I've been interviewed by many companies. Positions are a mix of design and development roles. The main responsibility is to build a website or to improve the look and functionality of it. I haven't had a technical interview where they'd test me on code or ask me technical questions. The interviews are mostly to get to know me and what I do. I am more passionate about designing websites using code than debugging but I'll take anything that'd help me learn more. I believe I have the skills for it but I keep getting rejected. My experiences consists of a 3 month internship and personal projects. My experience at my internship was using WordPress but I mostly coded websites through WordPress (hard coding HTML/CSS). I am currently learning to build my own website using React but it seems like it's not helping me with the job search. I want to highlight to the interviewers that I am willing to learn while I work with them. I can apply to the most simplest job but I'd get rejected. How do I land the job?
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Top comments (6)
Keep learning, building websites for your online portfolio and don't stop applying to jobs. You will get there, it is just a matter of time.
React will help you on your search because is very popular, but you have to narrow down the search. Choose one framework and learn it, but be prepared to learn a new one if needed.
As a real example, yesterday a junior I'm helping landed a front-end job. After 1y of learning or so he kept applying to React jobs. In the end he found a nice Angular position, even if he never worked with it before, the company appreciated his as a candidate more than the technology.
I was in the same position as you a couple of weeks ago. My story was that I had 1 year experience with meteor.js which no one seems to care about and everyone wants react/angular/vue (front-end jobs). So I started learning React (also through personal projects) and focused on learning JS fundamentals the most. Then I got an interview from my current company and eventhough I was not able to say too many specific details about React or Angular, the JS knowledge I showed proved enough for them to put their trust in me and hire me. Now I am studying Angular (never done it before) as part of my preparation for different projects and am looking forward to getting to know React a bit more as well.
Some advice I could give you would be to focus on studying basics and to be up-to-date with technologies (like ES6, node.js, react/angular/vue) - and don't worry about becoming master at them before landing the job - they will know you are just starting.
If you are passionate about what you want to do in this field and you can show it to the interviewer and you can back it up with some basic knowledge, I am sure that there will be a company that will give you a chance :)
Keep applying! (took me 3 months to get my job)
What are some good questions to ask your interviewer?
Another thing, how do I sell myself during the interview? I think one of the big problems is that I doubt myself a lot.
about questions: Anything to show that you are interested in working with them - ask them what are they looking for - and not just a short version of the job description but actual needs - do they need a person more involved with design or functionality? What is the team like - small/big? What technologies/methodologies are they using? Ask about their social activities - maybe there will be something you find interesting and you can show that to them so they know you won't be socially awkward and hard to deal with.
Ask about future opportunities/training/certificates - show that you are not looking to stay there a month or two but that you are interested in developing yourself.
Of course any other question you might have like not being sure about salary/working time/dress code etc are always welcome.
about selling yourself - I know this can be hard but I think the best way to do this is to be honest with them and very confident. If you don't know something - its ok just say you are not sure or that you haven't had the chance to look into that. If you know it - great - speak with confidence.
One tip from my interviewer I got was that he liked the fact that I did not just answer with "yes/no" to most questions but rather explained a bit more.
Another thing I would say is that the more interviews you do - the better you will become in answering the questions. You might not feel as good because of more and more rejection but if you manage to accept that it is for the better it should help you :)
I love this reply. Thank you so much. I've had a couple interviews and being rejected but not knowing why. They don't ask me technical questions but more about asking who I am and what I do. I show passion because I love to what I do but something isn't selling so I figure it could be the questions I ask. The questions I ask is mostly about the position such as "Are we building websites or fixing the functionality of it?" I think my questions are more focused on "getting the job done" rather than "what do you need from me"