How I got hired at Pythonmate
I saw The Django Developer Job Post one day before going to bed.
I knew I had made a mistake in the past: a too long cover letter. So this time I decided to fit it into two pages:
- The letter itself on one page.
- A distilled list of my relevant projects and articles on another.
Being versed in giving so many interviews in the past, one thing I knew for sure was that only crisp and to-the-point sells in the world. Keeping it simple rather than a complex profile makes the employer absorb your life like a sponge and understand you better. And that’s what you want before sitting in an interview, to be asked about what you know and then about what the employer wants to know.
I tried to make the application look nice with my novice design skills. They asked for a PDF, but I did not want to deliver a boring document. So I made it using some creativity.
They liked the application, and I was asked to do a technical exercise. Not too big, but interesting and fun. I could solve it on my own terms, and it let me show some technical and communication skills. Then I had three interviews: one with Prashma (HR); another with Abhishek (Django developer)and Sahil (Reactjs Developer, who has contributed to this official site as well) ; and a final one with Priyanka, the Business Process Manager.Each interview left some candidates out.
In the first interview telephonic round
The interview started with a short introduction, moving to some questions about my background, followed by some technical questions on skills and past projects. In the end, you’ll be asked if you’ve any questions for the interviewer.
In the second round:
I was instructed on an email for a Cluttered/noise-free environment, good internet, assure hardware is working:- Mouse/ Keyboard/ Display, and on email for 5 mins prior to joining. I easily followed that as with all interviews I was doing. The interviewer generally takes the first several minutes of the interview to ask general questions to make the environment comfortable, If you’ve succeeded in impressing them in the first minutes by following the guidance in this email, you may be asked for having an assignment. This assignment typically checks how well you use your existing knowledge to build up a daily use application. This round will be open book so feel free to use searching or exploring the web, if it can be completed in 20-30 mins then it’s all good. At last, this round ends with deeper, more specific questions to follow up on certain topics.
The final round was for guiding me on policies and checking finally, the recruiter set up a call to share the news.
About Interview things:
Interviews were not hard. No difficult questions or puzzles, only practical problem-solving questions. They felt like chatting about my background and Signimus with colleagues. They tried to make me feel comfortable and gave me their full attention, which was a big contrast with other past experiences. I read about how Pythonmate (Previous name of Signimus) hires previously, and it is a pretty good depiction of what to expect.
And So at end:
I hate describing rare fantastic outcomes as just the logical consequence of some actions. I am proud of the job I did but, when it comes to selecting people, there are no best fits, only right fits in a company, and I was one of the right ones. Said that I hope sharing my experience can inspire other future candidates.
great work