Doesn’t really feel like that many, I think I got quite lucky. But now that I have a job as an official “Web Developer” at EvolveDigital.
I finished University sometime in May and started applying after I’d moved out by June. I had my graduation ceremony, several holidays and all round decent summer.
One of my first interviews was with a company in London, for an Angular position (note: at this point I had minimal contact with Angular). I aced the interview it felt and had plenty to discuss, then with the technical I fumbled a bit (since I was pretty new to the technology) I got most of the tasks done but didn’t hear back from them again.
The second interview was for a position as a Java developer, which I wasn’t sure I could do in the first place. I realise most of my background is in web technologies but I feel being slightly out of my depth for work can only do good things. The position required use of Spring and was located in Brighton, I had used Spring earlier in the year at University and hadn’t enjoyed it a whole heap which wasn’t a good start. This technical challenge required me to build a really simple application and I would have been able to except I spent a large amount of time setting up my workspace for Spring (some little error caused the whole thing to take hours and hours). By the time I finished setting up I’d already used up all the time doing workspace problems.
I had several quizes to do and a couple other pieces of technical homework, some however felt like an awful lot of effort (spending up to a couple days on a task).
I also did a couple days (expenses paid) work experience at another company. It was amazing, but I’d missed the graduate openings for this year. Its something I’ll look into in future I guess.
Then out of the blue I found myself in an interview back in Kingston where I had studied for University. The interview went really well and the technical was straightforward and achievable. They offered my the position the day after the interview. I’ve now worked there for one week and had a lovely time, they are all very friendly and I feel I can learn a lot as well as bring a lot to the company.
Here’s to the future!