| layout | title | date | summary | categories |
|---|---|---|---|---|
post |
App Academy Interview Process |
2015-10-20 |
My very first interview! |
jekyll pixyll |
I applied app academy a month ago. Application process is both straightforward and challenging as written in FAQ on appacademy.io.
After filling out the application form, they sent me prep material and a sample test for the first test. Since their curriculum based heavily on Ruby on Rails, prep material is basically Ruby. Because I am a Python person, I had just skipped the material and dived into the sample tests. All the challenges are clear and straightforward. My impression was like they just want to be sure that you could learn.
After a couple of days due to my activities, I took the online challenges. It takes the range between 15 and 45 minutes, and it was fun. There were 3 questions, and 2 of them was string manipulation, and the other was just calculation.
After my submission, they sent me materials for second test immidiately. I was surprised because I felt that I was done the great job on the first one, and as far as I read online, they send the second test for the applicant who they don't feel her ability is enough to their criteria.
I just dived in to the second coding challenge. It was challenging because the difficulty advanced one step more. But I was prepared for that. I took the second coding challenge, and one of the three problems was really difficult to grasp. I solved the other two problem smoothly, but on the third one, I spent approximately 45 minutes. After submission, they sent me a mail to arrange a Skype interview with one of the teachers of app academy san francisco.
It was my first time to getting interview, and it would be live/peer coding. Verbalising thought processing helps me a lot, you can read this. As far as I learned, there are three main things you need to consider:
- What your function takes as a parameter,
- What it returns and
- Explaining the code on each line meticulously.
The article really helps me to overcome my anxiety. I explained the code I wrote to my lovely partner. Although she doesn't have a clue what I was talking about, she corrected me grammatically more than once, and it was really beneficial to have this kind of critics prior to the real interview.
Real interview was great. My interviewer was a nice guy. Before starting to solve the code problems, he made me feel relaxed. I can easily say the challenges are fun. It was similar to the first coding challenge. And the problems was clear. There is no question besides the problems, that's all.
After two days, they sent me an e-mail to arrange a second interview with the head of the code academy Kush Patel. I was excited because although I know I am good at coding, I am not sure about passing all the challenges and being accepted by app academy because their low percentage of acceptance. They just accepted 5% of the applicants.
The interview was great. I thought it was just formality. Because the challenge I was asked the most straightforward one during the whole process.
I visited App Academy place in NYC. The staff were super nice. I liked it.
They sent me an offer after a week, and unfortunately, I couldn't accept it because of my concerns about the offer document. It was too much commitment to me at that very time.
In future, App Academy would be my first choice, if I consider to attend a bootcamp.
Happy coding!