“My name is Wanda Suzanne Johnson. I saw your school and decided it was time to further my education at age of 50. My husband and I have worked chicken farms for 30 years, it’s definitely time to learn new skills and move on.”
How did you learn about Alison?
I learned about Alison through social media. The first course I took was Businesses Etiquette.
What’s your favourite way to relax from studying?
A coffee and knowing that I’m being rewarded for my effort.
Where are you working and what are you studying now?
“My name is Lillian Chisambe. I am 40 years old and I live in Zambia. I am the third born in a family of nine – five girls and four boys. I completed my grade twelve in 1999. I didn’t go to any college or university because of financial problems, but with God’s help, I have found employment.”
What’s next for you, in terms of education or work?
I would like to get a new job, particularly in the government, and I really want to continue to explore education.
What would you say to someone if they asked you about Alison? Would you recommend it and why?
Yes, Alison is the best. You study in your own free time and this allows you enough time to really learn. Alison encourages you to never give up no matter how hard the course is. Alison even reminds you when to study! It’s great!
There is an art to interviewing in the tech industry. With the different types of interviews that you can encounter, practicing or studying for an interview may feel overwhelming. We’ve rounded up some tips to help you prepare.
In this article, we’ll talk about the two main types of interviews that interviewees encounter while on a job hunt in the tech industry — behavioral interviews and technical interviews. We’ll share tips that will help you put your best foot forward and feel confident during your interview process.
Behavioral interview
The behavioral interview can take on many forms. More than likely, this interview will be with a recruiter or a senior company manager. It consists of questions focusing on your ability to react to certain industry situations, assesses the greatest strengths and weaknesses of your character, and your ability to overcome certain situations. In this section, we’ll take a look at some tips for how to approach this style of a job interview.
Before the interview
Research the company and the interviewer
You are likely to succeed in your interview if you are familiar with the products of the company you want to work for. Take a closer look and see if you can identify the company’s vision and mission. Why do they mesh with you? Also, do some research on the actual product you would be working on to make sure you are one step ahead of other job candidates.
Don’t stop at just the company! Most recruiters are happy to tell you who you will be interviewing with. Look your interviewer up on LinkedIn or GitHub to see if you can find anything out that’ll give you an edge – maybe your interviewer has a side business or hobby you can connect with and mention in your interview.
An interviewer is likely to remember you as that person “who plays the same musical instrument as I do” than the person “who can recite MDN backward and forward.”
Career changers: Why did you make the switch?
What’s your “why?” Many interviewers like to ask “why” to figure out who is in it for the money and who is in it because they are truly, genuinely interested in creating something awesome. Construct an elevator pitch if you don’t already have one – a short, 30-second snippet of who you are, what you do, and where you see yourself going. Here’s an example:
“Hi, I’m Christina. I’m a musician that took her love of practicing, mentoring students, and breaking down problems and turned it into a tech career, if you can believe it!”
“I’m currently a technical writer, creating blogs and articles for beginner level to professional level developers and engineers. I see that you got your start in writing as well! I would love to be able to pick your brain about how to transition to web development.”
When you create your elevator pitch, it helps guide you into thinking about why you are taking the coding or tech journey. Be thinking about this as you head into that initial interview.
Questions to think about
There are several interview questions, that no matter the industry, always seem to pop up in interview situations. Think about or jot down anecdotes to share that answer the following questions:
What is your greatest strength?
What is your greatest weakness?
Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a coworker?
What makes you unique?
Why should we hire you?
Knowing the answers to these questions will prepare you better for your interview. Keep a notebook or the notepad app open to jot down ideas and flesh out ones you’ve thought through.
Know the market rate for developers and engineers in your area
If you happen to live in the middle of the Midwest, but are interviewing for an engineering position in Seattle or San Francisco, it’s definitely a good idea to research median and average level salaries for a software engineer/developer in the area you will be living in before you comment on any salary requirements. Many times a recruiter will immediately ask for a salary expectation – if you don’t know the numbers for the area, you can possibly sell yourself short.
Hint: Respond with “What is the budget for this position?” and see what the recruiter has to say.
Prepare a Q&A for the interviewer
Interviewers tend to leave 10 minutes or so at the end of the interview to open the floor for questions. This can be a time for you to shine. Take the time to ask the interviewer about the culture of the workplace, how the company responds to disease pandemic situations, what the work/life balance is like, etc. Remember, this is usually answered in your initial interview, so don’t bring up anything yet in relation to salary or bonuses/benefits unless they open the floor to that conversation.
During the interview
Use STAR Method to tell your anecdotes
In the previous section, we talked about coming up with anecdotes to talk about all of those really tough interview questions. There is a method, called the STAR Method, that can assist in crafting an engaging anecdote.
STAR stands for:
S – Situation: the basic setup or premise of your anecdote. It sets the stage. T – Task: your responsibility within the situation. What can you quantify here? A – Action: the breakdown of what it took to get you from point A to point B. R – Result: the outcome of the action.
If you can follow these four guidelines when answering your questions, you will do very well.
Ask questions
Don’t be afraid to ask questions! You are interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing you.
By the same token, if something is not clear, be sure to ask a clarifying question to make sure you understand the initial ask.
Technical interview
You’ve made it to the next round of interviews — Congratulations! The technical interview is all about assessing your approach to problem-solving.
Be sure to ask the recruiter what format the interview will be in and if they have any recommendations on how best to prepare for it. Technical interviews are usually proctored through whiteboarding, a take-home project, or a Hackerrank challenge.
Whiteboard
When it comes to writing out code on a whiteboard, don’t be afraid to think out loud. Part of the interview is as much about the discussion of the algorithm you are being asked to write as it is about the actual solving of the problem.
Ask questions if you have them, especially if you are worried about edge cases. Usually, your interviewers will be happy that you have noticed an edge case, but won’t necessarily make you take the time to code it out if you can vocalize how you would do it.
Remember that whiteboarding is not about coming up with the best answer, but about talking through your approach to get to a workable solution. It probably will be a brute-force or naive solution, and that’s okay.
More than likely, your interviewer will want to talk through time complexity anyway – so this would be a good chance to show off your ability to think about time complexity and then steps you would probably take to refactor the solution to make it more efficient.
Take-home project
Another possible approach is through a take-home project. This will be some sort of prompt that will ask you to recreate an application based on a web design, or to implement the functionality of a web page – this is highly dependent on the position you are applying for.
If you are applying for a front-end position, focus on creating a pixel-perfect application with proper state management. If you are a full-stack or back-end candidate, focus on the architecture and functionality of the application. Design shouldn’t take a back burner, but you are being tested on your ability to think through system design.
Document your project if you have the time. A project with good documentation, either with inline comments or a good README.md, will get ahead. Be prepared to present your code in an interview with a round table of senior engineers. Talk about approach rather than going line by line. This will demonstrate that you can give a technical presentation and know what you are talking about in addition to producing viable code.
Ask questions
As I mentioned in the previous section, you are interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing you. This is the place to ask questions about the technologies the team uses, what the workflow looks like, how the team typically works together, etc. This is the time to find out as much as you can.
Interview follow-up
After the interviews are over, keep in close contact with the recruiter. They will be the ones to help navigate you through the next steps. If you don’t have e-mail addresses for the interviewers who talked to you, ask the recruiter for them so you can send a thank-you note for taking the time to speak with you.
The thank you note doesn’t have to be anything lavish or fancy. Here’s a simple example:
Dear [ name of interviewer ]:
I just wanted to take the time to thank you for meeting with me today about [ position applied for at [ company applied to ].
[ Mention something here about anything you’ve discussed during the interview that might be memorable so they will remember your meeting ].
If there are any other questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Thanks again.
Sincerely,
[ Your Name ]
Remember to breathe
This is the first interview of many if all goes well! Remember to take full breaths to keep yourself as calm as you can be, try not to interrupt the interviewer (It’s hard to do sometimes when you’re interviewing via phone or video conference!), and, most of all, have fun. You will only get better as you do more behavioral and technical interviews!
Christina Kopecky is a writer at Career Karma where she focuses on coding tutorials and technical articles.
Who’s behind the wheel of this souped up car? What brought so many spectators out to watch the action?
Use your imagination to write the opening of a short story or poem inspired by this video — or tell us about a memory from your own life that this image makes you think of.
Post it in the comments, then read the related article to learn more.
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
In June, heartened by low virus numbers, the national government began a campaign to encourage domestic travel in hopes of reinvigorating local tourism and the moribund service economy.
But infections began to rise again in July, quickly outpacing the growth in the lead-up to the earlier national emergency and provoking widespread criticism of the government for easing its control measures too early.
Even as the case numbers have risen, Mr. Abe said in early August that the country’s economy could not afford a second national emergency and that he would do everything in his power to avoid one.
For some people, putting on an old shirt that belonged to a loved one or looking at a special photo is comforting when they feel alone. For others, going to sleep every night with a beloved stuffed animal is a favorite nighttime ritual. What are the things you own that make you feel better during tough times?
What are the objects in your life that have special meaning or sentimental value?
In “The Comforts of Clutter,” Laila Lalami writes about objects being “a balm for uncertain times”:
Except for my writing desk, where books, manuscripts, index cards and journals are piled in random fashion, I have always disliked clutter. I grew up in a large, chaotic household; at any time of day or night, someone was entertaining a friend or watching television or fixing a snack or hammering at a woodworking project.
The bubbles of activity generated a lot of clutter, which I associated with noise and turbulence. So when I moved out of my parents’ house, I sought out quiet, spare spaces.
This impulse, it turned out, is well-suited for the immigrant’s life. Over the last 30 years, I have lived in a dozen homes in London, Casablanca and Los Angeles, in rented rooms and attic apartments and rambling houses with huge basements. The homes grew or shrank depending on the amount of money in my bank account, my personal entanglements, and my creative or scholarly work, but into and from each of these places I’ve also carried objects that are meaningful to me, markers of a life lived in between countries and cultures.
Ms. Lalami explains how she began to collect things over the years:
The accumulation started with small items, whether practical or sentimental, that could fit into the single suitcase I packed when I left home: family photographs; a pair of Moroccan slippers; a hot water bottle; a plaster pot I made in the second grade; my collection of paperbacks from Heinemann’s African Writers Series; a folder filled with every official document I might ever need in order to keep my student visa in good standing.
Over time, the collection grew to include more intimate or more valuable pieces that required careful handling. On my dresser, for instance, I keep my grandmother’s beaded choker, adorned in her tribe’s idiosyncratic patterns; a silver khamsa necklace my mother brought for me on one of her visits; a gold chain with a pearl pendant my sister gave me as a gift the year I graduated from college. Each time I wear one of these pieces, I’m reminded that I come from a long line of powerful women, who’ve met and survived struggles far bigger than my own.
Because I’m a writer, I’ve been particularly drawn to objects that connect me to family stories: My grandfather’s prayer beads, made of polished cedar wood, sit in a bowl on my desk. In moments of anxiety, it soothes me to touch something that I know he touched nearly a century ago. His military discharge certificate, which lists the dates of his service in the French Army during World War I, also hangs on a wall in my office. (I drew inspiration from imagining him on horseback, trudging through unfamiliar territory, as I worked on a historical novel.)
She explores the reasons she gravitates to photographs and things owned by her mother:
Photographs and family documents are my weakness. Whenever I travel back to Morocco, I ask for photo albums and go through archives, which I scan on my phone or copy into my notebook. I realized a while back that my attachment to these material things was an attempt to hold on to a past from which I feared drifting. A portable history, in the form of family heirlooms or cultural objects, is a balm for the itinerant life of an immigrant.
A few years ago, when my mother wanted to toss out her old coffee and sugar canisters, I held on to them, too. By this time, I had become a mother myself and had given up all hope of avoiding clutter. The tchotchkes I carried from home to home had multiplied: damascene pill boxes, wood coasters, miniature tagines, antique rugs, textiles of all kinds.
And finally, she contemplates present-day life with these accumulations:
But to be an immigrant is to know that, at any moment, we can be uprooted by forces larger than ourselves. In California, where my family and I live now, wildfires have become larger, faster and deadlier in the last 10 years. When the hills blaze up, we know we have to be ready to evacuate, leaving all we have behind.
Last summer, I pinned the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s recommended evacuation list of supplies to the inside of my closet door. In addition to the water, food and medications I’m supposed to pack, I’ve also written down the tangible things I continue to accumulate — relics of the intangible things I want to carry.
Students, read the entire essay, then tell us:
What, if anything, in what Ms. Lalami says about sentimental objects resonates with you? Explain. What is the story behind an object you own that has particular meaning to you?
For Ms. Lalami, things that had belonged to family members or gifts family members have given her are significant. Who in your life has given you something you cherish, or who once owned something that means a great deal to you?
The title of Ms. Lalami’s essay is “The Comforts of Clutter,” but she does not seem to view her sentimental objects as such. How do you define “clutter”? Do you feel that you have too many things? How do you determine which objects really matter to you versus which are just taking up space?
Ms. Lalami sees her life’s accumulations as being informed in part by being an immigrant. Are there places in your life, whether you once lived there, visited or hope to visit one day, that are reflected in the objects you value? If so, what stories do those objects tell?
To whom would you like to give a gift that becomes something that is held onto for many years? What would you like to give to that person, and why?
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
1. After looking closely at the image above (or at the full-size image), think about these three questions:
2. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)
3. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.
Each Monday, our collaborator, Visual Thinking Strategies, will facilitate a discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time by paraphrasing comments and linking to responses to help students’ understanding go deeper. You might use their responses as models for your own.
4. On Thursday afternoons, we will reveal at the bottom of this post more information about the photo. How does reading the caption and learning its back story help you see the image differently?
“My name is Kehinde Margret Makinde. I am a Nigerian, from Oyo State. I’m a law graduate from the Obafemi Awolowo University. I love to love (in charity, in prayer, through projects for strangers and loved ones) and I hunger to make the world a better place. I am Yoruba by tribe, a Christian by religion and a Roman Catholic by Christian denomination. I grew up in a loving nuclear family where I nursed the goal to transform the world into all it ought to be, starting with one person at a time.”
How did you learn about Alison?
I was searching for accredited courses online.
What was your first course on Alison, and why did you choose it?
Introduction to Time Management. Why did I choose it? Since I decided I was going to spend my time transforming the world, I needed to learn the art of time management in order to be able to continue to write, counsel, pray and study the word when my God-given man comes and we get wedded and begin to build our family. Because I am not ready to give up this beautiful way of living just because I get married. I wanted a course that would teach me that the time I have is enough.
What’s your favourite way to relax from studying?
Praying, studying the bible, seeing Christian movies and studying.
Where are you working now?
I am working from home – writing poems, quotes and short stories for people.
What’s next for you, in terms of education or work?
I desire to go into the poultry business to raise money for philanthropy, ministry and for the kingdom of God.
If you could learn absolutely anything in the world from an Alison course, what would it be?
How to meditate and draw in the Holy Spirit or how to counsel people spiritually.
What would you say to someone if they asked you about Alison? Would you recommend it and why?
Alison is so beautiful. It has great courses for all level of learners. It is resilient in helping you along all the time. I have not purchased my certificates, yet they are still there. That is an art of loyalty. Alison is a good group of people to learn from and with.
