Recently, I have heard more than one friend complain about the difficulty of finding a job. Waves of layoffs, the popularity of artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, and 11.58 million fresh graduates... have made the employment situation in the IT industry even worse this year. In the face of increasingly fierce competition for job hunting, what interview skills should you master as a programmer? This article invites 2 CloudQuery community users to share their interview & workplace experience with you.
How to prepare your “stepping stone”?
As a department interviewer, I receive a lot of resumes during the peak recruitment season. Unfortunately, although the number of resumes received is large, the ones that satisfy me are few and far between, and there are only a few fixed positions. Although many applicants have strong professional skills, they pass up the interview opportunity simply because they do not demonstrate their abilities well on their resumes.
In order to avoid similar situations, I will stand from the perspective of an interviewer and share some of my experiences and suggestions on resume production, hoping to help everyone go more smoothly in their next job search.
Next, I will describe the three parts of my resume that I value most in terms of technical ability, project experience, and overall impression:
technical skills
Usually "technical skills" should be placed after personal information, so that the interviewer can quickly judge whether your technical skills are consistent with the needs. When writing this part, you need to pay attention to listing the technical points required for JD. And match the skill that you are most proficient in, put it in a prominent position, and then display other skills in order according to the degree of matching.
The adjectives "understanding, familiarity, proficiency, and proficiency" can accurately describe your proficiency in mastering skills. As for the meaning behind these words, I believe I don't need to say more.
For example, you have experience in performance optimization, monitoring, engineering, etc., mastered the Vue/React source code, mastered the principles of network and browser, and are familiar with data structures and algorithms. Highlighting these contents can guide the interviewer towards your preset battlefield. Don't panic by suddenly asking a few interview questions you don't know.
In general, the suggestions here are: write down the abilities required for the position first, then the bonus abilities, and do not write down irrelevant abilities; match the highest priority of the job requirements, and arrange them from high to low according to the proficiency of the skills.
Project experience
This is also the most important part of your resume. Here I will give two examples to illustrate how to better display your past project experience. I believe you will make your own choice after reading it.
Form 1: I completed XXX requirements in a project and used technologies a, b, and c.
Form 2: XXX problem occurred in XXX project. As XXX, I was responsible for the XXX part. I successfully solved the problem through XXX method (or technical solution), so that XXX increased by XXX and XXX increased by XXX.
I don’t know if you have noticed that the description in Form 2 is the project experience introduced in accordance with the STAR rule. It also fully demonstrates to the interviewer the value of your output and achievements in project development. And learn about your multifaceted capabilities through your solutions.
To sum up: What matters here is "quality" rather than "quantity". Look for highlights, difficult problems to solve, and important outputs... Then follow the STAR rule to describe it so that the interviewer can quickly find it. Key Information.
overall impression
After completing the important components of your resume mentioned above, of course you can show off your bonus points. A simple example: GitHub Star 10W+, CSDN fan. If the blog is rich in content, you can put the link on it, but there is no content, just a few If you are taking interview notes, don’t put this kind of link, as it will lower your score. To sum it up, write what is powerful and how simple it is, and at the same time, it must be objective and honest!
A good resume should meet the following three characteristics: clear, short and necessary.
- Clarity: The layout is simple and easy to understand, and the work experience needs to be clear;
- Short: Within the scope of one page, let the interviewer see the key points directly in 10 to 30 seconds;
- Necessary: Only necessary information is required on the resume, which can help each other save time and improve efficiency;
Of course, there are also precise placements based on the company's JD, or finding internal recommendations, and regular question preparation before the interview...
Community users: Sharing my job search experience
Let me briefly introduce my background. I have two bachelor’s degrees, a 985 master’s degree, and an academic bastard. I have ACM experience, no national award or competition, a period of internship (data warehouse) after my undergraduate degree, and a period of internship (database kernel) after my first year of graduate school. In the spring of 2023, I joined a major Internet company in Shanghai and interviewed for back-end & big data related positions. Let me share with you my job search process.
I have submitted my resume to some big companies that everyone knows, and I also got interview opportunities. Let me first briefly share with you my interview experience at both companies. In Byte's interviews, algorithmic questions accounted for a large proportion, and the interview time was also long. However, I found that some eight-part problems in the project are relatively old, such as why the B+ tree of the database is preferably three-layer, etc. These problems are more applicable to the era of mechanical hard disks. Ctrip's interview experience was very good. The interview lasted about half an hour and the interviewer did not feel oppressive. Algorithms and project experience are weighted approximately 40-60 in interviews.
Of course, I have also encountered situations where the interviewer was late or the interview process was very pleasant, but in the end I was rejected. These situations will not be mentioned for the moment.
After introducing the previous background and feelings, let me share the skills I mastered before looking for a job. I hope it can be helpful to you.
algorithm
Since I was determined to work and not study for a Ph.D. from the very beginning of my graduate school, I came out for an internship very early. The internship basically focuses on stereotypes, projects, and algorithms. You can memorize stereotypes and compile projects, but algorithms are difficult to package. So I spent a lot of time and energy on training algorithm questions during the preparation stage. I have a basic knowledge of ACM, so I only brushed Leetcode Top 100.
After training on this series of algorithm questions, on the one hand, I can quickly and reflexively come up with ideas for some common question types during interviews (for example, I think of BFS for shortest path problems, and DP for problems with no aftereffects). On the other hand, I can also Improved my coding ability. Pay attention to some communication skills, code specifications, etc. during the interview, and the algorithm level will basically be enough.
stereotypes
When I started to answer the questions, I also started to study the basic knowledge (eight-part essay). Because I prefer to learn by reading books rather than watching videos. I recommend the content of Postgraduate Entrance Examination 408. If you learn it thoroughly, it will be very helpful for the interview.
At the same time, the complete works of eight-part essays and face-to-face scriptures compiled online are also useful, but you don’t need to read them all. Basically, just memorize the high-frequency questions. The most cost-effective way is to get the most points in the least time.
project
The project aspect is divided into course projects and commercial projects.
Course projects are graduation projects and major assignments done in school. In this part, I only list some foreign course labs that I have studied on my resume. Such as MIT 6.s081/6.824/6.830, CMU-15445/15721, etc.
Commercial projects are mainly projects done in the company during the internship. Mainly wrote some content about materialized view and CBO optimizer during the database kernel. Basically, as long as things can be explained clearly and there are one or two bright spots that can be used to sublimate the theme.
After practicing for more than half a year, my overall feeling is to learn how to review! Take the initiative to do things, think about the underlying logic behind something, what is the background, what problem is it trying to solve, has the problem been solved, and what would you do if you were given another chance?
Every time you finish one thing, ask yourself the above logic again. I believe that after a period of time, you will have a great improvement.
Summarize:
- When investing overseas, don’t want a resume to go all over the world, and appropriately modify the focus of the resume according to the JD of different companies, so that the resume can better match the position.
- It is not necessary to vote early, and sometimes there are more opportunities to vote late.
- Don't fight unprepared. A bad face-to-face review will affect the next delivery. There is a relatively long time interval between submitting your resume and the start of the interview, so you don't have to wait until you are fully prepared to submit your resume.
- The general environment is more important than hard work. Without HC, no matter how well prepared it is, it is useless.
Finally, I hope you can get your favorite Offer in the interview! !