… So a day or so later i get another call from the technical recuiter at amazon to set up round two of the interview process the technical interview. It’s set up for the following day. Fast forward to the next day and the phone call. This one starts out with a request to describe myself, my expirence, and why i’m looking for a new job. Uh-oh, that one hadn’t even crossed my mind. I mean i know that i’m looking for a new job and i know why, but i don’t know that i can give a good interview answer on the subject, i guess we’ll see. So i start in talking about some of the things i’ve done at work and how much i’ve learned doing this and that, throwing in lots of buzz words (but only when we’ve actually used the concepts behind them and they actually mean something. I do pretty good job and even get a good laugh or two when i talk about the name we picked for our image processing toolkit.
I finally get to the part where i’m going in to why i’m looking for a new job and say something close to. “I’ve been in my current job for 5 years and 6 months before that as a co-op. Along with my team mate(s) i created everything from the ground up building an expansive toolkit and libraries (refering back to the stuff i’d mentioned previously in the question) and have applied them to problems many times over. I have reached a point where i’ve run out of room to grow in my current position and am less interested in the other avenues afforded to me in main-line printer code development. It’s not that i can’t do what i am a day longer, but i felt it was best for me to start exploring other opertunities.”
I took a breath and was like, damn, so that’s why i’m looking around at other jobs. I’d probably put it better there in the interview than i’d ever even thought it in my head. Sure there are other smaller reasons that have affect my decision, but that’s what has brought me to the point of doing something about it. That’s why i put my resume up on monster.com. He seemed pleased with my answers and explained how the remainder of the interview would work. We then started in on the questions. “How would you find the nth node from the end of a linked list?” I respond with the same short and sweet answer i gave in the previous screening. He moves on to the second question, the same as the second in the first interview. I let him finish asking and state that i recieved both of these questions in the previous round and that i was more than happy to answer them, but i didn’t think that would show him much. He then realized he was mistakenly told he was the first round interviewer rather than second. He shuffles things around for a min and then starts in on the the second round process. This one differs in that it involes coding, albeit over the phone. If you’re doing this i highly suggest pencil and paper, don’t use a computer the clicking and clacking the background would be annoying.
The process goes something like this. You’re asked a question, you think about it and get clarification as necessary. You then start to brain storm out loud showing that you’re thinking through before coding etc. You then can begin to code. I suggest that you kinda lay out the structure of things and go back and work through the deatils, at least that’s usually the way i worked with these. While your at it don’t forget to consider the edge cases and talk about the fact that you’re considering them. This interview progressed with two more questions, one of which required more coding. These questions were probably a step harder than the previous round, but workable now that i know how thins are supposed to go. Another short interview, 25 mins or so, this time i wasn’t worried though. I’d done pretty well and for the most part knew it. At the end of the interview i asked a few questions diving in to their work environment and team sizes and project size/duration. At the end i was still a little surprised when he said “the next step will be to get you our here for an on site interview.” I replied with something to the effect that it would be great and i was looking forward to it. I hung up the phone and said to myself, “holy shit, i’m going to seattle.” heh…
(to be continued…)