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When should students start preparing or planning for internship or job interviews?
Student should start preparing for interviews as early as possible. The more practice you get at talking about your strengths and weaknesses (in a behavioral setting) or solving problems, writing code on a piece of paper and explaining concepts (in a technical setting), the better you will be in an actual interview. Practice could begin as early as the start of the semester, maybe ten minutes a day two or three times a week in your spare time.
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How should students prepare or plan for these interviews?
The behavioral and technical interviews are easy in some ways and hard in others. The behavioral interview is mainly based on talking about your strengths and weaknesses effectively. You should start by listing eight or so experiences that you would like to talk about before leaving the room, ranked from top priority to lowest priority. This will help limit the awkward silence when you are thinking of an answer to a question that caught you off guard. This will also ensure that the interviewer does not leave the room without knowing at least a few of your most important and impressive accomplishments. Another thing to reduce potential awkwardness is practicing how to tell your story without meandering too much. It might seem strange to talk to yourself about your own accomplishments but this can make a world of difference. The other thing to keep in mind is to follow the STAR (Situation, Task, Action and Result) model while giving your answer. This makes you look more polished by communicating your accomplishments fully as succinctly as possible.
For the technical interview, it is important to look at the important classes such as Operating Systems and Data Structures and re-learn (or memorize) some of the key concepts, such as the difference between a heap and a stack, process and a thread and so on. Another useful exercise is to ensure that you know the big O value for sorting, searching and storing data in commonly used data structures such as trees, min or max heaps, stacks and so on. Lastly, going over some important well known algorithms such as depth/breadth first search, in/pre/post order traversal, min/max heapify and so on. Practice these by writing them on pieces of paper, so the whole experience does not seem strange when you are doing it in the interview room.
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What resources should students consider? Books? Career Services? Student groups?
Mock interviews through the career center or a student group are a great way to prepare for the interview process. They give you a very realistic version of what an interview is like without having the full pressure of it. The questions you are asked are very similar to those that would be asked in an actual interview. Once it begins, you forget that the interview is fake, and you begin to feel as if you are in an actual interview. The entire experience is a greater way to learn about where you need to improve and what you did well. Unlike an actual interviewer, the person who interviewed can give you in-depth feedback afterwards. From there, you can figure out ways to improve your weaknesses and highlight your strengths for your actual interview.
Another great way to prepare for interviews is through preparation books. The only downfall to these is that they can be incredibly long and cumbersome. It is impossible to memorize every possible question that could be asked to you during an interview. A better process is to remember a few projects you have done that can be used to answer each question. When reading through the book, concentrate on how you would answer the question, not the actual question itself. By getting a feel for the process, you don’t need to remember all the questions, just the method for answering them. After going through a few questions, you will start to notice some similarities between them, which will give you a better understanding of how to approach questions of similar type during an interview.
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What extracurricular activities should students consider?
Students should consider whatever extracurricular they find enjoyment in. Companies these days are looking for well rounded individuals, not just those who can program. They look for people who have interests beyond the world of programming. Therefore, by participating in clubs and extracurricular activities, a student shows that are capable of being a multi-dimensional person. In many interviews, companies ask what sports you played in high school/college and what you do when you are not writing code. These companies have many events (such as video game tournaments and volunteer opportunities) and intercompany sports leagues. These are ways for employees to become better friends, and companies are looking for candidates who would be willing to participate in such events. By joining clubs and doing extracurricular activities in college, you show that you would be willing to interact with workers outside of work (just as when you join a club you interact with your classmates outside of class).
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How can students take advantage of networking and alumni relationships?
Networking and alumni relationships are one of the biggest advantages of going to Notre Dame. Notre Dame has one of the strongest alumni networks that can really help getting your feet in the door as most Notre Dame alumni are happy to help a fellow domer out. These relationships should be used to ask for advice but never to ask for jobs. Instead of just asking directly for jobs, it is better to try and learn from the alumni and get to know them better. Doing this can lead to jobs, but asking directly for jobs puts the connection in a tight spot and is rude. It is much better to try and learn from the alumni and networking rather than ask them directly for a job. By cultivating relationships, you can have a bunch of great networking later on that can help with jobs, advice, and even promotions down the road. These relationships should be friendships rather than a checklist. If done correctly these networking and alumni relationships can help students their entire professional life and can be really beneficial to the professional and social life down the road.
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How should students approach negotiations or contracts? Are there any pitfalls they should look out for?
The biggest problem with negotiations and contracts is getting too excited about getting the first job offer. The first offer is the biggest one in a lot of ways and while it is natural to be excited about it, make sure that you are looking at the contract and reading through everything that they send you. Getting too excited can lead to accepting the contract without reading it as well as not negotiating on things that are important for the student. Other important considerations to remember with the negotiating of contracts is to be respectful. The company is offering you a job that you want, and while you may want more money or something else, ask for it respectfully which should help it be more likely to be granted, as well as just keeps both sides civil. Other than these few things, I think it is important to remember the reason that you applied for that specific job and not make it just about the money, trying to accept a job that you would enjoy.
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Anything else you wish you knew before you went through the whole process?
Interviewing and applying for jobs is a stressful process, but a necessary one. It is a good window to see what the real world is like while still in college, by giving you a chance to interact with and ask questions to a person working in a field you are interested in. Thinking of it as such makes it less intimidating. Treating it as a conversation with someone interesting will make you more relaxed and allow you to speak more freely and do better. As far as the technical interview is concerned, the questions can be challenging, but for the most part, they are fun problems to solve. So, approaching them as fun brain-teasers rather than problems on an exam will also allow you to think clearer, and help you do better.
Overall, it is important to keep in mind that you study in one of the best colleges in the country. You are absolutely qualified. So don’t be intimidated, make sure to be relaxed and have fun and I’m sure you will do fine.
Compiled By:
Vaishnav Murthy, Calvin Rutherford and Kevin Boyd
vmurthyethics 