Overview: The Career Hunt
Now to the core part of this guide: What are the major stages of career hunting, and what can I expect in each stage? Within this section, we will overview each major stage of applying to a company chronologically from sending in your application to accepting the final offer. Each subsection will include the necessary preparation and action items for each stage. In the sections following this overview, we will dive deeper into each stage of the process to give specific advice and resources to best prepare you for success.
Application​
The first step in the process is sending out your application to companies. This stage is very simple as you’re just going to be filling out a lot of online job application forms and sending in your resume to the companies/roles you are applying for. Prior to this stage, you just need to have a digital copy of your resume ready to send out as part of your application. If you do not have your resume built yet (or want tips to improve it), we will cover this in the section Writing Your Resume.
Within this stage, you’ll become very familiar with the various online application platforms such as Workday, Taleo, Lever, Greenhouse, Icims, and some others. Application platforms will ask mostly the same questions for each application and can become very monotonous, but they are not difficult to answer (most applications take less than 3 minutes to fill out). You’ll most likely be asked to fill out information about your education, work experience, citizenship status, skills, and demographic information (race, gender, veteran status, and disability). This can be sped up by including this information in your resume which can be automatically parsed by the platform (more on this later). After you submit your application, your information and resume will be sent to the company’s system and/or recruiters for further review to either automatically (through automated applicant screening systems) or manually move you on to the next interview steps.
Online Assessment (OA)​
After you send in your application, the next step for most companies is to send you an online assessment (OA) that will screen your technical skills before moving you to the next step in the interview process. OA’s are typically timed assessments that ask you to solve a set of technical problems by submitting a code solution. This step requires you to have a solid understanding of data structures and algorithms and proficiency in at least one programming language.
In order to move onto the next interview steps, you must submit code solutions to most or all of the problems that pass the verification test cases. However, this is not as simple as it sounds. Online assessments vary in difficulty greatly from company to company and require a great deal of knowledge and practical preparation to pass. If you do not pass your first OA’s, do not be discouraged, it just means that you need to learn data structures and algorithms more and practice more technical problems.
The most commonly used platform to take OA’s is known as HackerRank, which is a technical assessment and interview platform that companies will ask you to take the assessment on. Below are screenshots of what your OA may look like (taken from a Sample Test on HackerRank.com).
Image 1: HackerRank Coding Question Interface
Image 2: HackerRank Test Case Interface
Image 3: HackerRank Multiple Choice Question Interface
Phone (Recruiter) Screen​
If you passed the online assessment, the next step is often a short phone/video call with a recruiter from the company to verify your information and begin discussing why you are a solid candidate for the role. In preparation for this step, you should perform research on the company and the role you are applying for and ensure that you can discuss anything on your resume. The recruiter you are speaking with can ask you both technical and behavioral questions to gauge your knowledge and skills, but most likely won’t ask you to solve complex technical questions similar to the online assessment or later technical interview.
An exception to this step is the possibility of performing a HireVue On Demand Interview, which has you record verbal answers (with your webcam on) to similar behavioral or technical questions that will be reviewed by the recruiter/hiring manager. This type of interview does not have you speak to a real person, but uses the HireVue platform to present the questions, record your responses, and submit them in a timed environment. You will have roughly 30-45 seconds to read the question and prepare, then 2-3 minutes to respond to each question. Most questions also allow you to resubmit your response 1-2 times if you make a mistake while recording.
If you give a good impression of yourself to the recruiter and meet the applicant standards they are looking for, you will most likely be moved on to the next interview stage.
Image: HireVue On Demand Interview Video Response Question Interface
On-Site / Technical Screen(s)​
The next step in the interview process is the infamous technical interview, where you will be interviewed by an engineer or manager from the company/team you applied to and asked to answer technical questions similar to the online assessment. However, on top of needing solid problem solving skills and data structures and algorithms knowledge, the technical interview also gauges your ability to communicate your problem solving process clearly to your interviewer.
These types of interviews are held either in person at the company campus or online in a phone/video call where you will be asked to solve a technical problem under a time constraint (usually under an hour) and verbalize each step of how you solve the problem from start to finish. If this is in person, you may be asked to write your code solution by hand on a whiteboard and not have help from any type of debugger/code editor (commonly known as The Whiteboard Interview).
This step in the process is often considered the most difficult due to the combination of needing to solve a difficult problem under time pressure, clearly communicate your thought process to your interviewer, and optimize your solution according to constraints set by the interviewer / problem statement. It is absolutely essential that you practice these types of interviews before doing it for real, which we will provide resources for later in this guide.
Again, do not be discouraged if you fail this part of the interview. This stage arguably requires the most preparation for and is most likely not something you will ace on the first try. Just try your best to solve the problem and communicate your process to the interviewer. Often interviewers choose harder problems and won’t expect you to answer it on your own -- they will give you supportive hints to nudge you in the right direction. Also, in this step your performance is gauged relative to the other candidates, so if you struggled on a very hard problem but made good progress, you may still be moved onto the next step in the process if others did not perform as well as you did.
Final Round​
The last step in the interview process is known as the final round or the manager round/screen. Assuming you made it this far, you’ve proven that you have solid soft skills and/or technical skills and just need to solidly communicate your candidate strengths to the manager(s) or senior engineer(s) who are interviewing you. This stage may involve more behavioral/situational questions to gauge your experience and traits as a team member and/or some technical questions directly related to the technologies used by the team you will be working with. You should perform more research on the company and team you are interviewing with to ensure you can solidly answer the questions presented to you by the interviewer(s).
After this step, you will be evaluated against all other remaining candidates for a final judgment on who will receive an offer for the position.
Offer Stage​
If you make it this far in the interview process, then congratulations -- you did it! At this stage you will have received a verbal or written offer of employment from the company and you just need to evaluate the offer and make any desired negotiations before accepting or declining it. In this stage, the most important action to do is READ THE CONTRACT, and ensure you are being offered the correct position, pay, team assignment, and other conditions you interviewed for.
If any of these are not to your satisfaction, you should communicate this to your recruiter / other company contact to either negotiate for better conditions or have it adjusted/fixed to what was originally offered. If you have other offers from other companies, this stage may be more complicated with you needing to evaluate each offer and decide on the best one. However, once you make that decision, you are finally done with the process and can celebrate your success.