Applying

• Apply in early August
• Apply to first and second year programs if eligible
• Apply to many companies (more than 100 might be overkill but some people do that)
• Stay organized, make a spreadsheet of your applications and the current stage you’re at in the recruitment process
• Go to career fairs, recruitment events (check EECS newsletter, CareerMail on Handshake, LinkedIn, AWE / SWE / other club newsletters / Slacks)

Rebecca’s recruiting resources

📚 Resources

Behavioral

• Prepare for standard questions
  • 30-60 second elevator pitch about you (name, year, major), your experience, your skills, and your interests
  • What is your past experience and how does it relate to what X company does? What was your impact at your past company/club/project?
  • Why X company?
  • How do you align with X company’s values?
• Have your resume memorized / nearby
• Take notes
• Prepare questions about the company - this is your chance to get to know them too

Technical

• Grind Leetcode mediums

• REACTO strategy

  1. REPEAT THE QUESTION
  2. EXAMPLES - WRITE THEM OUT
  3. APPROACH - DESCRIBE IT
  4. CODE
  5. TEST
  6. OPTIMIZE

• before coding: DO NOT CODE RIGHT AWAYYYY

  • ask clarifying questions!!
    • make sure you understand the examples
      • what is the type of input? are there multiple inputs?
      • what is the return type? is there one, are you printing? or both?
    • arrays
      • is it empty?
      • how long can the array be?
      • special cases when array is empty, 1-3 elements?
      • what are the data types in the array?
    • strings
      • is it empty?
      • uppercase or lowercase?
      • length?
      • any other special characteristics?
    • numbers
      • ints or floats?
      • floor div or float div?
      • can it be negative?
      • special cases when negative, zero, positive, decimal?
  • restate problem to ensure you’re on the same page
  • pseudocode
  • CONSIDER EDGE CASES
  • write out examples input → output

• Talk out loud at every step of your thought process

  • even dumb ideas might be correct ideas
  • why did you choose that particular data structure?
  • why are you doing it that way?

• Test your code!

  • Doctests (if possible)
  • Assert statements (while coding!!!)
  • Run through 1-2 examples! Include edge cases!!!

• Time complexity/how can you make it better?