[HN Gopher] Get mock interviews now, pay when you find your next...
___________________________________________________________________
Get mock interviews now, pay when you find your next job
Author : leeny
Score : 86 points
Date : 2022-02-09 14:54 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.interviewing.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.interviewing.io)
| jaimebuelta wrote:
| Come on, this interview process is going too far... I think most
| of the people working in tech knows that the interview process is
| just plain silly, but we keep doing it because reasons...
|
| And, the worst of it, it doesn't make any sense that for a senior
| role you get a code interview (or multiple), and then, if you
| don't pass it, they encourage you to re-apply in 6 months or a
| year...
| slytherone wrote:
| I like how this company posts videos of interviews so I can learn
| from other people
| leeny wrote:
| Here's the link to our youtube channel if folks wanna see what
| slytherone is referring to:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/interviewingio
| decebalus1 wrote:
| hello fellow hn-ers, I also like how [company] offers this
| [benefit] to [customers]
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I don't understand this. Why wouldn't you just practice by
| interviewing with random companies? If you are hired, just
| counteroffer with an absurd salary requirement. And if they
| accept, then congrats you don't need to practice interviewing
| anymore.
| canti wrote:
| Not everyone has the luxury of having such an abundance of tech
| interviews that they can simply use some of them as practice
| for the "real" interviews
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Feedback, focus, efficiency.
|
| I did about session a day for maybe two or three weeks. I'll
| compare it to trying to practice by doing real interviews. I
| got much more detailed and honest feedback from my practice
| interviews than any real one I've had. I got to practice just
| the interview type I wanted, algorithms, without doing other
| things that would come up in a series of interviews (culture,
| system design, etc). I also didn't have to contact and
| coordinate with >= 10 companies to get 10 sessions. I just
| booked 10 sessions.
| potatochup wrote:
| I used to do interviews for interviewing.io, and it's a bit
| different. For my work, I'm not going to give any feedback, and
| will try leave early if it's not going well. When I was being
| paid for it via interviewing.io, I would give people fairly
| detailed feedback on what went well and what went wrong, and
| also answer any questions the mock candidate had.
| iandouglas wrote:
| For me, I'd use a platform like interviewing.io where you'll
| GET actionable feedback -- most companies won't give you
| feedback at all, other then "here's your offer" or "nah, thanks
| anyway"
| systemsignal wrote:
| Anyone have advice for getting to the interview in the first
| place?
| trhway wrote:
| just reply to FB/Google/AMZN recruiters. These FAANG companies
| are basically running "practice-interview-as-a-service", and as
| a bonus if you happen to like their offer (it seems though that
| their offers on second and further attempts are pretty low - as
| you're put into "benchwarmers") you can even spend some time
| working there.
| leeny wrote:
| OP here. If you do well in practice, you can book interviews
| with companies through us (we hire for Amazon, Dropbox,
| Clubhouse, MongoDB, and a bunch of others). You skip all the
| recruiter calls and scheduling and just go straight to the real
| interview.
|
| And if you find a job through us, you don't have to pay for
| practice.
| sdwolfz wrote:
| Here is what workred in my recent job search, that just ended
| this week:
|
| 1. Messgae people on LinkedIn, the more senior in the company,
| the better. This was by far the fastest and most reliable way
| for me to get to the first round.
|
| 2. Message the company via a recruiting@, or contact@, even a
| support@ email they have on their website. Not as reliable as
| option 1 but better than the job application forms.
|
| 3. Have them contact you via a "HN who is hiring?" post, it's
| rare, but it does happen.
|
| If it's a job post form, then personally I'd just consider it a
| loss. Don't know why, it's not like I provide different or less
| info compared to direct messaging, but that just leaves me
| ignored for weeks, or rejected with a template message.
| DeWilde wrote:
| You mean getting past the resume/application stage?
| throwaway158497 wrote:
| One thing I wish people leeny (who work with hiring managers)
| tell companies is that as people start hitting 35-40, they dont'
| have same motivation to solve a trick coding question in 40 min
| interview. I can demonstrate that I have all the knowledge to do
| the problem, but if you want me to write compilable (throwaway)
| code with absolutely no mistakes, you have to loose some
| candidates. As you age, solving one off puzzles is a nuisance.
| mbrameld wrote:
| You're saying you can demonstrate that you have the knowledge
| to do the problem, but you can't actually do the problem? I'm
| 43 myself, it's not something I do for fun but I can certainly
| code up a DFS/BFS implementation or something similar in 40
| minutes. With a modern IDE it's not unreasonable for me to
| expect it to work correctly on the first try.
| throwaway158497 wrote:
| Try doing it with coderpad IDE with no autcommplete. On top
| of that, for Java, make sure you declare everything as
| static, because top level class has static on it.
|
| A reasonable middle ground is that I demonstrate I know all
| the concepts in the interview and I can send a fully
| compilable version after the interview.
|
| >>I'm 43 myself, it's not something I do for fun but I can
| certainly code up a DFS/BFS implementation or something
| similar in 40 minutes.
|
| Do you think you can do or have you done this? There is a
| difference between the two.
| iandouglas wrote:
| For me it's experience in the industry. If you can see my work
| history, that I have >25 years in the industry, working for mid
| and large size companies, and lots and lots of startups, why do
| I need to do something like a 2-pointer / heap / etc kind of
| problem to prove I can code?
|
| One of my favorite job offers was literally a conversation that
| played out like: Manager: Cool, come to our office and meet the
| team Me: Want me to prep for a tech challenge or something?
| Manager: Nah, you were employed by ____ for __ years -- if you
| were incompetent, they would have fired you years ago.
| ggoo wrote:
| When I was learning how to interview better, I just applied to
| companies I ethically didn't agree with.
| [deleted]
| alasdair_ wrote:
| I have a friend who does this with companies that he finds
| morally repugnant, except he takes it a step further and gets
| free vacations out of it by having them fly him in for the
| onsite in New York and put him up in a nice hotel the day
| before and the day after. He usually walks out after a couple
| of hours and spends the day visiting tourist stuff.
| sickygnar wrote:
| Sounds like he'd be a perfect fit for those companies
| Kranar wrote:
| Your friend is morally repugnant.
| bduerst wrote:
| It sounds more like your friend has found a way to justify
| deceptively stealing/wasting time and resources by labeling
| people as morally repugnant.
|
| Yes, it's legal to do, but isn't it a shade hypocritical?
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| jrm4 wrote:
| I can't meaningfully distinguish this from "Trying a free
| sample at Costco with no intent to buy the product."
|
| Aka, who cares?
| thfuran wrote:
| >I can't meaningfully distinguish this from "Trying a
| free sample at Costco with no intent to buy the product."
|
| Are you serious?
|
| >Aka, who cares?
|
| Surely the company would rather not waste the money.
| jrm4 wrote:
| And that is _solely_ the company 's problem.
|
| You either accept that "people who take your free stuff
| might not be profitable" or you do a better job screening
| who you give free stuff to. Zoom exists.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| Not to Godwin the thread, but surely e.g. Nazi Germany
| would rather not have their factories bombed and their
| personnel shot at?
| jrm4 wrote:
| What in the entire fresh heck is this supposed to even
| mean?
| remram wrote:
| If a company does shady enough business that it has
| problems hiring developers, and decides to spend money on
| flying and lodging remote candidates rather than improve
| its practices, why should _we_ feel bad about having them
| spend that money?
|
| You don't force them to do it, you don't lie in your resume
| that they decided was a desirable candidate. If they can't
| convince you to come on board, that's on them; hiring is a
| mutual negotiation.
| tannedNerd wrote:
| While I personally wouldn't do it, I could see the argument
| that tying up resources of a morally repugnant company is a
| worthwhile act because it prevents them being as terrible
| for a day?
| alasdair_ wrote:
| I think it depends. When the Iraq war was starting, I could
| see the justification for wasting a bunch of Haliburton's
| time as a form of civil disobedience or protest, for
| example.
|
| Personally though, I don't do this, nor would I. I think
| it's too easy become corrupt from doing things this way.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I would do this, except even an interview for a position I
| didn't want would make me dreadfully nervous. There's something
| about paying for someone to help that reduces the anxiety. That
| said, I'm not an engineer so this particular service isn't for
| me.
| m00x wrote:
| Ironic since this is wasting interviewers' time, making your
| own ethics questionable.
| powersnail wrote:
| The interviewer uses work time to interview, so they still
| get paid for their time. It wastes the company's resources,
| but not the interviewer's.
| boardwaalk wrote:
| ... and I'm sure all the programmers on dead end projects
| out there feel great too!
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Sometimes you just have to play the game of capitalism.
| blairbeckwith wrote:
| If you view every minute an interviewer is doing actual work
| as harmful to the world, then wasting said interviewers time
| would be even more of an ethical good would it not?
| legostormtroopr wrote:
| This also assumes that the interviewee has the "right"
| ethics. From their perspective, yes wasting time in an
| interview is ethically good to them.
|
| But outsiders may agree with the interviewers ethics, and
| would see wasting their time as unethical.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| I know this wasn't your point, but I'd like to call out the
| common assumption that interviewing isn't "actual work". It
| is. Recruiting, interviewing, mentoring, all of that is
| just as important as shipping code.
| gumby wrote:
| So you could frame that commenter's activity as providing
| interviewing practice to the company's employees...for
| free!
| boardwaalk wrote:
| I don't think that was the assumption here. They were
| saying that interviewing someone who doesn't want the job
| isn't actual (useful) work in the sense it can't produce
| the goal (a good hire).
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| This is a very interesting take on activism.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Depends on your perspective. Making an unethical company less
| productive isn't necessarily unethical in itself.
| [deleted]
| crooked-v wrote:
| That only holds if you assume that "good" ethics must include
| being nice to everyone all the time.
| mhh__ wrote:
| "Stern, if this factory ever produces a shell that can
| actually be fired, I'll be very unhappy."
| muh_gradle wrote:
| I found this to be inefficient use of my time personally. 30
| minute interview to go over what's already written on the job
| description. A 30 minute to 60 minute interview with the
| manager or some higher up to see if you're the right cultural
| fit. Only after can you go through the on-site process.
| paxys wrote:
| Heck I've done it with companies that are (probably) not doing
| anything wrong ethically, simply because it was their
| recruiters who hounded me in the first place. If you are that
| desperate for me to interview despite me telling you I'm not
| interested, don't then blame me for wasting your time by doing
| mock interviews with your engineers.
| allisdust wrote:
| Anecdotal but the secret to success from my personal experience
| is to: 1) Never stop looking around (okay, may be not when you
| have less than one year tenure in the current company) 2)
| Interview when you really can afford to fail the interview and
| still not care (for example when things are going well in your
| current company) 3) Treat it like a collaborative session than
| a actual interview. 4) Don't reject offers for petty reasons
| like not agreeing with a companies ethics/tools they use/what
| work they do. It's work and that is why they pay people to do
| it. So consider all these factors and ask for a higher package
| and if you really like to work on something else, aim for good
| work life balance and use that time to do what you want. 5)
| Shamelessly sell yourself. The 5 mins intro that you provide in
| each round in a lot of cases can decide how the rest of the
| round goes.
| leeny wrote:
| OP here. Yeah... throwaway interviews are a way to do it. The
| nice thing about interviewing.io is that you don't have to deal
| with all the recruiter stuff and scheduling and getting in
| their process in the first place. You just book practice
| whenever you want it. AND you actually get interview feedback
| (with specific actionable things you need to work on... way
| beyond just pass/fail).
| deedubaya wrote:
| Trolley problem, applied
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Coding interviews are the easiest interviews. There's very little
| difference between the problems, and they usually don't need a
| trick. Just discuss your solution before you start writing the
| code, and assuming you don't get a jerk or completely blank,
| you'll be fine. It's the most objective of all the rounds. It's
| literally just practice. The fact that it's so paint by numbers,
| is probably one of the reasons why interview coaching focuses on
| it. Manufacture some demand, and you have a low effort company.
|
| Technical design is a bit harder to prepare for, because it's
| more about trying pattern match systems you know against the
| problem presented. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of high level
| case studies or design discussions.
|
| The ones that are hardest to prepare for, and no doubt has sunk
| many a candidate are the softer interviews, particularly
| management interviews and cultural fit interviews. Those are a
| complete crapshoot. There's probably stock answers to prepare,
| but the questions are pretty random. If you can figure out how to
| coach the those in 202X (as opposed to recycling 1965's advice),
| then you've got something.
| homie wrote:
| Absolutely agree. I've found that behavioral interviews are
| harder than technical interviews at this point. If you don't
| have the set of experiences they're looking for then it's game
| over.
|
| This can be ameliorated slightly if the interviewer is willing
| to accept a hypothetical, but this has rarely been the case for
| me recently.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Or if your management philosophy doesn't mesh with theirs.
|
| "Tell me about the last time you had make your team work late
| for a deadline."
|
| "I don't. It's been my experience as both an IC and a a
| manager that crunches just burn people out, and you end up
| getting less quality work out of them. It's much better to
| communicate early and either adjust deadlines or
| deliverables."
|
| "What if you can't?"
|
| "Unless there is an external forcing function on the company,
| everything should be negotiable. Does this happen a lot
| here?"
|
| "One or twice a year."
|
| "Huh. It's only happened to me once in ten years, and that
| was due to a multimillion dollar contract deadline. If it
| happens regularly here, then the company should fire the
| directors of engineering for gross incompetence. They can't
| project manage."
|
| Needless to say, I didn't get the job, but at that point, why
| would I have wanted it?
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| > Coding interviews are the easiest interviews.
|
| For you. I am a bit over a year into my eng career and coding
| interviews are far harder than any other type of interview for
| me. I have a handful of stock behavioral question answers that
| I can adjust for most non technical interviews. I do minimal
| prep before hand looking up who I am interviewing with to have
| a few questions for them and try to find a way to relate to
| them during the interview.
|
| That is much easier than someone asking me anything from fizz
| buzz to red black trees.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| No one asks anyone to implement a red-black tree. There are
| too many special cases. Just know it exists and what problem
| it's trying to solve.
|
| Fizz buzz is a hello world problem. That's why it exists.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I'm giving examples of the range of questions that exist.
| I've been given Fizz Buzz in a real coding interview. I'm
| sure someone has been asked to implement a red-black tree
| before.
|
| Replace red-black tree implementation with some other silly
| overly complex question that isnt related to the actual
| job.
| djanogo wrote:
| >Manufacture some demand, and you have a low effort company
|
| What do you mean by that?
| jonathankoren wrote:
| I've interviewed at four of the five FAANGs, and got offers
| from three of them, including one of them twice. I've
| interviewed at I don't know how many startups and midsized
| companies as well. All the technical interviews are the same.
| You might get some better interviewers at the bigger
| companies, but that's more due to practice on their part.
| They just have interviewed more people overall, and have
| asked this question enough times they know the common
| mistakes.
|
| There's this belief that FAANG interviews are somehow harder,
| and you need to study for months to prepare, and it's not
| really true. It's the same MO as the test prep business, but
| with less obvious metrics for success. (You don't get
| standardized test scores to compare, you just get an offer...
| eventually. Did the interview prep business help? Who knows?)
|
| The interview prep businesses push the specious idea that
| FAANGs are tougher, and people believe it. (eg Less than 1%
| of FAANG applicants get an offer! Well, yeah. Do you know how
| many people apply? A lot. Do you know how many are nowhere
| near qualified for the job they're applying for? Probably
| more than half.) They keep repeating these claims, they end
| up scaring people into paying for something that's not
| needed. That's the manufacturing demand part.
|
| The low effort part is that technical interview questions and
| programming puzzles are a penny for two dozen. You give the
| question and the solution in maybe three different languages
| (say, JavaScript, Python, and Java) and you're done. Charge
| $500 for ten questions, give them a HackerRank link, and
| you're done. You'll spend more on advertising and paid
| testimonials than anything else.
|
| The interview prep companies don't focus on the noncoding
| interviews, because they're harder to find questions for, and
| harder to grade. When it comes to personal interviews, you
| have work with each student one on one to help them talk
| about their experiences most effectively. That's high touch.
| If you're trying to maximize volume, you don't do that.
| iamricks wrote:
| I find that for more problems you do need a trick. Once you
| memorize some of the main algorithms asked, usually the
| questions are a twist on common algorithms + some trick that is
| not obvious.
|
| Sure you it can become easy if you "Practice" but everything
| gets easier the more you do it.
|
| People who pass these either have have IQ or have grit, thats
| why companies use this to judge canidates, either you spent 500
| hours on learning it or DS/A just sticks to your head like
| glue.
| jaimebuelta wrote:
| the main problem is that you can get caught in an
| interviewing pet project, so it seems obvious for them, but
| not for you. Properly done, a code interview could not
| require clever tricks, but the problem is that it's just too
| easy to slip into that realm...
| iamricks wrote:
| That's true, you can get unlucky with interviewers.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| The quality of the interviewer is one thing that the
| interviewee can't control. The main interviewer failures
| are:
|
| 1) Letting the interviewer struggle. By the end of the
| interview, the candidate should know what the solution
| looks like, even if they couldn't solve the problem
| themselves. If you let someone struggle too long, you're
| failing them. Give feedback early. Point out caveats.
| Don't have them code up a dumb a solution, and then in
| the last 10 minutes tell them to redo it with a
| completely different approach because it's suboptimal.
| (Im not talking about special cars they can retrofit, or
| if the original wrong solution was trivial. Use your
| judgement.) The interviewer understands the nuances of
| the problem. The candidate probably doesn't. After all,
| they just heard problem.
|
| 2) DO NOT CONFUSE THEM! This happens by giving the wrong
| feedback. You might think you're helping someone, but you
| could be knocking them off their game. If they're going
| for the optimal solution, and they know the approach,
| just let them. It's not wrong, I'm fact it's the most
| correct answer. It's _very_ easy to confuse someone in
| these timed and stressful situations. Don't don't do it!
|
| 3) If it's a design question, or something else with
| multiple reasonable answers, then there are multiple
| correct answers. Make them state their assumptions. Ask
| how the solution would change if something was different.
|
| Don't expect someone to come in off the street and
| understand the nuances of your use case and data issues.
| _You_ didn't understand them until you were confronted
| with the obstacles either.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Binary search
|
| Quicksort
|
| Mergesort
|
| Dijkstra's algorthim
|
| Depth first search
|
| Breadth first search
|
| Doubly linked list
|
| Semaphores and mutexes
|
| Make sure you know the recursive versions of the algorithms,
| and that's pretty much everything you ever need for a generic
| coding interview, and you might not even get asked a dynamic
| programming or a producer-consumer question.
|
| Maybe you need some more specialized data structures for a
| more specialized role (eg tries[0] and inverted indices, for
| a search job), but you probably already knew those if you
| were already doing that job.
|
| There's just not that much to know.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie
| kache_ wrote:
| I actually made some friends over discord who ran mocks with me.
| Being a person who spent most of university partying rather than
| hanging out with the studious people, I didn't have much friends
| who had the same programming skill as I was.
|
| Just look around, I'm sure you can find people with similar skill
| to run mocks with you (without having to go through some paid
| service that most likely employs desperate people ergo less
| qualified people). Plus, running the interviews yourself could be
| more valuable than going through one.
| leeny wrote:
| OP here. Our interviewers are all senior engineers from FAANG
| and FAANG-adjacent companies. Average is 8 years of experience.
| They've also all conducted at least 20 interviews on behalf of
| their employer.
|
| They're not desperate... they're doing this because they 1) get
| paid and 2) enjoy helping people get better at this stuff.
|
| Happy to set you up with an account so you can get a feel for
| the quality.
| kache_ wrote:
| Have you tried to flip the script and allow people training
| for interviewing to interview master interviewees? So they
| can see what success looks like?
| dundarious wrote:
| Given the widespread (and not unreasonable) belief that
| FAANG-style interview processes function as more of a
| quantity filter (quite arbitrarily reduce the candidate pool
| down to a size that human hiring teams can deal with) rather
| than a quality filter (find ideal workers), it's quite
| humorous to see the same people running those ineffective
| interviews profiting off of making them a worse quantity
| filter. If you squint at it, you can see this is
| graft/corruption but legalized through layers of indirection
| (a classic practice in the US).
| Wagthesam wrote:
| I'm senior at a large bay area tech co. I used this service a
| few years ago and actually got great feedback and tips (11
| offers during that search, almost 100% offer rate for
| onsite). I'm also on the recorded interviews list
|
| One of my interviewer (from ms) actually had too high a bar
| and was good to see an upper bound for coding interviews
|
| Highly recommend this service
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| You know hiring is fucked when entire industries spring up around
| the process.
| lrem wrote:
| A local company here is offering an insurance whose whole point
| is to handle the claims with your real insurance. I wish they
| were joking.
| drekipus wrote:
| I don't get why everyone seems so hung up on the interview.
|
| Relax, talk about yourself, talk about what you've done.
|
| I think doing things like this and from the thousands of Reddit
| posts about "the dreaded interview problem" only leads people to
| over think it and have worse anxiety and performance, not better.
|
| The interview to my first job was just listening to my then-boss
| talk about the company for 30 minutes, the second was
| stonewalling while my boss grilled me to make sure I know what I
| said I know.
|
| You're not going to be able to "train" for that just like you
| can't "train" for getting rejected for dating, you just have to
| learn social interactions and go do it a couple of times.
|
| ----
|
| I did just remember my worst interview experience, where, after
| being jobless for a number of years (early on, mind. I'm still
| young) I applied for phone IT support. - the interviewers asked
| me to:
|
| "describe the best vacation you had"
|
| "I haven't really been on a vacation" (I haven't been working,
| poor family, etc)
|
| "Ok describe the vacation you would like to have"
|
| "... I literally don't want a vacation.. I am looking to find
| work." (Jobless.for.years. every day has been a mediocre vacation
| up until this point.)
|
| "..... Ok just tell us a story about a vacation"
|
| "....... Ok I suppose I'll go to Rome then? And uh... " _Draws
| blanks_
|
| You can't be prepared for interviews where the interviewers are
| shit, nor if they blindside you with questions like that.
|
| You also might lose your ability to detect bullshit if you try.
| jrjarrett wrote:
| > I don't get why everyone seems so hung up on the interview.
|
| Because if you need a job, the wild asymmetry between you and
| the interviewers.
|
| You have to be ON for that short time and ready to deal with
| questions like what you got about "best vacation" or in the
| next question code a red-green tree implementation, followed
| seconds later by describing a full scale cloud architecture.
|
| All of that in an hour.
|
| And if you falter anywhere along the line, they reject you and
| you worry about how you will feed and clothe yourself and your
| family.
| Kranar wrote:
| If the company you're interviewing for is just some boss
| rambling about his wife, then sure, don't bother training for
| it or doing everything you can to increase your chances of
| success.
|
| If the company you're interviewing for is among the highest
| paying companies in the world, where you can literally change
| the quality of your life and your family's life by making
| enough money to comfortably retire as a multimillionaire by the
| time you're 35-40... then investing months doing the dreaded
| leetcode grind, mock interviews, and doing everything in your
| power to prepare for it is absolutely worth it.
|
| In fact, seeing just how few people are willing to actually
| invest time and effort into excelling at an interview process
| that can tangibly improve ones life in ways very few other
| professional careers can is even more of a reason to do it.
| Every time I see people who are dismissive of technical
| questions, rant about how it's unfair that interviewers expect
| them to understand fundamental data structures, algorithms,
| time complexity, and think that all they should need to know to
| be a developer is how to glue a few APIs together, it makes me
| both sad to see how low of a standard we hold ourselves to, but
| also in a selfish way it makes me happy knowing that the
| competition for competent developers is so low.
| DeWilde wrote:
| Applied for their site a while back, but was put on hold because
| there were too many applicants. Have yet to get a response from
| them. Meanwhile got the job I was looking for, without any mock
| interview sites.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I signed up for a dedicated coaching program with interviewing.io
| and ended up getting a refund because I didnt think they were
| actually very good at coaching.
|
| The platform seems like its mostly useful for people who are
| already good at technical interviews, or at least good at solving
| technical problems, and just need practice writing code in front
| of other people or in a live setting.
|
| Has anyone used interviewing.io with good/great results?
| paxys wrote:
| I don't see the word "coaching" anywhere on interviewing.io.
| Mock interviews are usually done at the last stage when you
| have already done the rest of the prep work. I haven't used
| this platform but did get friends to help me with them and they
| were immensely helpful. You can have all the technical
| knowledge in the world but end up crumbling under the pressure
| of a live interview setting. If you are unfamiliar with the
| material in the first place then mock interviews are pointless.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| They have a dedicated coaching program (https://start.intervi
| ewing.io/dashboard/interviewee/dedicate... - not sure if that
| link works unless you are logged in) which is what my
| critique was of. The FAQ says if you can write a loop that
| returns some data then it's worth signing up for dedicated
| coaching for FAANG companies. I found that claim not to be
| true.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Maybe it's only after log-in. They sell coaching packages.
| Weirdly, the FAQ is a Google Doc.
|
| https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d7mJDPkEykKzSYjj-Wmza-
| UX...
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yeah. This is what I was talking about. It's $4000 to $3500
| for 10 mock interviews and there is supposed to be some
| type of training/coaching build it. But it's basically just
| 10 mock interviews.
| leeny wrote:
| Hey Taylor, OP and founder here. I've shared your
| feedback with our team. The purpose of this program is to
| go beyond just mock interviews, and it looks like we've
| not done a good job here. I'm glad you got a refund
| already, but if have more feedback you can share, please
| email me at aline@interviewing.io
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Sure. I'll forward along my conversations with Shamiya
| and Lauren. They were fine during my interactions with
| them but it didnt seem like they had much ability to do
| anything other than just match me with another mentor.
|
| After 3 unsuccessful/unfruitful coach matches I asked for
| the refund.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| i did one session of the system design interview, it was a good
| way to check my interviewing skills and what i needed to
| improve on. The most effective way to use this service is for
| yourself to study your ass of first then just use one or two
| sessions to validate that.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _at least good at solving technical problems, and just need
| practice writing code in front of other people or in a live
| setting._
|
| I think you mean this as a minor criticism, but this seems to
| be exactly the point of the service. To figure out a way to
| find people that are _actually_ competent at the work itself,
| but not in the somewhat uncorrelated skill of public speaking
| & live coding w/ an audience.
|
| Also a good way of identifying people that haven't gone to top
| tier elite schools but are just as good or better as those
| graduates: Recruiters at a FAANG might disregard a graduate
| from Generic State University w/ 2-3 years of experience under
| normal conditions, but if you get one that is willing to place
| a $1024 bet on themselves _and_ then passes the tech interview
| with flying colors, it 's a much easier sell.
|
| Now, with all that said, after 6 years I'd still really like to
| know what their long-term outcomes are. What's their typical
| tenure at that job, where do they land for $job +1, +2, etc.?
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I should have been more specific. Has anyone had a good
| experience with the dedicated coaching program? I know the
| value of a mock interview. The coaching program didnt see to
| provide the value that they advertised for me. I wanted to
| know if I'm unique or if other have had the same experience.
| skullgrid wrote:
| I did a 10 session package (got it on sale) that focused on
| (distributed) system design and ML system design. I felt
| confident in the coding piece, but I didn't have the
| opportunity to work on large scale systems in my previous role.
| I believed that I could obtain a sufficient level of knowledge
| by self-study and practice, but I also have a toddler that
| takes up a lot of time and energy, so I wanted to be more
| efficient. I think it was valuable to absorb knowledge from a
| mentor that has real experience working in my target role. It
| turned out that was very successful in my real interviews. I
| think that I would have still done OK had I not done the
| interviewing.io, but, by my estimate, the return on investment
| was high, since I received multiple offers and negotiated up.
|
| e: I wanted to add that my mentor and I decided that we would
| do 4 pure teaching sessions, and then the remainder would be
| partial mock interviews that would transition over sessions
| from them doing most of the talking to me doing most of the
| talking. I found this format to be good for building my own
| confidence.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| That is interesting. Glad to hear it worked well for you.
|
| Having the coach be upfront about some being teaching and
| some being mock interviews is helpful. The FAQ doesnt really
| address HOW they are going to coach or help you get better
| and in my experience it was, "Do a lot of leetcode".
|
| I guess saying, "We will help you with the last 20% of
| interview prep" or polishing doesnt sounds as good.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| I've watched some of the interviews they put up on youtube, but
| one thing I found lacking was an actual answer of "I would pass
| you, but maybe 20% of my peers wouldn't" vs. "This is a hard no
| for me at my current company, but previous companies you have a
| 50/50 shot".
|
| Instead all the feedback seems like "you did good, but you should
| work on..."
|
| Regarding the 'pay later' thing, I wonder if the term is too
| short? Let's say theoretically I sign up, completely and utterly
| bomb the first mock interview, and decide I need to spend 3
| months doing hackerrank every weekend. Then I do another one, and
| i'm doing better, by the time I get the actual job the time
| period has expired?
| leeny wrote:
| OP here. You don't pay til you find a job. That's really how it
| works. It takes as long as it takes.
| RenvoiDeChien wrote:
| I found Pramp to be useful, if you need practice with LeetCode
| style questions and explaining yourself to the interviewer, a
| peer in the same situation. It's free (technically you have to
| pay after the free interviews count, but being reviewed
| positively by the other interviewer gives you free interviews, so
| I've done 10 and still have free ones to spare). The participants
| skew junior but I still feel it's worthwhile.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-02-09 23:02 UTC)