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Well, enough about that. Now back to the real stuff. For now, I plan to keep this blog about things that are relevant to me (keeping personal rants to the minimum necessary) but could also be useful for people in similar situations. Interviews, as I have them, will pop up here, as will any NLP work that I do in the future as I move toward my M.Eng. Other topics you might see here are:
Linguistics (especially any new observations)
Hiking
Biking / Cycling
Diet / Fitness
Music (especially new or obscure artists or albums)
Books / Music / TV (again, only obscure things; don't have time for much else)
Linux / Web Development (assuming I ever get going on that website of mine)
General interesting news that I might follow (hint: you won't see politics here)
Baby steps to investing and finance
Boston
MIT
And more?
In any case, over the last few weeks/months I've had a lot of interviews, mostly to prepare for the important interviews, but also because I wanted to keep my options open this year. Last year, I only applied to a handful of companies, so every rejection hurt a lot; in addition, I was a sophomore, so there were a number of opportunities that I didn't even get simply because I had no work experience (and presumably not enough class experience). This year, as a junior, the companies seem to want me a lot more. It's really satisfying.
What I want to do here is document them; my experiences should be useful both to me next year and to anyone else who ends up reading these posts. The companies I have interviewed with so far,this year:
Apple (1st round)
Basis Technology (only round)
Bridgewater Associates (1st round)
Click Harmonics (1st & 2nd round)
Google (1st 1st round)
Google (2nd 1st round)
Highbridge Associates (1st round)
Microsoft (1st round)
Microsoft (2nd round)
Morgan Stanley (1st round)
Novantas (1st round)
Vistaprint (1st round)
Posts on these interviews coming soon (though sporadically).
Woohoo! On Thursday I had a phone interview with Bridgewater Associates, and the next day I got a request for a follow-up with a "senior technologist." That might be a chance for me to fail spectacularly, but at least I get to tell you about the first-round screener.
The Bridgewater interview was definitely fast-paced but not incredibly hard. The phone call had been scheduled for 2:30 on Thursday some weeks earlier; at 2:35 I got the call from "Thomas", and, after a brief disclaimer that I would be recorded and the realization that I was on speakerphone, the questions began. Thomas and the other interviewer (nameless Indian guy, I'm not sure he was ever introduced) right away wanted to know about my work at Charles River Analytics last summer. I told them briefly what the project was and my involvement in it. They wanted more details; this was a pattern throughout the interview - I would explain something, and the would want to know more. "Tell me more about that" or "can you explain that" or (my favorite) "why?" So I went through pretty much every aspect of my coding responsibilities, the team dynamics, and conflict with Eric (a full-timer there) and how I resolved it. It's a good thing I've had so many interviews before, so I had a chance to hone my answers to these CRA questions.
The technical question was the same one that N. had when he applied for a full time position. It is not unlikely that they reuse this one a lot. The question was about taxicab numbers: numbers that can be written as the sum of two distinct pairs of cubes. The problem was to find all taxicab numbers between 1 (1^3) and a million (100^3). My answer was not ideal; I started with the incredibly dumb answer and was walked through the different parts of the solution later. N. had to do detailed run-time analysis, but I did not. I think my interviewers were very interested in my CRA experience (both technical and personal), which did not leave us as much time for the technical question. In any case, there was a hash table involved at the end (remember to use hash tables always!!).
The final question was kind of from left field, though thanks to N. I was expecting something like it. They wanted me to tell them about something interesting that I do or did or have done in the past. I told them about the trip to Patagonia over IAP (January inter-activities period) and how it made me realize I really like hiking. I had not prepared for this question, so I stumbled a bit as they drilled farther and farther into my answer ("why?"), but I think I did okay. The final part was asking them any questions that I had. I asked them about previous intern projects, which took a good couple minutes. Then we were done.
I'll follow this post up with the second-round phone interview; I'm not sure if I'll go out for an on-site even if I do qualify, since I am really leaning towards Microsoft and the PM job right now (oh yeah, I got the offer from them last week). We'll have to see.
At the end of an interview, there is almost always at least a little bit it time when the interviewer asks you if you have any questions for him (or, rarely, her). Clearly, since you are already trying your hardest to impress the interviewer with your dazzling brilliance and cutting insight, you'd like to squeeze all you can out of this opportunity. Personally, I have not found a magic bullet question that would turn a bad interview around (if you have, please let me know!). But I have found a few ideas that work pretty well.
1. What is your favorite thing about (working at) [company]?
(Caveat: there are times when this question seems inappropriate, as with highly efficient, question-drilling types like Morgan Stanley or Bridgewater Associates.) Of course, it's one of the standards, so I'm not saying anything new here. But taking a page from Dale Carnegie, what this question is really doing is letting the interviewer talk about him/herself. I mean, your interviewer has sometimes spent the entire day listening to people just like you talk on and on about themselves. He might be thinking, "oh, you little punk, you think you're soooo much better than anybody else, don't you?" Or not - that might be an exaggeration! In any case, your interviewer is narcissistic, maybe a little bored and lonely; I have actually seen interviewers' faces light up when they got to talk about themselves. And if your interviewer feels happy immediately after your interview, I think you might just have boosted your chances.
2. What kinds of projects do the interns at [company] work on?
If you still have time after the last question, this is often a good filler. (Caveat: I have had this fail in situations when the recruiter doesn't ever actually work with or see interns.) This seems to work well whenever you aren't super-familiar with the intern program at a company, especially if you kind of skirted around the "why do you want to work here" question in the first place. This is a good time to insert intelligent questions and look genuinely interested and excited about the projects they describe.
3. What do you hate about (working at) [company]?
This one is really all for you. I've been told that this question can elicit some of the most candid responses and can help you decide whether [company] is a place you really want to work at or not. Personally, I prefer to see the offer before I have to make that decision and go off my intuition and reading up on the internet, but it's another good question to ask.
