How to not FAIL your coding interview

[@joyelo-oghene]

Very practical, love itttt!!

[@JustFAANGplus]

Glad I could do that!

[@joyelo-oghene]

amazing video, micah!!

[@JustFAANGplus]

thanks a lot!

[@QK_Engineer]

Man ik youre probably tired of hearing this but its crazy how much we have to go to just to get a job. You could even have all these interview skills that you are mentioning in this video but what if you never even get the chance to show it? What if your resume doesnt pass the ATS or worse the position just gets dropped/application gets ghosted. How did you even get your foot in the door to interview at Meta? How did you get your application seen?

[@JustFAANGplus]

TLDR; do your best, and do more of it. Yeah man! I have to admit, that is the hard part. In most of my videos and with my clients, I always tell them "I really don't know for sure how to get past the resume stage. And this is for people who don't have any experience in the industry. If you're a senior engineer, my guess is, it's easier to get past the resume stage." Like you've pointed out, it is hard to determine why you're rejected, could be for thousands of reasons. We know there are factors within our control and factors beyond our control. For example, we can control how our resume looks, what projects go on it, we can control how many companies we apply to, we can control if we reach out to people there, if we build connections, and stuff like that. What we can't control are things like, would the referral even work for this company, we can't control if the position is dropped or filled, if there's enough headcount, and many other things. The way I like to approach it is, try to do your best in all these different areas that are within your control, and then do more of it... at the end of the day, you're probably only gonna be working one job, and you just kinda need one offer. So if how your resume looks and what projects are on it are within your control, you can make it look good. How would you know if it looks good? Send your resume out to about 30 or so people, some you know and some you've never met, just make sure they're not all within your comfort zone (like just all in your school or work, or something like that), and ask them to take a look, and tell you what they think. If 90% are saying the resume is pretty good, and the only suggestions are that you need some minor changes, then you know you're good on the resume. Maybe to increase your chances based on the job role, you may need to do some kinds of projects, and all that good stuff. Pretty long answer, but all that to say that, "I'm not sure the exact ways to get past the resume stage for all companies, but to increase your chances, do your best and then do more" For Meta, I really just applied and I got seen. I asked the recruiter why, but I didn't get an answer, so I'm not sure why they picked me. Based on what I know, they do pick quite a lot of people to get to the next stage after the resume stage, so I don't know what criteria they use

[@no_bs_science]

I've been watching some System Design Interview courses from Frank Kane, who has been working as a "bar raiser” (a person who comes at any stage of the interview process and helds veto authority over hiring decisions across the company), who interviewed over 1,000 candidates, and hired and managed hundreds into Amazon/iMDB and the whole process is crazy, your resume should pass a lot of automatic and manual checks before even be considered for review. And even if you successfully pass all screenings and technical interviews, there's always someone (like a "bar raiser") who helds the power to just reject you based on his own imaginary rules so, I would say that hiring process is like winning in some small lottery or casino. As soon as you know the rules and prepared to "play", there's not much you can do.

[@JustFAANGplus]

@@no_bs_science exactly. The process is way too complex to have a general rule that guarantees a result. A lot of it is dependent on factors that we can't control. That's why volume does matter to some degree. The rules for one particular company can change, so what worked five years ago, may not work now. We just need to be able to adapt and play the game with the ever changing rules