“When are you going to do this if not now…“
Sometimes it is not easy to look for a job when you have a full-time job that keeps you very busy. I had no motivation to look for another one because I was happy at my job at RBC where I kept getting promoted almost every year and loved working with my team. It was not until I met with my mentor from Google last summer in 2015. I was excited meeting up with him and discussing about the scene in the startup world. There are so many new things to learn and surrounding myself among colleagues who were as excited or more than I was can be addictive. My mentor reminded me if not now, then when. It might be never. So I started hitting the books to brush up my interviewing skills.
I bought the algorithm books that I have been eyeing for awhile:
- Algorithm Design Manual by Steven Skiena
- Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
I have done many interviews with giant tech companies before moving to Canada and I found it very intimidating. The anxiety was re-lived. My brain freezes and I cannot even solve simple problems. The books were very practical and what helped me the most, though very subtle, was my sessions with my Gestalt psychotherapist. He helped me overcome my fear of coding and white-boarding on the spot.
The other thing that helped me the most was practice. I randomly saw an advertisement for Hired.com from my Facebook feeds. They only selected the top 1% of candidates who apply to work with. I filled my profile very quickly and without uploading my resume, I was given a call the next day. I doubted that they had a high selection process because I thought it came back too fast (I didn’t give myself enough credit). I am now patting my shoulders now. 😃 I completed my profile and was enrolled in their first batch for Toronto candidates. This is a snippet of the profile that I completed and subsequently added more details.
Within the first couple of weeks, I received multiple requests for interviews and I was excited for the opportunity but it got very exhausting with sometimes back to back with phone screens, coding sessions via screen sharing, and some week long programming challenge to complete. I realized that the batch process was for a month long and I thought I was going to get some rest finally. Within a month when I was thinking of taking the interviews as a practice, I decided to move forward with GRUBHUB. I loved the collaborative process with the team at the company during the interview session and supportive management. Both aligned very well to what I was looking for.
If you are a techie person and looking to start the process, check out Hired.com and use my referral code to let them know I sent you.