This past week I underwent one of the most unique interview experiences I think I will ever have. As a final stage interview for JP Morgan Chase’s Early Career Software Engineer Program, I partook in a 12 hour mock hackathon with fellow candidates. Your reaction to reading that is likely very similar to mine when I first heard about the event. “12 whole hours!?”. “Working with fellow candidates!?”. On the surface, these seem like very valid reactions to what is a very intimidating event. However, after some mental reframing, as well as the benefit of assessing after participating, I can offer some different perspectives.
The first thought I had, and many people that I told about the event had, was the sheer duration of the event. A 12 hour workday is intense, regardless of the situation. When taken in the context of it essentially being an interview, the mere thought of it may be enough to induce anxieties in some people, and understandably so. I have certainly put in work days of even greater length in my life, both on coding projects and elsewhere. However, there is a concern of “will I still be showing my best self as the hours crawl on?”, as afterall, that is usually the goal in an interview. While the day was certainly still intimidating, and it wasn’t an easy 12 hours, my personal approach was to reframe the day in my mind. Rather than it being “I have to sit through a 12 hour event/interview”, I looked at is as “I am being given the opportunity to show myself and my skills as a software engineer for 12 hours”. This is significantly longer than you typically have to convince a person/people that you are the right candidate for a position. As such, I approached the day with the mindset of making the most of the time.
Secondly, it may seem daunting to have to work with fellow candidates, what many people would consider to be competitors for the position(s) in the program. Also, as you are working on a group project, it may feel as if you are going to be judged at least partially on the quality of other people’s work, which can seem unfair. In this instance I give credit to the team from JPMC that was running the event, as they spoke at length to these two points in the pre-event information session. They made sure to call out that your teammates shouldn’t be thought of as competitors. In part due to the fact that there are many positions available in the program, but more so because you are being judged in large part on your “soft skills”, such as your ability to communicate, work in a team, and overcome challenges.
Speaking of challenges, a particular one that I faced during the event was working outside of my comfort zone. Your teammates are randomly assigned for the event, and as such there is no guarantee that everybody will have the same technical background. As was the case for my team, we all had varrying backgrounds and were familiar with different languages and frameworks. I wound up being 1 of 3 people on the backend half of my team, and the other two members were both familiar with Python and the framework Django. I personally did not have any experience with Django before that day, and have only a mild familiarity with base Python3. However, as it was 2:1, I readily agreed to work in the stack that they were familiar with. I have been working extensively since graduating from Flatiron to expand my language and framework base, and as such I both felt confident in my technical ability to do so, and also wanted to be a good team player. While there were certainly challenges I faced throughout the day with not being familiar with Django, I was able to use the opportunity to both learn extensively, and also demonstrate my personal malleability and adaptability as an engineer.
In addition to the afforementioned technical difficulties faced, my team aslo had to overcome the loss of a member only a few hours into the event due to connection issues. While this certainly didn’t make the event easier, it did provide an opportunity to demonstrate many of the soft skills that interviewers look for, such as ability to adapt, overcome challenges, resilience, and collaboration. While my teams product wasn’t fully complete and functional come the end of the day, I am still very proud of what we did accomplish. I think being where we were given the cirumstances was impressive, and I also believe we had a clear path forward if there was more time to continue working. I also feel that as a team we worked well together, and communicate in an effective and respectful manner at all times.
Ultimately the event was certainly a unique experience. Not only was the mere prospect of it daunting leading up to it, but the day itself was certainly stressful. However, I am grateful for the experience, and I certainly took plenty away from the experience. It was the first time I got to truly work as part of a much larger engineering team, and I also got to expand my technical skill set. I have plenty of lessons learned from the experience, both technical and non-technical. Now comes the hardest part yet, waiting to hear back from the team at JPMC.