Comment by et-al | Hacker News Reader

Comment by et-al | Hacker News Reader

Sorry if these are obvious and you've already gone over them:

- have you tried reaching out to your alumni network or the career development person at the bootcamp?

- what has feedback been about your interviews? if it's "we're looking for someone more senior", ask them what are the traits of a senior person and work towards that

- if you're focused on Javascript, do you know the latest frameworks kids are discussing? Angular/React/Vue? And while it's awesome you picked up Haskell, can you write RxJS?

- in terms of interview prep, you've know the answers to explaining .this, closures, class instantiation, async right? And how are your "tell me about yourself", "time when things were difficult" stories? Confident? Engaging?

I don't think you need to go back to school. Perhaps the market is flooded with bootcamp grads and now it's how do you differentiate yourself. Better portfolio site, stronger Github presence with good readmes. And like thegandhi says, sometimes it's out of your control. Some companies really just want fresh grads with 3.8 GPAs.

Also, take a week off from job hunting or even thinking about the internet. Go out camping, be out in nature, and reset.

I've been in regular communication with a couple career development people via Slack, and saw one during an on-campus event recently. They're supportive, but their advice is mostly "Keep going!"

I should ask what the traits of senior people are—I've had some really nice conversations with interviewers by asking, "If you were in my position, what would you be doing?" Sometimes it seems like they just want me out of their hair after the rejection, which I understand.

Yeah, my bootcamp taught Angular and I taught myself React and built a couple apps with it. Haven't looked at Vue, I should do that. And no, haven't used RxJS—I'll look into that, thanks!

My technical answers have been solid so far. My "time when things were difficult" stories were a little clumsy out the gate—I'm coming from a field where I never, ever got asked questions like that—but I'm getting them together now.

I appreciate your words of advice and support! The advice to take a week off is especially good, and something I should probably put an effort toward. I've been in go-mode unremittingly since June of last year, and keep putting relaxation off because I don't want to miss an opportunity.

> I've been in go-mode unremittingly since June of last year, and keep putting relaxation off because I don't want to miss an opportunity.

That's really admirable! But yeah, take care of your mental health too.

When I mentioned Angular/React/Vue, I'd pick one and specialise, but be aware of the others, too. And yes, work on the "behavioral" questions. In another recent interview thread [0], jonasvp and ryandrake had some good insight worth reading.

"These are standard interview questions that you just have to have a prepared, rehearsed answer for that you can rattle off without thinking. There are tons of these types of "behavioral" questions. Tell me about a project that you worked on that failed. Tell me about a time you had to deal with team conflict. Talk about a struggling project that you had to help turn around. You can get a book full of them. Be ready with canned answers for as many as you can and practice them in front of a mirror." [1]

Ultimately, if you've landed an interview, you're pretty much 80% of the way to getting the job. The rest is just showing you're proficient in what you've written about and that you're a likeable person I'd want to work with day in and day out (the dreaded culture fit).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13874026

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13876602 (specific comment in above thread)

I agree. The bootcamps have a probably done a great job of flooding the market at the low level. It's pretty clear that bootcamps are the new ITT tech. I think a lot these bootcamps are selling false promises and preying on people trying to better themselves.

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