Good day mates!
This morning I had my very first phone interview. First they had sent me written interview and them the next step was the phone call!
I was quite excited, so I went all over Dev.to looking for suggestions on questions I should ask (Will link to the ones I used in the end).
The before interview.
I got this interview scheduled with the CTO the day before thanksgiving, after exchanging emails with the CEO. Excited and anxious as I am, I spent the Thanksgiving morning doing some research on the company, may or may not have looked them on LinkedIn and wrote down everything they had share of importance and everything I found out about them, not much since it is a startup. What I found made me really want to work there, because their work is something I really believe in.
My question list
After the Turkey wore off my system lol I came to Dev.to as mentioned, to look for questions to ask. Here is the list I came up with based in several other posts I got here. Due credits will me given in the end of the post :
- What are your expectations of me? M. shared with me a overall view, but I would like to know more in technical terms. Will most of it be me working with a teammate, or will I do most of the work by myself?
- What am I going to work on?
- What would my immediate responsibilities be? What are your expectations of me in 3 months?
- Do you have a feedback system? Like how often will I get feedback? How do you assess people's performance? My performance?
- What would you say consists of a successful internship? How do you define and measure success? What qualities make someone excel at this company?
- What's the general working process? Can you describe one day or one week of the team's work?
- How does the company help junior people to grow?
- What does a team look like? How many people, which positions?
- How can I best prepare for this role before starting?
- How do I compare against other candidates that have interviewed/ applied? And what’s the next step?
Those were the most general questions, I had some more that are particular to the company type of product (It is a bit of a controversial product) but I won't share those
During the interview
First, for some reason I thought it was going to be a video call, so I spent 10 minutes trying to find the place with the best illumination and even applied a tiny bity of makeup. But them, she called me on my phone lol
Also, I got nervous and forgot to ask about 2/3 of the mentioned questions lol
I answered her questions, asked a few of the questions above, got to know a bit more about the company, the team and the project I would be work on for starters.
And I am happy to announce...
That I got the internship!!!
It is an unpaid position, but in a startup that has a cause I really believe in, and it is part time so they will work around my schedule so I can get a regular job to pay my bills, while I get real life experience as a front-end developer!
I am super excited and of course I will let you know how it all goes!
Hope you all have a Monday as good as mine!
XOXO.
P.
And as promised, here is the awesome post from where I got most of my questions: