Jobhunting in College: Tales of Triumph, Struggle, and Everything in Between
Throughout my college years, I had been regularly applying for internships and jobs. I sent out nearly a triple-digit number of applications in total, heard back from companies in few of them, and got accepted 3 times. The following paragraphs are selected stories from them.
I may have done this for a slightly longer time than the average person, as around 2019, I had the option to tighten up and finish all of my college courses on time, but I made the conscious decision not to do so, and postponed my graduation for a couple of months to further pursue internship/fresh-graduate roles in and outside of Egypt, eventually departing from college in the spring of 2021 instead of the summer of 2020.
Now that I’ve quit the rat race for a while, I think it’s about time to release this blog. In some cheesy sense, this took about 4 years to be created, as most of my job hunting took place between 2018 and 2021. I started writing this shortly after graduating college, and it has (not very actively) been written for more than a couple of years now. I slowly altered it until it reached the state it is in today.
People treat their job hunts hush-hush-ly, so I figured I would share my stories. Hopefully, by the end of these blocks of text, you’ll have a better idea about how hiring generally works and what not to do, as I’ll try to tell the mistakes I made indirectly instead of writing a glorified bulleted list. Buckle up!
Google, 2018
Like any CS undergraduate, Google was compulsively one of those places I regularly kept applying to. My first ever shot at it was in 2018. I had a cool competitive-programming related achievement on my resume, so I figured it could help me stand out from the crowd. The process was very short, to say the least.
Initially, I received a coding test, which consisted of basic Data Structures and Algorithms problems. It was much easier than the types of problems we’d solve in algorithmic competitions. I would like to think that I did pretty well at them. Later on, an intern questionnaire and a survey slipped into my inbox, I filled those out as well and shortly received a rejection letter afterwards.
It seemed weird, but my best guess is that my questionnaire answers weren’t good enough at the time. As I was filling out the form, I thought I could skip a page and get back to it at a later time (spoilers: I couldn’t), so I ended up leaving a blank paragraph or two.
I applied to Google about 30 times in my college years. Some with referrals, some without. Most of the applications ended up in a point-blank rejection or getting ghosted. I’ll only mention my first and last tries in this blog.
Microsoft, 2019
I spent that summer trying to get an internship. I was pretty bummed out by my Google rejections, so I tunnel-visioned on ATLC that summer (A sector of Microsoft based in Egypt called Advanced Technology Labs). Knowing how rigid they are with grades, I decided to compensate for my little-shy-of-3.0 cumulative GPA with a bunch of recommendation letters from my university professors.
I left good impressions with two professors a couple of months prior, who taught Algorithms and Object-Oriented Programming. So I asked them for the letters. Fortunately, they were very generous about it, and I ended up with two letters attached to my application.
I heard back from ATLC a month or two later with a code test on Codility. It was okay; I got a dynamic programming problem involving bit-masking. I had never solved this type of problem before, and I figured it out in the test (one of my high moments, if you ask me).
A couple of weeks went by, and I got an invitation to do an on-site interview. Their office looked cozy, and I met a couple of friends there so it was a nice atmosphere. I did 2 interviews with 2 different engineers, both interviews were floating in the DS/Algorithms space with some open-ended questions. I heard some people getting OOP questions as well.
My turn came. I was a bit nervous in the first interview, but I solved the question with slight hints. The second one was also okay, it had an open-ended “design” question, and he seemed very satisfied with my answer.
A week or two went by and I received a rejection letter. I don’t think my run was bad, but I wouldn’t call it perfect either.
IBM, 2019
The position wasn’t 100% technical. IBM was doing a tour across universities to promote their cloud development tracks. (If you have ever seen an influx in “Cloud Application Developer - Mastery” badges on Linkedin, you’ll notice they’re all issued at that time). They needed interns who could do technical stuff while organizing and speaking at their events.
Anywho, a friend of mine was working there at the time so he referred me. A week or two later I received a call from an HR person, whom I’ll call Ms. A, scheduling an interview to be done in their offices.
A week later or so, I visited IBM and met Ms. A alongside another manager-ish person. They asked me about my extracurricular activities, with very few technical questions involving front-end stuff. It was a very monotonous Q&A interview; a lot of “Do you know X?, Do you know Y?”. They were more interested in my role in my student activity (acmASCIS) and how I would use my “connections” to organize their events, which isn’t really my thing.
I got ghosted afterward. This would turn out to be a recurring (albeit normal) theme in my journey. ;)
Pixelogic Media, 2019
I went to a job fair alongside a couple of friends. Pixelogic had set up a booth there so we talked with one of their senior engineers. The company looked cool, they created distribution and localization tools for entertainment entities like Disney and Fox. I slipped them my resume and forgot about them. A couple of months went by and their HR called me to set up an on-site interview, I visited their office the following week.
It was a very friendly place. I got interviewed by one of their staff engineers and an HR lady. I was asked general (basic) questions about backend and testing, since the role was a hybrid of the two. In addition to general questions about my resume and projects.
A week later or so, I received an offer and ended up getting the internship. I learned a lot, the environment and the culture were great, and we were treated very well; catering every day and such. It was a very awesome experience.
C3S Solutions, 2019
I don’t remember applying to c3s. I think I did, but I was surprised at the time to find an email scheduling an online interview. I happily obliged.
I did an online call with one of their engineers, it was very basic. I was asked general stuff about Data Structures/Algorithms/OOP, and a small problem to wrap it up, I think its only purpose was to check whether I had the literacy to write any code.
I proceeded to the next stage. It was an interview with 2 engineers who had very senior/manager-ish vibes. We met in a coffee shop and it lasted 2 hours; each one would get 20 minutes with me and then pass me to the other like a fur ball.
The 1st engineer gave me DS/Algorithms problems to solve on a piece of paper, they revolved around Arrays, Trees, Binary Search, and Math. It was an identical whiteboard interview you’d find in Google. I did pretty well at them.
The 2nd one asked board questions in computer science. They ranged from Operating Systems, Networking, Algorithms, and basics of Software Engineering. It was a pretty fun interview, I couldn’t solve any OS questions because that was one of my postponed courses, but I left a good impression.
A week went by, and they sent me an apology mail stating they can’t proceed with me since I’m still an undergraduate and I still didn’t finish my military service, but I was free to continue the process any time once I clear it up.
Facebook/Meta, 2019
A friend of mine was at their London office as a summer intern so he referred me. This was my first ever interview in a so-called big N company. I did several mock interviews with friends and random people on Pramp, in addition to doing the usual LeetCode grind. After my referral, the rest of the process presented itself as 2 interviews on separate days, with the first one being scheduled on a Friday.
Fast forward to Friday. I hopped on a call with one of their software engineers. The interview was purely technical (2 DS/Algorithms problems). After a quick round of introduction, we jumped straight to the first problem, which was a medium LeetCode.
I treated the engineer like they’re someone who was “examining” me, and treated the problem like a competitive programming task; just coding it to get a correct output, regardless of who was reading it afterward. The resulting code was similar to something you would find on Codeforces. At some point, we got a bit back and forth about its time complexity.
The second problem was a trivial searching problem in CS. I went silent for a couple of minutes and mumbled the solution out loud which happened to be the intended approach. However, we were running out of time and I didn’t have much to code it, so it was sufficient for the interviewer to end it there.
I received a rejection letter a week later. I never got to know the engineer’s feedback as part of their typical policy, but pretty sure it contained words like “argumentative” & “poorly-written code”.
Bloomberg LP, 2019
I was mass applying that summer, and Bloomberg was one of those companies I randomly spammed. I applied through their website and heard back after ~2 weeks of my Facebook debacle. I prepared with the same routine, LeetCodes, and mock interviews with a lot more emphasis on C++ after reaching out to a couple of their engineers on Linkedin and asking about their stack.
Later on, I got invited to a phone interview with one of their engineers. We got to talk about my resume and stuff I did in college, and we closed the call with an easy-level HackerRank problem. I really enjoyed this call, and it’s safe to say that it boosted my morale for at least 9 hours afterward. It didn’t take a couple of days until I got an invitation to do another (a bit longer) technical interview, this time via video call with two of their engineers.
4-5 days before my interview, I received an email containing a link to the video conference room the interview would take place in. It wasn’t Zoom or Google Meets, but rather: NEXI, a tool built in-house at Bloomberg. I didn’t bother to check whether or not the link was working; I had complete trust and faith (some call it love) in NEXI that everything would work fine.
Fast forward to interview day. Right after my interviewers joined, I realized my camera wasn’t working, and I had to leave them for about 10 minutes to try and fix it. My camera was functional, but NEXI did not seem to believe it. I eventually rejoined and apologized, saying it was not going to work. They seemed to be cool about it, but it made me feel quite nervous at the time.
They rolled in the first question, and it’s a medium LeetCode. I walked them through a dummy approach, optimized it, coded it, and finished the whole problem in ~15-20 minutes. It went very smoothly. They gave me another LC medium Data Structure problem. It stomped me a little because I didn’t know whether they wanted to see how I would design my code (OOP-wise) or the actual implementation itself. Because it seemed straightforward, with some details. Anyhow, I wrote the solution with slight hints, I don’t think my code was that readable, and my initial hesitation must have left a bad impression.
At the end of the interview, when I got to ask questions, I asked whether or not interns get to work on real projects that make it to production, to which one of the engineers who happened to hold a poker face in the entirety of the interview, replied with something along the lines of “you’re not an intern yet”, I took it as a hint that I’m not proceeding to the next stage.
Got a rejection letter a week later, but it was a very fun experience.
PayMe/EasyKash, 2019
I applied via Wuzzuf. It had three “screening” Javascript questions. I’m pretty sure these served the same purpose as the “prove you’re not a robot” riddles. I naturally filled in the questions and sort of forgot about the whole company. I remember seeing new intern hires afterward, but I didn’t give much thought to why I wasn’t selected.
A year goes by, and I randomly decide to clean up my old mail, and voilà, the follow-up email was just sitting there giving me the “;-)” face. As it turned out, they DID send it, and I did not see it because I had a messy inbox at the time.
Palantir Technologies, 2019
I applied to Palantir that summer as part of my mindless spamming spree. I heard back from them around the following winter with a HackerRank coding test (typical Algorithms/Data Structures). I managed to solve one problem and partially solve the second one. I did not expect a response due to the cool kid vibes they let out on their website, but one of their recruiters followed up with me anyway.
She sent an email scheduling an “interview” on Zoom, and I put that in quotes because there was no conferencing link attached. Zoom was pretty obscure to me at the time, I thought she would somehow call me directly, so I installed it on my phone and started waiting.
The wait stretched a little over 30 minutes beyond the initial planned time. I had a nasty cold but kept waiting. Minutes later, she sent me an email mentioning that she couldn’t reach me. I replied back by saying I did not receive any calls and continued waiting, this time for hours; apparently it was in the middle of her workday. She finally responded and sent an email with a valid meeting link.
Fast-forward to 10:00 PM that day. Going through that was a bit unpleasant, but that was the best course of action to take according to my sick brain at the time. The call finally started, she asked me typical questions about my favorite projects in college, why I joined CS, etc… I responded very candidly to the latter by saying how I liked to play video games and used to listen to their developer commentary, so I decided to pursue CS to learn more about how to make them. Apparently, that was too much focused on my interests, and there was nothing there for her to see that could benefit the company.
Being acutely aware of how Palantir is a data company, when asked about what I think about data and working with it, I sort of tried to bullshit and say “Data? I love data! In fact, my graduation project is about creating an ML model to create subtitles, it involves huuuuuuuge amounts of data!”.
Needless to say, I got rejected a couple of days later. I did not have expectations towards Palantir to begin with, so it lacked the “umph” factor, but most of the misery (waiting and refusing to rest despite being sick) that day could have been avoided by having a passive attitude and by just sending an email to reschedule the interview when she couldn’t make it the first time.
360Imaging, 2020
The company looked cool, they do Image Processing/Graphics solutions for medical usage. I applied through Wuzzuf and got shortlisted on the same day. Later, an engineer called me to introduce himself, the company, his team, and what they were working on. We set up an online interview afterward.
A couple of days went by, and I hopped on a call with 3 engineers. It was 90 minutes of one of the hardest interviews I have gone through with respect to my level at the time. I got very detailed questions about my projects and internship. The latter were fine, but I struggled to answer inquiries about some of my listed projects, which was quite the lesson in why one shouldn’t put stuff in their resume unless they’re fully finished (I used to have the habit of listing some projects after messing around with a framework or making a small POC of what I wanted to implement). I wouldn’t blame my interviewers if they thought I was trying to bullshit my way in. :-)
Later, I was asked a C++ Design/Data Structures problem, and multiple questions spread throughout Computer Graphics and Linear Algebra. 10 minutes into writing the problem, I realized that I don’t know C++ as much as I thought I did. I struggled to understand the problem itself and wrote poor code that just worked, which, of course, wasn’t good enough. When we were done with it, I was a bit disappointed and didn’t show much enthusiasm in answering the following questions, which surely didn’t leave a good impression.
Looking back at the C++ problem, it was a direct implementation of the Composite pattern, but it just slipped over my head, as I couldn’t truly fully grasp design patterns until I got my first job after college. The reason I remember this vividly is because I got an identical problem in an interview with a different company months later, which I had no issue clearing.
Got rejected pretty much the same day, but it gave me a very clear idea about myself, and how much I still don’t know.
Widebot, 2020
I’ve had two brief instances with Widebot.
One time, I applied through their annual internship announcement as a Data Engineer intern. Days later, I received a take-home assessment consisting of a web-crawling task, and a task involving cleaning up some data and training an ML model on it.
I didn’t have a problem with the first one, but my knowledge of ML was very limited; it wasn’t part of my college courseware, and I did not explore it well enough in my free time. I wrote some Python code that cleaned up the dataset and partially completed the task. I think what was remaining at the time was just a couple of lines to run/train the model, but I was running out of time and the deadline was almost there, so I plastered my code with TODO comments and delivered it as it is.
Overall, I think it’s generous to say that I delivered about 70-80% of the task, but I got ghosted and received no response afterward. Worth mentioning that the deliverable was a Github repo containing the code. My gut says that I could have worked on the task for an additional day to have it fully wrapped up. It may have improved my chances of getting accepted.
The second time, a friend of mine referred me as a Backend intern. A couple of days later, I was sent another take-home task (Apparently Widebot is a huge fan of those). However, it was very poorly worded and I did not fully grasp what was required, I sent an email asking for clarification and received a reply along the lines of “Do the best you can in it”, which was very sweet, but was still left clueless.
This was almost in the middle of my exams. Having made no progress, I mentally checked out of it and decided to focus on my studies. I understandably did not receive any further follow-ups from them.
Despite having the feeling that I did the best of my abilities at the time, I feel like there was more to be done. Like additional communication, and coordinating a more suitable time to deliver my tasks. Especially since I was referred the second time. But you live and you learn.
Instabug, 2020
Similar to Widebot, Instabug announces its internships every summer. They usually have multiple roles, including Backend, DevOps, and other stuff. Knowing a friend who worked there at the time, I reached out to him to ask for a referral, and he was cool enough to recommend me.
I was a bit hesitant about which role to apply for. I originally chose Backend, but after giving more thought to it, I wanted to explore DevOps a little bit, so I ended up changing my application as such, which might have caused some nuisance to everyone involved.
The next stop after passing the screening was receiving a take-home assessment. I received the DevOps task, but because of the shenanigans I mentioned earlier, I also got the Backend one by mistake. I naturally dismissed the latter and began googling my way through the first. It was about creating a simple Jenkins pipeline for a public NodeJs repo on Github.
They set a 2-day deadline, so I got super duper-focused on getting it done. I finished the whole thing in a day. One of the testing steps was always failing because it was missing a library that was only available on Linux. Since I was doing the whole thing on Windows with little time left, I ended up commenting out the troublesome line and explaining it in a Readme file.
A couple of weeks went by and I received no responses, I reached out to my recruiter to follow up on my process with no luck. Eventually, I reached out to my friend who referred me, who confirmed that I should have received a rejection email by now, my inbox was clear of any Instabug emails, but it was nice to know that at least.
After knowing for sure that I’m not proceeding with them any further, out of sheer curiosity, I decided to check the original Backend task that I got by accident, and it was relatively a lot easier, mostly questions floating in Algorithms, Data Structures, and General CS questions. I think my chances of clearing this were much higher. Not going to lie, that felt salty for a couple of days.
In retrospect, this whole thing was a tough lesson on not obsessing over what-ifs, as switching roles caused most of the troubles. The silver lining to my experience is that I left it knowing a little bit more about CI/CD pipelines, which came in handy later in my career.
Palantir Technologies, 2020
I came back for a second shot at Palantir. This time my resume was different, and I had a lot more interviewing experience, and since I didn’t do very well in my 2019 run, I dedicated my time to that one, I solved a considerable amount of LeetCodes, interviewed myself with behavioral questions I could find online, and it was my first time for me to start getting into system design after reaching out to an engineer working at Palantir, I think it was the most time and preparation I’ve invested into an application at the time.
I initially received a Hackerrank coding test. The problem involved a bit of parsing. I wrote it down with its corner cases in ~10 minutes (another one of my high moments if you ask me). It didn’t take much for my recruiter to schedule a follow-up introductory/HR interview. It was in the middle of the 2020 Biden/Trump votes count.
When the big day arrived, he asked me random questions, mainly stuff in my resume, why I pursued Computer Science and my previous internship experience; things like “What would I change differently in my internship” and so forth. I could tell he was kind of bored, from the occasional sighs he let off when I asked him to repeat some of his questions because I couldn’t hear him clearly, or the more subtle clue: watching the election stream while interviewing me. It was cool to know that Biden was leading in Colorado nonetheless.
Overall, I wasn’t too happy with the interview and ended up receiving a rejection letter a couple of days later. My speculation about not making it is that I wasn’t pursuing a Master’s degree following that summer (or in other words, I was not in between degrees to be eligible for it), when I was asked in my interview whether or not I was considering it, I simply replied with “not sure yet”.
When I inquired, I received generic feedback because they couldn’t share the actual reasons, so I settled on the more plausible scenario: they had better candidates. :-)
Mentor Graphics/Nabla - Contract, 2021
I applied through a Linkedin post advertising a contracting position for Mentor Graphics (now called Siemens Digital Industries). I still had a couple of months left till my military drafting process, so I threw in my resume anyway.
A couple of weeks later, I was contacted by an older gentleman in his fifties. He was a college professor who happened to be one of the first directors (or managers? I can’t remember the title, but sounded pretty hotshot at the time) at the old Mentor Graphics in Egypt, he had parted ways with them but still contracted projects for them under a different entity called Nabla.
We scheduled an interview at a local sporting club. He arrived on his bike in a scene that honestly set the bar for me for how chill I should be in my fifties. He also paid for my invitation, which was a lovely gesture.
The “interview” was a casual discussion about C++, OpenGL, and my previous experiences with them, as well as some of the projects he was planning on delivering, in addition to salaries and so forth. The discussion was going smoothly until the subject of my military service got brought up.
He wasn’t too pleased that I was yet to apply and start my drafting process, but there was this glimpse of hope for both of us that this might work out with a small project as I still had 2-3 months (and potentially more time since I wasn’t in the first batch). We left it open-ended until I went and asked about my drafting logistics.
A couple of days went by, and I shot him a follow-up email, and received a very sweet rejection letter.
Google, 2021
A friend of mine referred me. I applied for an internship position and received a very basic (DS and Algorithms) code test. It was suspiciously straightforward. I had to check the sender’s domain multiple times just to make sure it wasn’t my Nigerian prince. I solved the problems either way and waited for a response.
The waiting bit spanned about 3 months. The code test wasn’t sent by a recruiter, but it was an automated email very generously plastered with “DO NOT REPLY” and “REPLIES WILL NOT BE READ”. Just to know where I’m standing, I reached out to an old Google recruiter of mine (I had been collecting a couple of those throughout my college years up until that point), and it turned out she was no longer working with them. I reached out to another previous recruiter, who said I should just talk to the person who sent me the test (not very helpful, ma’am). I eventually let a noogler friend ask internally, and they responded that they weren’t proceeding with anyone who didn’t get a follow-up email at the time.
That was the last time I applied there, and it was a fitting ending for my college years, not out of pettiness, but in my first Google paragraph, that 2018 version of me would have been very disappointed with the rejection, but at that time? I was so cool with it. It turned out the 30th time might not necessarily be the charm, and that was totally okay.
Pencil Technologies, 2021
This was somewhere after my graduation and before my military service process. I applied on Linkedin, and received a take-home assessment. It was a front-end task, that wasn’t really my thing at the time, but still, it was a fun chance to try out Angular for the first time.
I progressed in it very slowly and missed the initial deadline. I sent a follow-up email explaining that I had not finished it yet and requested an extension. They were very fine with it.
However, at that time, I hit a mental wall. In retrospect, I think it was a classic burnout. I couldn’t look at the code let alone make any further progress in the task, so I mentally ghosted it and just stopped. especially because I also assumed they wouldn’t be progressing with me since I was overdue the deadline I initially requested, so I did not send any follow-up emails afterward.
A week passed by, and they understandably sent a rejection letter. I did not think too much of it, but just like Widebot, part of me wishes I communicated my situation properly, as I have a feeling they might have been okay with another extension.
On the other hand, I now know a little bit more about Angular than before, which is a win.
Orange Labs, 2021
This was in May, about ~2 months after my graduation. There was a huge question mark in October about my military service and whether or not I’d be drafted, but I decided to continue spamming companies anyway. Worst-case scenario, I’ll miss out on them and get some interviewing practice, or even maybe join them as an intern till I get drafted, who knows? I’ve heard good things about OL, and they needed a fresh graduate who knows C++ (which I’ve significantly put time into since my 360imaging interview). The whole thing fit like a jigsaw piece for me.
I applied online and received a DS/Algorithms coding test. It didn’t follow the standard LeetCode questions format but a more competitive-programming-ish kind of style, which was very refreshing to see. Fortunately, I didn’t have a problem with those and proceeded to the next stage.
My next stop was at a call with one of their HR people, nothing significant to mention here except this was the first time I got asked “Where do you see yourself in the next five years?”, I cannot remember my answer to that, but I guess it was good enough to pass to the next stage.
Later on, I got an invitation to do an on-site interview in their offices in the smart village (which I’m not hesitant to say on record that it’s my least favorite ~4 square kilometers of land, due to how far it is from home). The COVID paranoia was still in place, so OL offices were 90% empty. Anywho, I met the engineer who sent me the invitation and we set up our interview.
The questions revolved around OOP/Design Patterns/Algorithms/C++, with a lot of emphasis on the latter. This was honestly one of the best interviews I’ve performed in. I had been contributing to cpp questions on StackOverflow for quite some months up until that point, so I didn’t have a problem with it. Overall, I was pretty confident I’d be advancing to the next stages.
I sort of got ghosted for the following 2-3 weeks. OL looked like my best opportunity at the time, and given how well I performed. I shot them a follow-up email, and they responded by saying that I’ve been put on hold till I clear my military service. It was kind of a bummer, as my interviewer mentioned we could make it work somehow, but it’s all cool.
The Bad Nomads, 2021
It was a gaming studio that had just launched. I applied online. Their CEO messaged me on Linkedin, he sounded like a pretty chill dude, We had a back-and-forth conversation about my military service and how it could affect my employment, concluding that I couldn’t join them while serving, but I should carry on with the process nonetheless for any future opportunities. We scheduled an “online hackathon with their tech lead”. I did not know what that meant, I figured I’d work on a design problem with one of their engineers like a real-life hackathon, which sounded cool.
Anyway, the big day arrived, I got an invite link to a shared online IDE (replit), with the equivalent of “Anonymous Badger” and “Anonymous Chameleon” passively observing it - I assume that was the CEO and the tech lead. I asked whether or not there would be some sort of a voice call, and they said they were not doing that. The only means of communication is through the website’s built-in chat.
The timer started and a block of text was pasted in the IDE. It was a typical low-level design problem but slightly tilted towards a gaming feature. I had 45 mins to finish it. I couldn’t fully understand what they wanted me to code out, and having to type out questions for clarification and figuring out a typed response added a whole new layer of difficulty for me.
I glued some code from what I could interpret from the text messages, when the time eventually ran out they did a little “evaluation”, and they stated that I was missing a very key part in the design - a detail, in my opinion, that is impossible to figure out through texting. They promptly ended the session afterward.
I reached out to their CEO to give feedback about their process and how texting may not be the best way to communicate in design problems - or in interviews in general. He stated that they do these sessions concurrently with multiple candidates simultaneously, so verbal talking wouldn’t have been possible. It works for them I suppose, but I don’t think it works the other way around. I never heard back from them again.
DevSquads/Vidscola, 2021
A software house/Agile coaching consultancy. I used to know a couple of people who worked there, and was hanging out at their office in 2018. I really liked what they were doing, especially when it came to their team dynamics. I tried to join as an intern at the time but I don’t exactly remember why it didn’t work out. However, their founder/CEO got to know me, which was enough.
A week after I graduated college, I still had quite some time before going through the process of my military service. I messaged him about the possibility of spending that time as an intern at DevSquads. They agreed that I’d come by their offices for a quick “interview”, it was a casual conversation about what I’ve previously worked with, they liked me, and I joined them for 5 months building an automation framework, it was a very cool experience.
Microsoft, 2021
It turned out, that at one of the companies I previously interviewed (and did pretty well) at, the interviewer happened to be a manager at Microsoft ATLC, he was creating a new team at the time, and since I left a good impression with him, he decided to reach out to check whether or not I was available to join it.
The military service issue was still on the table, but we went with the process anyways, as there was a decent chance that I would be exempted.
A couple of days went by, and I did 5 interviews in a single day. I could tell the interviewers came from different levels (2 SWE-1s, 1 SWE-2, and an EM), and I was given problems floating in Algorithms, Data Structures, and Object-Oriented Programming. I did pretty well in all of them, although I was pretty tired at the end.
I eventually did one last interview with one of ATLC’s directors. He was a very chill person. We discussed my resume, and my military service. To be frank, I was a bit hesitant about the whole thing, as this wasn’t a full-time role, but a contracting one. It had fewer benefits and lasted for only 18 months. Moving full-time depended on performance and whether or not they’re hiring at that time. The vagueness was a bit discouraging.
Despite passing and almost receiving an offer, I ended up passing on it as I decided to pursue other opportunities I deemed more exciting at the time.
Honorable Mentions
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Someone called me while I was playing Counter-Strike after checking my Linkedin profile to discuss an opportunity, kudos to him for not hanging up over the sounds of in-game gunshots, and not so much for trying to convince me how +40 hours/week falls under part-time employment.
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CrossWorkers & Eksab.com: who use Stanford-Binet-IQ-like tests as a part of their assessment. I feel like they’re filtering out a lot of good candidates because they couldn’t figure out “which shape of these 4 is the odd one”, or “what’s the next number in the sequence: 1, 42, 69, 420, …”
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Cognitive: making someone type down their hopes and dreams and “describe themselves in a sentence” in an online application form breaks the ice for sure. But for the average job seeking spammer, I think they would find this activity a bit time-wasting. :)
That’s about it.
I wish I could write a lengthy sentiment about this, but there isn’t much to it. Assessments and interviews will always be the crappy parts of the platter, but in retrospect, it’s the best way to get yourself in a feedback loop to keep on improving, so you might as well keep on swinging.
If there’s anything I could criticize myself about, it would be how I took it too seriously. This whole journey could have been way more enjoyable had I taken it as a harmless side quest, not an all-or-nothing ultimatum. It could have been way more fun, and definitely less impactful on my mental health.
So next time you get a rejection letter, don’t think too hard about it. Move it to the trash, turn on your favorite movie, hang out with your family or friends, and in the most cliche manner: move on.
“What do you do when you win?”
“Party!”
“What do you do when you lose?”
“PARTY HARDER!”
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