How I found a job

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

I must admit I was worried that I had done Makers at a particularly bad time for the tech industry. With the financial crisis developing in the country and lots of employees from well-known companies being sacked, I wasn’t sure the investment in time, effort and money was going to pay-off.

And thus, I decided to give my all just before Christmas, while other people were taking a well-deserved rest, hoping that there would be some company, somewhere, still hiring so late in the year.

I applied for over 30 jobs in a week and a half, trying to write cover letters that would mean something and spending a couple of days just improving my CV. Most of the applications I made were in a website called Okta, which is definitely my favourite place to look for IT jobs. I must admit, about half of them got back to me saying that they were looking for someone with more experience, which was more than I got with the rest of the applications I had made.

I then saw that Makers was advertising a talk from a company that was hiring two junior developers. I was quite curious, so I attended the talk, and although the product the company had to offer wasn’t something I felt passionate about (I think my ideal would be something related to science or education), I quite liked the members of the team that were there and how they presented the company.

And thus, I decided to apply, which meant doing a take home timed tech-test. Although we had done some at Makers, this was my first real tech-test and I wasn’t too sure of what to expect. We had the option of choosing the language we were most comfortable with from a selection of them (Ruby, JavaScript, Java and Python I think), and although I had been working with JavaScript for the previous month and a half, I chose Ruby, because I felt more confident that I could succeed if it was a complicated one (at least I wouldn’t have to worry about asynchronicity).

The tech-test was alright, although I initially panicked at the fact that the codebase was written in Ruby on Rails, which I had never touched before. But once I had a good look, I realised it was fairly easy to guess what each thing was doing, and I managed to implement all the functionality and make all the tests pass in the two exercises I was given

The following day, I was invited to an interview with the company. I couldn’t believe it, my first interview, it had been so quick! I tried to arrange a session with one of the coaches at Makers to practice for the interview, but unfortunately, I was flying to Spain for holidays on that day and my plane was late, so I was unable to attend and I can’t say anything about these coaching sessions, although some of my colleagues say they are great.

I had been told that the interview consisted of the following parts:

• 0 – 45 minutes – Overview / team / cultural fit

• 45 – 120 minutes – Technical questions / discussions

A two hours interview on top of a tech-test felt like a lot, coming from an industry where they normally just have an informal chat with you to see if you’d be a good fit for the team, but I guess it helps screening and deciding when there are so many candidates that seem very similar.

And there I went, from the comfort of my dad’s house in Spain. For the first part of the interview, I had the line manager of the teams they were hiring for and one of the senior developers. They told me about the company, what they did and how they worked as well as about the culture, and then asked me to tell them “my story”, and some questions like “tell us about a situation where there was a conflict in your team and how you resolved it”.

For the technical part of the interview, the manager left and one of their junior developers (also ex-Makers) joined. We had another brief introduction and they asked me a few technical questions (to which some of them I had to say the truth, that I didn’t know the answer) and then proceed to pairing with both of them over a simple coding exercise. Although in different circumstances I could’ve probably finished that exercise in 5-10 minutes and with a much cleaner answer, having two people you don’t know looking at you while you code (even though they also tried to help, rather than just watching), and knowing that your future depended on what you did over the next few minutes, was pretty awkward.

It was a relief once I was over and done with it, and I also had the impression that it would be a very nice team to join. I most of the time go with my gut feeling for these things, and although sometimes it is wrong, most of the times gives me a good answer.

The next few days were difficult, I was really looking forward to hearing from them. I thought I had done a relatively good job at the interview, but I didn’t want to get too excited in case things didn’t go as I would have liked. After all, they probably had lots of interviews, as every month, twenty new Makers were out in the market. But if my interview was on a Friday, I got a reply on Tuesday saying that they really liked me and would like to offer me the position. I was so shocked! I couldn’t believe I had found a job in only a couple of weeks after finishing the course, and after only my first interview. It was the best Christmas present I could wish for, the chance to relax over the holiday period knowing that I had a job on the other side.

From the sounds of it, I was extremely lucky, as most of my peers haven’t yet found anything and there don’t seem to be as many companies looking for juniors as there had been in the past, so I cannot say that I’d recommend anyone to invest the time and money on the Makers course right now, as it is quite an investment and there’s no guarantee of having a job shortly after finishing, but I still think it is worth applying for apprenticeships that pay for Makers or having it funded by the government, as it is a unique and amazing experience (I wish I had done that kind of research before applying, and maybe I would have saved myself 8k).

That is all for today, I hope all these posts can give you a good insight in what being a Makers student involves and helps you decide about whether to do the course or not (if it’s something you were considering).

See you soon, fellow catonauts!