Had another opportunity come my way. Bit further out. An hour’s commute each day. I’m not super-keen for that and a reason unrelated to the client, but they sent me some assessment to do the other night. Delivered it this morning, got a call this afternoon asking if I can do a telephone interview tomorrow. The agent wasn’t keeping his cards to his chest. “They’re in love with you, basically”.
Fksake. All I did was suggest how one might sanely integrate six fucking off the shelf systems into a cohesive whole
This is a classic approach - they want to see how you deal with ambiguity - most client problems or needs are never straight forward and the key skill is problem solving - in structured way… and they dont want stock prepped answers from the web either. Prepping facts so you know about the company and its business is one thing… and fair, but trying to prep for questions where they are expecting you to assess the problem and come up with a reasonable approach is another… its not about the solution, there is no expectation that you would be able to find a soution in 10 minutes… what is more important is the way in which you deal with it and structure your solution development. I suspect that they spot the stock preppped answer… never a winner
The test I got over the weekend was full of unknowns, CF.
I spent time pointing them out and saying that elements of the solution may change as we know about more of them.
If I’d have even pretended to say “yeah, I know what I’m doing with everything”, I’d have never been asked back; it just wasn’t possible with what they gave me. Incomplete information is a near constant problem across most disciplines. You can be damned sure firms want people who know how to deal with it.
For sure. For all their reputation as being the ‘nice’ one of the Big 4, I found the interview tougher than PwC’s one, which was entirely competency-based.
Did the on-site interview. Quietly confident. Would probably be the best coder there if I joined.
Working alone?
Nah, the old skills just haven’t atrophied as much as they might have.
Just did the other interview I have planned. I could go to a second interview this week ( they said they’ll pay me to attend! ) but need to suss out how the first goes first.
