathons
• Recruiting events
• Conferences
• Meetups
• Social networks
• Blog, Twitter, Piazza Careers, LinkedIn
• Alumni

My approach to networking

• It's more of a mindset and being open to meeting new people
• Help others without expecting anything in return
• Things will work themselves out
• Everyone has their own style, figure out which forum work for you
• I liked hackathons
• It gets easier the more you do it

Networking - TO DOs

• Read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Get LinkedIn and Piazza Careers and build out a profile
• Use LinkedIn to connect with people
• Pick one thing to get involved in
• Sign up to tri-mentoring
• Go up to a recruiter after a talk and ask a question
• Write a blog and share it with others
• Go to a meetup and learn a new skill while connecting with new people
• Answer question on Reddit/Facebook student groups

Passing your interview

Interview Success

• Types and Purpose
• The grind
• Whiteboarding

Types of Interviews

• HR Screen
• Work Auth, Communication, Trivia
• Technical
• Probably where most people get rejected
• Take home project (optional)
• Behavioral

What do you need to show in a technical interview?

• Coding ability
• Computer Science fundamentals - Algorithms and Data Structures
• That you can break down a hard problem
• You can communicate and work with others

The grind

• It takes a LOT of prep
• Resources
• Programming Interviews Exposed
• Leetcode (premium + company)
• Cracking the Coding Interview

Leetcoding - My Approach

• Start with easier questions for your target companies/often asked
• Try and solve within 15 minutes
• Read discussion forum and find optimal answer
• Repeat
• Come back later and repeat
• Understand the fundamental approach rather than memorizing
• Number of problems I've done

Whiteboarding

• Understand
• Ask clarifying questions. Constraints
• Sample cases
• Pattern match
• Think out loud
• Outline approach
• Consider complexities
• Code
• Test

Example

• Find the most common element in an array
• Understand
• Does the array fit in emory
• What types of elements
• What if there's a tie
• What if it's an empty array
• Initial approach
• We have to check every element. No matter what it's O(n) runtime
• How could we do better?
• How much space will we use?

What if you don't know where to start?

• It's ok to ask for a second to think about it
• Try and think about what makes the problem so hard
• Consider easier variants of the problem and see if they can help you build up a more general solution
• Consider other similar problems you've solved before
• Think out loud
• Make use of your interviewer's hints, guidance and body language
• Hmm I'm not sure I understand where you're going with that, can you explain more?
• i.e. you're probably on the wrong track

Interviews are a two way street

• Don't forget you're also interviewing them
• Have questions prepared!
• How do you typically determine what to work on?
• Why did you decide to join this company?
• I heard your team works on technology X, why did you decide to build it in-house?
• For people you've worked with who have succeeded in this position, what were the things they did day to day that made them stand out?

Common interview mistakes

• Being late
• Not being polite or humble
• We're asking hard questions because we want to get a sense of your ability
• It's not because we don't like you!
• Not preparing/regurgitating an answer you don't understand
• Not testing your code
• Not demonstrating your interest
• Giving up
• Not taking an interviewer's hints or guidance
• Asking how you did

Making the most of your job

Making the most of your job

• Communicate
• Expectations
• Keep people up to date
• Ask the right number of questions
• Skills to pick up
• Navigate a large codebase
• When to ask questions
• When to escalate
• Watch how other people do it
• Take notes

Final Thoughts

• Learn by doing
• It'll take hard work
• Time is your most valuable asset
• I'm putting together a career guide. Sign up here https://forms.gle/igzgRjFAiy9sYg2Z9

Questions?