How to Pass a Successful Interview and get Your First Job in Web Development
It is not a secret that after getting your first job experience, all the doors will be open for you. But how exactly to impress your recruiter.
At any time, the job interview can be a very stressful and at the time important moment. I do not know any person who would be completely relaxed few minutes before getting the call from the recruiter.
It becomes even more stressful when this interview is going to be for the job that you do not know very well and in which you have just started to have some knowledge.
In this article I would like to talk about the advices that I got before passing my first job interviews for the web developer position and that helped me to actually get the job.
👉 Be sure about yourself
It is something very simple but at the same very difficult to achieve if you do not know have enough experience in a particular sphere. By default you want to underestimate your knowledge and you know that at this moment your skills are not as developed as per the other candidate.
The thing that you have to know is that even if you do not have enough experience that absolutely doesn’t mean that you do not have any potential.
First of all you learned the topic, you took the time to study and you practiced that topic. That means that you are already level up than some other people.
Just know that you have more knowledge about web development than even a recruiter in front of you.
👉 Prepare yourself technically
Most of the times the first step of the interview is just a talk about what you know and what you do not know. The technical part is coming just after.
During the technical part you can have different challenges. It can be a test that will be given to you to do at home or just a speech with another developer who can ask you some technical questions.
It is not easy to be prepared to every possibile question but you have to know at least the basic JS functions and of course to be ready to asnwer about everything what is written in your CV.
✅ Note: If you have a test that you have to realize at home and you feel that you are failing it, do not stop here. Better to still deliver your work and to potentially get a feedback than to do nothing.
👉 Know selling yourself
One of my previous colleague that coached me before I started to search for my first dev job once told me:
You know, job interview is like a date, you have to know how to impress the person in front of you and to make it like you.
The main idea of this phrase is to understand that you have to create a good contact with the person in front of you and to be less stressful.
Handling your emotions is also one of the good qualities that is demanded at any work. Who would want to hire a nervous person?
You have to show yourself from your best side. You have to prove that you know the topic and that it is exactly you who has to be hired.
👉 Do not lie
Sometimes you watch a tutorial on Youtube, do a course or read a documation about certain topic and after that… you write it in your CV as a new skill.
Many of us are doing this mistake. It doesn’t mean that you do not know at all that topic but imagine if you have to work with it on a very big project with some short deadlines. Well, I would advise you to mention in your CV only the topics that you really know and you are sure about them. For example, if you have already done a small side-project about it or anything else.
The same thing about your previous experience. I know that it is difficult to get your first job if you do not have any lines on your CV but it is better to do a non-paid internship while looking for a job than to lie about it.
👉 Show your motivation
Searching for a first job means that you do not have years of experience behind you and some of your skills are not really confirmed.
In this situation, your biggest weapon is your motivation. It is exactly something that you have to show to the recruiter. You have to show that you are ready for the challenges even if they are difficult.
Imagine you have a technical question and you do not know an answer on it. The best thing to do would be to say that even if you do not know the answer, you would want to know it and you will try to search more information about it. That will show that you love what you are doing and want to learn more.
👉 Do not give up
You may have really a lot of refuses and negative answers. Sometimes, even very often, you won’t get any answer at all. That’s the reality of life. You should be ready for that.
Before to get my first job interview, I had to send my CV around 50 times and in most of the cases, I got no answer or a typical answer “You don’t have enough experience”. Did I give up? No, until I got my first job.
You have to know that it is normal that for now your profile is not very attractive and that you have to do a lot of effort to get what you want.
Keep going! ✊ Send your CV to every company who is looking for someone with your skills even if they want someone with more years of experience. Maybe it is your chance.
Those were the rules that I personally followed and all of them were important in reaching my final goal — getting the first dev job.
Thank you for reading! 😊