Software developer internship interview advice

Seeds thought this was worth mentioning said Tue, Nov 8th 2016 at 12:53pm ET

I have my first interview for a software developer internship tomorrow. It’s just a phone interview with someone from the HR department, but I have no idea what to expect or what I should be reviewing to prepare. I’ve already done my standard interview thing (get my resume ready in front of me, look into the company and get a few questions ready), but I’ve never had a job that actually required education and I don’t know if/how this will be different. Hopefully I’ll have an on-site interview with developers soon so I’d take any tips for that too. The company provides software for the public sector if that helps.

9 comments, 11 replies
Comment

carl669 said Tue, Nov 8th 2016 at 1:06pm ET:

most likely, if it’s just an HR interview, it’s just an initial screen. mainly to make sure you’re not a complete idiot and can speak in cohesive sentences. most likely there won’t be any technical questions. they may also be checking if you’d be a potential personality fit with the rest of the team.

that’s been my experience with HR interviews.

10
- Reply
- Whisper
JerseyFrank said Tue, Nov 8th 2016 at 1:25pm ET:
1. It’s not “just” a phone interview. It’s your first chance to make a good impression upon someone who controls the keys to your future.
2. Use glassdoor.com and try to figure out what sorts of questions you’ll be asked.
3. Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know, but I know where I can learn it.” (or ask probing questions if you feel that the question was too vague).
4. Be comfortable writing code on a whiteboard or typing with someone watching over your shoulder.
5. Use “magic” functions if you need some method that doesn’t yet exist, but expect to write them out. I’d rather see a deep call stack than a 100 line method.
6. Don’t oversell your experience. I don’t want another story of how your time delivering pizzas was the inspiration for learning shortest-path algorithms.
7. Research the company. Know what they do. Better: know what challenges their customers face.
8. Ask questions, but don’t ask ones that could be easily answered by the website. Preferably, they should relate to something you discussed during the interview. Ideally you were comfortable & relaxed enough in the interview to really process the discussion, and your questions should demonstrate that.
10
- Reply
- Whisper
- @JerseyFrank Great advice!
  
  One comment for number 6 - I would LOVE to hear someone try to do that!
  
  G1 said Tue, Nov 8th 2016 at 11:49pm ET
  - 5
  - Reply
  - Whisper
- @G1 I love the stories, but I get X minutes to interview you. Every minute we spend listening to strained analogies is a minute we’re not finding out how you’d handle test cases, boundaries, and recursion.
  
  JerseyFrank said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 2:27am ET
  - 3
  - Reply
  - Whisper
mehvelous said Tue, Nov 8th 2016 at 7:20pm ET:

Forget internships. There are plenty of people looking for coders who are not cheap bastards looking to take advantage of you. Keep looking

1
- Reply
- Whisper
- @mehvelous it’s $20/hr before I finish my degree
  
  Seeds said Tue, Nov 8th 2016 at 7:24pm ET
  - 6
  - Reply
  - Whisper
- @mehvelous I would say that depends on the mentor(s) you can find there. I would gladly take an intern under my wing and share everything I know - for what it’s worth. Based on my experience with my first mentor, that would be of huge value… Try it out, and bail if you’re mistreated.
  
  Jasongb said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 1:08am ET
  - 3
  - Reply
  - Whisper
luckyduke24 said Tue, Nov 8th 2016 at 10:55pm ET:

I’m in the same boat, just wrote my cover letter and resume today. All of my experience is in customer service except for the programming classes that I’ve taken. Good luck.

3
- Reply
- Whisper
Yoda_Daenerys said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 12:00am ET:

i can coAch you, if you’d like.

depending on circumstance, well it depends

1
- Reply
- Whisper
- @Yoda_Daenerys ?
  
  Seeds said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 6:53am ET
  - 1
  - Reply
  - Whisper
- @Pantheist yea, no idea what i meant at the time, but if you’d like to talk, i’ve done a lot of interviewing on both sides of the table in recent years.
  
  Yoda_Daenerys said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 1:44pm ET
  - 2
  - Reply
  - Whisper
MrGlass said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 1:36am ET:
@pantheist I’m a professional dev. Intern interviews typically are mostly about your personality, not knowledge. They want someone they can give basic tasks to who won’t screw up the office. They are not expecting much in the way of knowledge/skills, you are doing the internship to get that.

That said, developer interviews are very different than normal interviews. Be ready to answer algorithm questions, be ready to write out a basic recursive program in notepad or even on a whiteboard.

Some stuff I have done that clearly impressed interviewers:
- Implement a heap sort on a whiteboard
- Map out a complex data structure, including both database tables and the model (which are different)
- Jump straight to a recursive or otherwise complex solution, when there was an obvious less elegant solution
In the end of the day, if your gunning for an internship, they won’t expect a ton of knowledge. Get some practice so you can show your capable of producing basic code (I like https://projecteuler.net/ ), and get ready to talk passionately about code/computers.
4
- Reply
- Whisper
mollama said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 7:14am ET:
@pantheist I agree with both @carl666 and @JerseyFrank:
1. it is just likely a screening interview so do make a good first impression, but likely nothing hard will be asked.
2. most likely the second interview will be more like what JerseyFrank said about wanting to hear about how you’d solve a problem than other things, particularly his #4, #5 and #6.
3. IF they do go “behavioural interview”/personality stuff on either interview (more likely the second but like JerseyFrank said, less likely for this type of position), before the interview think about 4 or 5 experiences you had and put them in a format of “here was the situation/problem, here is what team AND I did, here was the result” format (it has several acroynms but the one I am used to is STAR: Situation/Task, Action, Result). The Action section is a hard balancing act, I have had people blow it both because they only talked “we” and we could not draw out of the interviewee what HE/SHE did, or they only talked about “I” and made it sound like they are supreme. So you want to do something like “our project for X class was to come up with Y. We got together and agreed on 2 weeks to each code a section of the problem, then get back together for integration and test for 1.5 weeks before the project was due in a month. We also agreed on common variable names and a few other things to make integration easier. My section was to write the part of the code that made the robot dissect the cadaver frog and rip out it’s heart, which I finished on time. When we got back together, during test the person who’s section was to have the robot take the balloon and tie it into a dog shape couldn’t get the hind legs to work, so he, another team member and I worked on that for a day, which worked out because we had built that .5 week slack in our schedule. In the end we turned in our project on time and got an A.” So you talked about team and about you personally. And the Result can be at any level (me: I got an A or an award, team/company: the action was a success, external: the customer bought 10 extra) like in this case it was about the team grade. Then during the interview, when they ask you a question, likely one of the stories you already wrote up will fit and you can use it (when a face-to-face interview, have a notepad to make notes from your questions, but at the top have a few key words for each story to glance at to figure out what to say for the interviewer’s question). That way you aren’t stressed during the interview trying to think up something “on the fly.” I have even had people use the same story for 2 questions, just highlighting different parts of the action and results (for example they used it to explain how something went well, but also how they overcame a challenge like when one of the people on the project would not agree to what was being done and how you helped bring the group back together).
  Wishing you the best!!!
5
- Reply
- Whisper
- @mollama Your robot example would put a candidate up on the Rock Star shelf, if it was a genuine story (meaning - true, and not some rehearsed bs story).
  
  G1 said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 9:47am ET
  - 2
  - Reply
  - Whisper
- @mollama did you just call me @carl666? are you implying i’m evil?
  
  /giphy evil
  
  carl669 said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 1:29pm ET
  - 2
  - Reply
  - Whisper
- @carl669 oops, can I claim it was early and I hadn’t had my coffee? So I was the evil one.
  
  mollama said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 7:03pm ET
  - 1
  - Reply
  - Whisper
G1 said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 9:43am ET:

@pantheist For MY company, HR is only trying to see if you are eligible. They don’t know how to code.

HR wants to see if you are in the country legally, that you can relocate (on our dime), that you don’t have felony convictions, etc. My HR does this through questionaires, actually.

When we do phone screens, it is an attempt to see if someone is technically worthwhile to bring in for a more in-depth interview. I have my engineers do the phoners. Some of them ask for a video link and a “whiteboard” to do phone screens. (This would be for full-time positions, btw.) I think that’s a bit much for a phone screen.

For interns, it’s personality. “Would I want to work with this person day after day?”

Be low maintenance, but know what you need to be successful. If you tell me that you need a quiet environment because you don’t like talking to people, it’s a short phone call. If you need ADA accomodations, that is a VERY different thing, and state that shit up-front, loud and proud.

Experience with Aurduino and Raspberry is HUGE to me, not because we use them, but because it shows that you’re a geek.

Use your internship to figure out what you want to do when you grow up! AND what you don’t want to do.

5
- Reply
- Whisper
Seeds said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 1:20pm ET:

Thanks for the tips everyone. It went… okay I think. I’m not really sure. I’ll find out in a month.

6
- Reply
- Whisper
- @Pantheist dang, sorry on the wait. Sounds like you are applying at my company, many decisions seem to take longer than you’d think they should.
  
  mollama said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 7:12pm ET
  - 3
  - Reply
  - Whisper
- @mollama I mean, it makes sense since most people in college are out of the area until winter break but I definitely am not looking forward to the wait.
  
  Seeds said Wed, Nov 9th 2016 at 11:57pm ET
  - 2
  - Reply
  - Whisper