Interview

Describe a time when you sacrificed short term goals for long term success.

S: During college I had many field trips planned with my family, but I was not able to go with them for most of the times because I wanted to invest in myself and gain more working experiences to allow me to be more qualified for jobs after I graduate from college by doing internships and part-time jobs throughout the years of college. I don't think canceling field trips and vacation was sacrificing anything significant, rather, I think they are a part of the effort in preparation for the long term success. T: t A: a R: After I graduated, I found a job even when there is a pandemic going on, but the work at this company was not something I was expecting. So I thought it was time for me to move on and pursue a better position, and apply my skillsets and bring values to a more promising company. And this is one of those moments that I have been preparing for a long time. Follow-ups: The project I was working on got discontinued due to the virus, and because of that the future of the company is uncertain and I'm a person who is always looking for more challenging opportunities.

Tell me about a situation where you had to solve a difficult problem Tell me about a time you recovered from a difficult situation.

S: I had a school project sponsored by a local company in Connecticut during my last year of college. T: We were a team of 5 and tasked to develop a full-stack web application that assists automation of data processing for the staff of the sponsor company. And we had a deadline of 2 months to come up with an alpha basic working version. One of the teammates has been assigned to design the database schema, I was in charge with another person on the backend server. One week into the development, we were still waiting on the database design from this teammate, but he said he would make a rough design as soon as he can. We waited a few more days and didn't hear anything from this teammate. A: So I scheduled an informal meeting with this person during a lunch time. I asked him if he was busy with something else and offered my help with the database design. He said that would be great but he was worried that he wouldn't receive any credits. So I emailed my professor regarding situation and asked if it was okay for me to work on his part with him. The professor replied saying that's fine. So I scheduled a couple meetings with this teammate so I could help him finish the database design but he wasn't showing up to meetings. And I didn't know what exactly happened, so I just went ahead and did the database design for him within two days. R: Then finally, we were able to move on to the backend and the frontend, and were able to managed to finish an alpha version 2 days before the deadline. Follow-ups: It was an application that extracts useful datas from a number of rendeder files such as PDF, word and excel documents. Then we run a number of analysis on the data we extracted and display the results in charts and bar graphs for visualization.

33. What was the coolest thing from work 33.1 What is the coolest thing you've learned on your own that has helped you better perform your job?

S: I have always been an self-taught person from a young age. Of course schooling has provided a good supplemental role in my knowledge but my own passion towards programming has made me seek out various hobbies to hone my skills. Due to me always constantly trying to improve, I'm always seeking new challenges and difficult work is just another puzzle for me to solve. T: t A: a R: r I believe the coolest thing I've learned would be staying postive and self-discipline at work. I happen to love my job! It's difficult at times, it's emotional, it's exhausting, but it's also incredibly fun and rewarding.

Tell me a time when you had to deal with a difficult customer

S: I haven't had a lot experience dealing with customer, but the closest thing that comes to mind is a time in my previous job, working part-time writing itineraries at a travel agent company. A customer called in that a local guide at a specific tour she was on was being unprofessional. T: Since we were a company that only provides customized tour packages and we didn't have any control over the local guide hired by the local travel company that we were having business with. A: I listened to all her problems patiently and apologized for the inconvenience. I immediately notified my boss and asked for advice on this particular situation. We came up with a plan and explained to the customer that we would like to refund the tour completely and offer a one-night 4 stars hotel voucher for compensating the unpleasant experience. R: In this way, the problem ended in a win-win situation. After this, she became a loyal customer of the company, and we received a positive review from her online on addressing how we handled the problem professionally and how she was satisfied with our response.

A time when you faced a problem that had multiple possible solutions OR Tell me about a situation where you had to solve a difficult problem

S: I remember I was working on a REST API for a school project T: I was tasked to improve the existing basic CRUD operations A: So I was doing a lot of research on my own online, and found out a number of improvements that I could use, for examples We should use nouns instead of verbs in endpoint path, We should enforce the use of plural nouns for name collections Another improvement was to handle errors with standard error codes 400 Bad Request - This means that client-side input fails validation. 401 Unauthorized - This means the user isn't not authorized to access a resource. It usually returns when the user isn't authenticated. 403 Forbidden - This means the user is authenticated, but it's not allowed to access a resource. 404 Not Found - This indicates that a resource is not found. 500 Internal server error - This is a generic server error. It probably shouldn't be thrown explicitly. Allow filtering, sorting, and pagination, so the frontend developer can use this feature to customize their request Add SSL certificate to secure communication between client and server Add role based authorizations Cache data to improve performance, this really reduces the hit onto the database Versioning APIs, v2 would employ all the new features that might break the client, but v1 would be the stable release, if there was any problem with the v2, the clients can easily roll back to the stable version v1 R: So, I employed all the aforementioned improvements and presented to my sponsor and my sponsor was really impressed and pleased with my solution. https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/03/02/best-practices-for-rest-api-design/ Follow-ups: This project is designed for the project sponsor which it parses through rendered files such as pdf and word documents filtering and extracting useful informations, and employs a number of qualitative analysis on the extracted information and finally return the result data to the front-end

What makes you the best fit for this position? Why do you want this job?

I think I can help <Company> to maintain its leading position in <Industry Name> and grow my career at the same time. Working under the umbrella of <Company> as a new graduate would be any Software Engineer's dream job. And yes, I'm the type of person who enjoys solving complex problems and create data-driven and scalable solutions as well as influential products with my previous experiences. I work well under tight deadline and always give my best to meet the requirements. I have a strong passion and ability to learn new things, and I have just recently gotten 2 AWS certifications by self-teaching. I think this Entry Level Software Engineer role is a perfect fit for me.

Tell me about yourself

My name is Richard Zheng. I recently graduated from the University of Connecticut with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science in May 2020. I have a background in Software Development where I not only studied fundamental Computer Science like Data Structures, Algorithms, and OO Designs, but also worked and interned at a number of technology companies with hands-on experiences. On top of that, I have a passion in solving challenges through innovative technology such as using AWS Cloud services to build scalable and distributed applications. I think I can help GM to maintain its leading position in automotive industry and grow my career at the same time. Working under the umbrella of GM as a new graduate would be any Software Engineer's dream job. And yes, I'm the type of person who enjoys solving complex problems and create data-driven and scalable solutions as well as influential products with my previous experiences. I work well under tight deadline and always give my best to meet the requirements. I have a strong passion and ability to learn new things, and I have just recently gotten 2 AWS certifications by self-teaching. I think this Entry Level Software Engineer role is a perfect fit for me.

Tell me about a time you had to quickly adjust your work priorities to meet changing demands.

S: I was a Teaching Assistant in a Computer Science lab in my Sophomore year T: where I was instructed by the professor to hand out a list of problems to the students to finish within the lab period, but there would always be a number of students that needed more time and help A: so I often had to reschedule my plans and stay after the lab and help them finish the assignments. R: I took the same class one year before and by helping them really help me consolidate all the data structures and algorithms that I have previously learned, So it was a win-win situation for me. And at the end of the semester, I was told by the professor that the class average is the highest over the last 5 years, and I also received multiple positive feedbacks from the students.

32. Tell me a time when you exceed expectation 32.1. Tell Me About a Time You Went Above and Beyond 36. Provide an example of when you personally demonstrate ownership.

S: I was a Teaching Assistant in a Computer Science lab in my Sophomore year. T: where I was instructed by the professor to hand out a list of coding problems to the students to finish within the lab period, but there would always be a number of students that needed more time and help. A: And going above and beyond in my position is something I enjoy. I would stay over even after the class ended to provide help and guidance to the students that were struggling in the class. R: I took the same class one year before and by helping them really help me consolidate all the data structures and algorithms that I have previously learned. So it was a win-win situation for me. And at the end of the semester, I was told by the professor that the class average is the highest over the last 5 years, and I received multiple positive feedbacks from the students.

Tell me a time when you missed a deadline

S: I was given a 1 week of deadline to work on this major school project where T: I was tasked to design and implement the famous Minesweeper game. And thankfully, I've gotten the same assignment in my previous class, so I put priority on my other school projects and thought it wouldn't take more than a day for me to recreate one. A: So I waited till the last day and finished the implementation but while I was reading through the project description, I realized that I was also required to write a 6-page write-up on documenting the project from the design to the actual implementation. I realized I wouldn't make it in time and contacted my professor to explain the situation. I apologized, explained what happened and asked for an extra day extension which he generously granted. R: Later, I learned that I need to be more careful with myself and dive deeper into the project requirements before making any plans in order to deliver the assignment on time. And I have not made the same mistake since.

We've all had to work with people that don't like us. How do you deal with someone that doesn't like you?

S: I was in a team of 2 working on this database schema project in a database design class. T: We were tasked to design an airline database schema that manages all the incoming and outgoing flights. My partner and I had different ideas on using the primary keys on this flight table. I thought it would be best to use a composite key to uniquely identify a tuple, but my partner insists on just having the flight. No. column as the primary key. A: So I listened to what he had to say patiently and later realized a composite key for the flight table might be redundant through testing with data because I would always prefer to use factual information and data to motivate my bias. R: This approach has helped to both defuse a lot of our disagreements and ensure a mutually beneficial relationship in the team. We had been partners in all remaining projects throughout semester and both of us got good grades in this class at the end.

How have you leveraged data to develop a strategy?

S: I was interning as a Software Engineer at a technology company called Pitney Bowes. T: During my first assignment, I was tasked to design a home locating algorithm based on user's travel history where each data point was the current location of the user in latitude and longitude. A: In order to find the user's primary locations and look into the problem deeper, I needed to process a lot more data to devise a home locating algorithm. So I was using Java along with Apache Spark framework, a cluster-computing framework, to process the vast amount of data I was receiving till a point our server was getting overheated. So, I made a decision using the AWS EMR service (Elastic MapReduce) to handle the heavy lifting. R: As a result, I was able to verify the algorithm and it was working perfectly as expected. And I was later offered a part-time job at this company.

14. Tell me about a time you had to deal with ambiguity 15. Tell me about a time when you had to work on a project with unclear responsibilities. 16. Tell me a time when you have to work with incomplete information

S: I was interning as a Software Engineer at a technology company called Pitney Bowes. When I first joined the team, the scope of the role wasn't clearly defined. I was put in every meeting but I could not understand what they were talking about. T: During my first assignment, I was tasked to design a home locating algorithm given a vast amount of data entries. A: To design this feature I knew I needed to study the core of the project in order to design something that would integrate into the larger picture of the application. I would attend every meeting and gather as much information as possible, and schedule meetings with my co-workers in a mentor to mentee relationships and ask all the questions I could come up. After a while, I learned that it was a weather application where users could upload a CSV or Excel file containing a series of coordinates (latitude and longitude) of the users travel history. The system will map the data points onto a Google Map Interface, and the feature I did was to locate users home and provide an estimate of the properties that would be impacted by the upcoming storms. R: I then had a clear sight of the bigger picture and finally understood my objectives. I implemented the feature with Java by utilizing the Apache Spark framework and successfully delivered my feature before my internship ended. Later I was offered with a part time job with Pitney Bowes while attending the university.

We all deal with difficult customers from time to time. Tell me about a challenging client-facing situation and how you handled it.

S: I was working as a part-time software engineer in my last year of college at a company called Pitney Bowes. T: We were working on a weather application which provides archive weather data and forecast weather data. When we demo the application to our clients during development, we found out that our clients were having problems, at least for the first time, using the application because there was overwhelming amount of buttons and text fields on the console panel. A: Our team had a meeting right after the demo, and our manager was asking for suggestions. I suggested that without removing any functionalities, we could hide some of the user interfaces and, display them in a modal by using a sequence diagram. For example, you have a login page, it has username input, password input, email input, and etc. Let's say this is probably too much for the user to take in for the first time. This is probably unnecessary in this particular example, but you would prompt the user to just enter for the username, after they have entered a valid username, you would prompt them to enter a password. This way it takes out a lot of stress off the users, and makes the user experience a lot better. R: My suggestion was taken and implemented in production, we never hear similar problems from our clients again.

Describe a situation in which you found a creative way to overcome an obstacle.

S: I was working part-time as Software Engineer at this technology company called Pitney Bowes. Our team was in development on a feature using Apache Spark. So, we were working with a lot of testing data. T: And I was tasked to back up the PostgreSQL database daily on the server and also remove the older back-ups in order to maintain the database copies in the last 7 days. And I was also told to avoid exporting the back-up during working hours to avoid excessive overhead. A: Initially, I was doing that manually everyday but it gets repetitive and time consuming and sometimes it took hours to back-up. So I wrote a script automating the process by dumping the database after working hours at around mid-night and run the script periodically in the system's task scheduler. R: This has proved to work perfectly and I was able to free up my time to work on the actual feature itself. The feature was to design an algorithm that identifies users' home, based on their travel history. Apache Spark is an open-source distributed general-purpose cluster-computing framework.

Tell me about a time when you were 75% through a project, & you had to pivot strategy

S: I was working part-time as a Software Engineer for a technology company called Pitney Bowes. T: I was working on a project that provided weather services to our clients between archive weather tool and forecast weather tool. My initial thought was that both features were equally important and useful to our clients. However, as soon as we demo the features to our clients in an Agile development process, we immediately notice that most of our clients were more interested in the forecast weather tool instead of the archive weather tool, because most of the clients are dealing problems in real time and the forecast weather data would minimize their loss on certain properties. A: We shifted all our resources into implementing and improving our forecast weather tool in order to satisfy all our clients requests R: And this has actually proved to be a very profitable idea for our department

Tell me about a time when you received negative feedback from your manager. How did you respond?

S: I was working part-time writing itineraries at a travel agent company. My boss told me I needed to be more careful because a number of customers reported back saying that the itineraries contain misinformation and typos. T: We were using Word documents and basically I was typing everything manually. A: So I apologized to my boss and promised to be more careful doing my job. So I started double checking and sometimes triple checking my documents. And I would ask my co workers to proofread my documents whenever they are avaliable, and I'd do the same in return. R: By following this precedures, I never hear again from my boss or the customers regarding misinformation on the itineraries. I adapted the habit of double checking into my school works, and I would always find some silly mistakes on my paper or exams whenever I am done doing it. And because I was inspired by that, I started writing a lot of tests for my programming projects.

The last time you had to apologize to someone

S: I was working part-time writing itineraries at a travel agent company. My boss told me I needed to be more careful because a number of customers reported back saying that the itineraries contain misinformation and typos. T: We were using Word documents and basically I was typing everything manually. A: So I apologized to my boss and promised to be more careful doing my job. So I started double checking and sometimes triple checking my documents. And I would ask my co workers to proofread my documents whenever they are avaliable, and I'd do the same in return. R: By following this precedures, I never hear again from my boss or the customers regarding misinformation on the itineraries. I adapted the habit of double checking into my school works, and I would always find some silly mistakes on my paper or exams whenever I am done doing it. And because I was inspired by that, I started writing a lot of tests for my programming projects.

Tell me about a time you stepped up into a leadership role

S: I was working part-time writing itineraries at a travel agent company. We were doing things in a very traditonal way, we would manually type out each tour description and sometimes copy and paste into the word documents. And as you can see, this gets very repetitive quickly and it was quite easy to make mistakes and typos. And if the customers that traveled with us find out typos and misinformation on their itineraries, I'm sure they wouldn't be happy about it. T: t A: I went to my boss and offered my help to write a program in my own time that would automate the process. He agreed and knowing that I was major in CS in college and that would be a good practice for me as well. So it took me about 3 months to make the alpha version which was working quite well but had found a few bugs here and there, so 2 months later I came up with the second version of the program which was heavily tested with the bugs found in the first version. R: This program increased my work efficiency so much I was doing 10 bookings a day where without the program I would probably take a week to do 10 bookings. And ever since that I never hear anything from our customers having any problems with the itineraries. This program generates itineraries based on previous itineraries and is highly customizable with user input while keeping all the data persistent using Sqlite because I didn't have money to rent a database service.

Tell me a time when you had to deal with a tight deadline but deliver in time.

S: I'm very accustomed to working under tight deadlines in schools. For me, teamwork and communication are keys in these type of scenarios. T: An example of such is a school programming project where I was in a team of 3, and tasked to design and implement an Arcade game clone called Space Shooter. Technically, we had 2 weeks of time to finish the project, but our professor said that we could get extra credit if we could finish the project in a week, because usually 2 weeks is the standard deadline for a project of this size. A: I'm a person who is always looking for more challenges. I talked with my team, and we all really wanted the extra credit to improve our class grade. So, I scheduled meetings for every day in that week including the weekends, and we were being very productive in those meetings making sure that we meet the deadline. R: So by adjusting our schedules, we were able to complete and submit the assignment early and we all got extra credit as a result.

Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned from it OR Tell me about a decision that you regret

S: One example that comes to mind here is a couple years ago, as a junior in college while taking this Algorithms and Complexity class. T: I was busy working with my own coding projects and didn't think that algorithms were important because I heard from some people saying that they were irrelevant in real work. So I didn't put too much emphasis on this class and even skipped some important lectures throughout the semester. As a result, I got a bad grade for the class. A: But later in my senior when I started applying for jobs, pretty much all companies asked coding questions which requires the knowledge of studying algorithms. R: So I wish I had pay more attention to the Algorithms class when I was taking it. And then I started doing a lot of coding problems on my own to prepare myself for upcoming interviews. At the end, I was able to land a full-time job. And I learned that you cannot be right all the time and it's never too late to correct your mistakes.

Tell me about a time when you were not able to meet a time commitment. What prevented you from meeting it? What was the outcome and what did you learn from it?

S: One example that comes to mind here is that I was interning at a technology company called Pitney Bowes for 2 months during a summer. T: I was tasked to work on my primary project which they thought it would take me the whole duration of the internship to complete it, but I finished it a head of the schedule within a month and a half. Then my manager assigned me another project to work with, but this project was on Angular which I didn't have experience with it at the time. So I was picking up the language as soon as I can in my remaining time working as an intern. A: And I knew I wouldn't finish the project before my internship ends. So I talked to manager regarding not being able to finish the project before my internship ends and still show my interest in the project. My manager told me that I should still work on it as much as I can, and she would handle the rest. R: So at the end of the internship, I didn't finish the project as I expected it because I was mostly learning the new framework Angular. When I got back to school, my manager emailed me if I would be interested to keep working on the project as a part-time job with them because I did a great job on the first assignment. And I accepted the offer, and was doing 10 - 20 hours a week for them. Follow-ups: First project was to design an algorithm and write a program on locating homes based on a series of user travel history containing coordinates using Apache Spark framework with Java for that. Second project was the frontend application for a weather application. Spark is a general-purpose cluster-computing framework.

Give me an example of a time you faced a conflict while working on a team. How did you handle that? OR Tell me about a time when you had to choose between technologies for a project

S: One example that comes to mind here is that We had a school team project sponsored by a local company in Connecticut to do a full-stack web application. T: We were asked to use Angular for the front-end language, and we could choose a preferred language for the backend. One of my teammates had strong opinion on using PHP, and another had strong opinion on using Java, specifically Spring Boot. A: I am also a big fan of Java but I thought that it would be more appropriate to use NodeJs judging by the size of the overall application and the number of end users. Because this application was designed specifically for the internal employees for sponsor company, and the company size is pretty small with estimated 20 users max would be accessing at the same time. We could really utilize NodeJs to build a light weight backend and more importantly we could all use TypeScript for the front-end and the back-end. This way all of us could participate in every part of the application and learn. And essentially our common goal was to learn as much as possible. R: As we did more research on the framework, my team had agreed with me using NodeJs for the back-end language. At the end of the semester, we delivered the entire project to our sponsor. And our sponsor was really impressed and pleased. And I learned from the experience that communication in a team setting is really important. And even now, Me and my teammates still keep in contact even after we graduated..

We all make mistakes we wish we could take back. Tell me about a time you wish you'd handled a situation differently with a colleague.

S: One example that comes to mind is to talk about my internship experience at a technology company called Pitney Bowes. I was one of the two interns in this team. T: We were tasked to research on the Angular framework and each of us needed to make our own presentation in two weeks of time. A: I wasn't sure how many slides I should make as it was my first time presenting in the team. So I did a lot of research and made about 80 slides on my presentation. The other intern did his presentation in 10 minutes with about 20 slides. And by the time I was presenting, I realized I couldn't finish my presentation in time with the amount of slides I have. So I was stopped due to the time reasons. R: If I could've handled the situation differently, I would definitely ask more details about the presentation format and talk with my intern colleague because at the end of the day we are in the same team working towards a common goal. I then realized I needed to switch my mentality on working project in a school setting to a team working setting.

Why do you want to quit your job?

The project I was working on, initially when I first joined the company got discontinued due to the Covid19 virus, and I haven't been working on a project for a couple months now, because of that the future of the company is uncertain and I'm a person who is always looking for more challenging opportunities, and who is always looking for opportunities to learn, and I learn most effectively by doing. The saying "If you did what you always did, You will get what you'll always get" always resonates with me. I am a person who wants to continually improve my abilities and this requires new experiences that can both help me gain new knowledge while also improving the next company with my prior experiences. At this stage, I think it is a good time for me to move on and grow my career actively. And I really want to move to Texas.

Tell me about a time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem

S: The best example I can think of would be when I first started learning full-stack development. I was doing a lot of researching on what's the best backend language, what's the best frontend language, and what's the best and most popular cutting edge technology stacks, to see what could work as the best possible solution to design the project. T: And actually it helped me understand and learn a lot of high level designs. This worked quite well, but I didn't realized immediately that choosing the right software stack for building web applications is one of the most important steps to begin with. And choosing the wrong stacks could lead to additional maintenance costs and technical debts. A: I was originally using Java for the backend but having done my research and knowing that this was a small size project for a small group of targeted end users, I switched to NodeJS which was light weight easy to learn high performance JavaScript backend language that integrates really well with the frontend language I was using, Angular R: I was able to code in one language which is TypeScript for both the frontend and the backend which I was able to code better and faster for the project.

What's your weakness

S: The first one that comes to mind is public speaking. In my previous courses both in High School and College, we had to work on projects and present them at the end of the due date. T: Although I have no problems presenting anything in a team and doing my best to deliver results, but when it comes to a large crowd of people, I become nervous and anxious, and having hard time to deliver my messages. A: And this is one of the areas that I would definitely put more emphasis on once I join a large company where there would be many mandatory presentations to overcome my fear in public speaking. R: I believe by working in a group with passion will continuously improve on my communication skills and deliver my messages properly in a public setting. 二 : Procrastination S: Another one that comes to mind is procrastination. I remember a few months ago in my last year of college. T: I had the opportunity to apply for Amazon because I saw the job description in my university career site. A: I didn't have the commitment to apply and thought that I was not going to be qualified even for the online assessment. So I was doing a lot coding problems and hoping to be more prepared before applying because I don't want to get rejected. R: But having done the online assessment now, I realized it wasn't that bad, but it's always better to prepare more than prepare less.

Describe a long-term project that you managed. How did you keep everything moving along in a timely manner?

S: The last long-term proejct I worked on was a 2-year project that I designed for a former employer also a friend of mine at a Travel Agent Company. They were doing business in a very traditional style, basically just involves paper copy and word/excel documents. T: I designed a booking system full-stack web application for them which includes a set of core functionalities such as generating a booking, generating travel itinerary, and generating all travel related important informations while keeping all the data persistent on a browser level. I also had to implement an authentication layer which prevents unauthorized users from loggin in. A: I would work on the project whenever I am done with my school work for the past 2 years. R: I was the sole and primary developer for this project, so it took a little more than 2 years. Fortunately, I was able to deliever the complete project at the beginning of this year. It has been a long journey but I finally delivered my promise. Started in 2018, delievered Mar 2020

What's the most innovative new idea that you have implemented?

S: The most recent piece of innovation that I had was a full-stack project that I designed and implemented for a former employer also a friend of mine at a Travel Agent Company. They were doing business in a very traditional style, their business basically were operated on word and excel documents and printing a lot of papers for records. I realized that was not a reliable and efficient way to keep your clients and business information. T: A: I designed and implemented a Booking System which manages all the bookings and generates all the necessary travel documents for the passengers such as Travel Itinerary, Tours and Hotel Vouchers, and all the important travel documents related to the destination. R: This program makes their business operations so much more efficient while keeping all the data persistent on a cloud level. I basically eliminated my position with this program. Because I was the one who writes all the itineraries manually while I was working there.

Tell me about the toughest decision you've had to make in the past six months.

S: The toughest decision I've had to make is probably leaving my current job. I joined my current company as a Software Engineer about 3 months ago right after I graduated from college. I was being very lucky to find a full-time job in a global pandemic. And I had a lot of enthusiasm to start building my career fresh off the boat. T: I've learned a great deal in my first month of working in this company and later was assigned to a team to work on this brand new project where I had researched on a number of cutting-edge and innovative technologies including GraphQL and Vue.js A: As we were still very early into the development, we received a notice from the management regarding project discontinuing due to the virus and lack of resources. R: and because of that the future of the company becomes uncertain and I'm a person who is always looking for more challenging opportunities, and wanting to continually improve my abilities and this requires new experiences that can both help me gain new knowledge while also improving the next company with my prior experiences.

Describe a situation when you negotiated with others in your organization to reach an agreement.

S: We had a school project sponsored by a local company in Connecticut in my senior year. T: Our original deadline for the project was posponed for a month because of Covid19 and school was canceled at the time. Then my team started to relax a little bit on the scheduled progress because suddenly we had more time. A: So I talked to my team in an online group chat, we could definitely finish the project within the original deadline if we keep the same pace. We don't have to meet in person and we have internet at home. So there is really no need to drag this out for another month because everyone has their own arrangements after the original deadline. R: My team agreed with me and we finished the project before the original deadline.

What did you do when you needed to motivate a group of individuals?

S: We had a school team project sponsored by a local company in Connecticut to do a full-stack web application T: Our team had little idea where to even start as some of us had little or no experience in developing a full-stack application from stcratch. A: Since I had a little more experience in programming than the rest of my team, I scheduled a meeting for our team and went over how I first started designing and implementing a full-stack project. I did the same thing and held weekly meetings for the rest of the semester. R: Thoughout this project, every teammate was participating, contributing, and learning. At the end of the semester, we were one of the few teams that actually completed the project. Our sponsor was really pleased with our overall performance. Another ANSWER S: I had a school project. We were a team of 4 people and tasked to recreate the Centipede arcade game in Java. T: We had a deadline of a month and a half, but one week into the project I realized I was the only one that was doing work. I could probably finish the project by myself but then the idea of staying in a team would be meaningless. A: So I scheduled a team meeting with all the team members and try and figure out a path to move forward. Later, I found out that they didn't have much experience in Java. Since I was a little more experienced than they are in Java. I asked them to come to the library twice a week so I could teach them some basic data structures and OOPs so that we could move forward as a team and make a few friends along the way. R: At the end, we managed to finish the project just 1 week before the deadline. And everyone in the team has participated and learned so much about not only programming but also team works. Centipede is a fixed shooter arcade game developed in the 80's

Tell me about a time when you had to challenge a decision

S: We had this school project sponsored by a local company in Connecticut. I was in a team of 5. T: We were tasked to develop a web service that processes data uploaded by the users and apply a number of analysis to extract useful information. The sponsor had a soft requirement and wanted us to use PHP for developing the service because their other services were implemented with PHP. I knew immediately this wouldn't be possible because we only had a 2 months of time and none of the teammate was familiar with PHP. And it would take us a long time just to learn a new language let alone implementing the web service. A: I scheduled a meeting with my teammates regarding this issues, and we all got to the common ground that it would be more appropriate for us to implement the service in Java because that's the language we are all familiar with and the with that the task can be done possible within the deadline. R: So I emailed our sponsor on behalf of my team regarding the language decision with all the thought process that we discussed as a team. And our sponsor was really understanding and approved our request. And we delivered the project 2 weeks before the deadline.

What's your strength.

一 : Passion for learning (Custoemr Obession) S: I believe the best way to showcase my strengths would be to talk about one of my latest successes with my experience working as part-time software engineer at a company called Pitney Bowes. T: I participated developing a full-stack application that was built with Angular and Spring Boot in a corporate-level decision making. A: Maybe it doesn't sound like a lot but as a college student, developing corporate-level projects and projects that actually have an impact on helping customers and generating profit was something every new to me. R: So yeah, the passion for learning never ceases and it's one my all-time most important strengths. 二 : Creativity and Ownership S: Another scenario to showcase my strengths would be to talk about one of my proudest projects I have done. This project was inspired by one of my part-time jobs at a Travel Agent Company. T: My task was basically writing travel itineraries manually in word documents which was very repetitive and easy to make errors and typos. A: Although it was not in my job description, I talked to my boss and asked if it was okay that I create an application to simplify the itinerary process so that I could have more time to learn other business operations to increase productivity. R: My boss was very nice and said it would be a good practice for me being a CS student. And It took me about two months in my own time making the application. This application maximizes my productivity and minimizes errors and typos occur in the travel documents.