Interview Retrospective

I had an internship interview today. My thoughts on how it went:

Things that went well:

I could talk about my previous experiences, and had a large variety of research projects to discuss.
Showing that I can work with others and ask for help.

Things I could have done better:

I am not nearly as proficient in javascript as I thought, particularly the OOP aspects of javascript.
I need to review OOP principles, since they are such common questions.

I think one of my biggest flaws is not talking out my thought process when answering questions. During the interview I was asked “Say I have a hundred index cards, with numbers 1..100, and I remove one. How do I find the missing card?” The answer I came up with pretty quickly, was to sum the numbers and subtract it from the expected sum to find the missing number. This was the correct answer. If I had talked more, I could have been stopped there and carried on. However, I said nothing and tried to think of a better solution than one that didn’t exist. The point of these questions is to show the thought process behind you, regardless of your answer. I didn’t talk while I was thinking, so my interviewers did not get to see how I approached problem solving.

Hopefully I will be offered an internship, but I could have done a lot better at the interview. In any case, the interview was good practice for future internships.

<< Previous Next >>