SOFT SKILLS INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

List 6 things that made me nervous

boredom stagnation height large social events earthquakes thunder

Tell me about a time when you overcome a challenge

1 week into the bootcamp, I was considering dropping out because I felt very behind. But I already paid money and put my job on hold for it, and so I determined to keep trying. I asked my teachers for practice drills to improve my skills. I read documentations on things I didn't understand and afterwards trying out the new techniques by applying them in coding challenges that I found online. I gradually get better and I started to enjoy coding and found it to actually be fun. For the last project, I was responsible for most of our app functionalities on the front end.

Tell me about a time when you were communicating with someone and they did not understand you. What did you do?

A picture is worth a thousand words. I was trying to explain to my teammate my code. They didn't understand so I showed them on the console line by line what each piece of code did and how they tied together.

If you could only choose one song to play every time you walked into a room for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Another one bites the dust

What is the key to working in a team composed of on site and remote developers?

Communication and trust. Communicate because you need to know what's going on. Trust because you need to have faith that other people are gonna do their share without supervision

Give me an example of a time you faced a conflict while working on a team. How did you handle that?

During our second hackathon in the development program, two of our teammates were having a disagreement and would not talk to each other. I was close to one of them so during break, I asked about her what was wrong and she told me how she didn't like the other person's working style. I thought she needed to vent so I listened to her and acknowledged her view while not particularly agreeing with it. After she finished talking, I offered my view on what happened and tried to mediate the relationship between the two. • Are you easy to get along with? • Do you collaborate well? • Can you communicate effectively with different personalities? • Can I handle seeing you in the office every day without strangling you? Some jobs come with specific teamwork challenges: • Can you deal with difficult personalities? • Do you know how to push back diplomatically when necessary? • Can you mediate disagreements? • Can you motivate people to perform?

What actions and support, in your experience, make a team function successfully?

Encouraging and acknowledging people's good work and giving them credits. Owing up to your mistake. Be ready to forgive and take one for the team. Taking initiative to do the hard work.

What are the three things that are most important to you in a job?

Growth potential, friendly work environment, openness to feedback

Do you have any questions for us?

How does the engineering team balance resources between feature requests and engineering maintenance? How do you measure success? What are your most important product metrics? What are your highest priorities right now? How do you see this position evolving in the next three years? From your observation, what are some traits and habits of effective bilingual engineers?

Tell me about a time when you failed

I applied to SJSU hoping to become a UX designer. I did not make it in. Even though I was initially bummed, I tried to come up with a plan B and decided to learn how to code as that path could eventually lead me to UX design as well. That was how I started to code by myself.

What do you avoid?

I avoid stagnation and working on something that I believe to be ineffective and obsolete.

Tell me about one of your favorite experiences working with a team and your contribution.

I liked almost everything about the last project when I was in the development program. I liked that our team communicates and encourages each other. I liked that we didn't have any drama and just overall got along well with each other.

Tell me about your experience at LFZ? What did you learn there?

I really enjoyed my experience at LFZ. It taught me not just how to code but how to collaborate with people from various background as well as those with different perspectives. Our class's age varied from 19-55 and we all had different occupations upon starting. I learned how to be an effective team player under an agile environment and I learned that I work well under pressure. I enjoyed seeing how other people arrived to their solutions because it helps me see new effective ways to do things. I enjoyed the friendship that I made there. We worked closely and spent so much time together and that allowed me to foster good relationship with several people from my class.

How do you stay creative?

I stay creative by exposing myself to many disciplines and cultures. Learning information from various fields, connecting, and finding relationship between them

How do you tackle challenges? Name a difficult challenge you faced while working on a project, how you overcame it, and what you learned.

I tackled challenges by persevering, breaking it down to smaller parts, and giving the challenge some distance before coming back to it. I was building a memory match game in OOP and I didn't understand why some of the cards did not play sound upon clicking. I was pushing hard through the issue to try to figure it out but I couldn't find out what was the issue. So I decided to take a break from it. When I came back, I was able to think more clearly and made an educated guess and put debuggers where I suspected there to be a problem. Turned out the the length of the audio effect was longer than the time it takes for a user to click on a new card. If the old card has not finished playing its audio, the new clicked card would have no audio at all. I accelerated the play speed of the audio effect to remedy the issue. I learned to break things down and inspect it part by part to figure out seemingly complicated problem.

Why do you want this job?

I want to work at Google. Also, I want to make my family and myself proud for knowing that I work for the biggest tech company using my knowledge of our culture.

Tell me about a time you made a mistake

I worked on a feature for 3 hours without committing or pushing. There was an issue with the branch and I ran into a merge conflict. All of my work for the past 3 hours were not there anymore. I asked a coworker for help as he was knowledgeable in Git. He helped me recover all of my information. I asked him how he was able to do that. Since then, whenever I ran to the problem, I just did what he showed me.

What's the most interesting thing about you that's not on your resume?

I would like to get a mediator certificate. People often confide in me. I've been drawing anime style since I was 6. I like to skateboard

What would you want to do if you didn't have to work?

I would study and learn all the subjects and skills that I've been interested in and explored them in depth with the free time.

What would you want to do if you didn't have to work?

I would study and learn all the subjects and skills that I've been interested in and explored them in depth with the free time. Beside programming, I also find anthropology, design, fashion, and medicine very interesting.

Tell us about yourself — your recent work, what type of work you want to be doing, and, most importantly, what you desire in your next role.

I'm currently a front end developer at Maven for a mobile application. Using wireframes provided by designers, I build the app's interface using Javascript, React, HTML, and CSS. I work together with other developers, UX designers, and graphic designers.

Tell me about a time when you were innovative at work or solved a problem by being creative

I'm most innovative when presented with creative constraints. I was teaching social skills to one of my students. She was easily bored and so to address that issue, I turned it into a game. She loved video games, YouTube, and anime. I wrote the questions into small pieces of paper and mixed them up in a cup. She would draw out a random piece of paper with the question on it and answer it. I put references of her favorite characters and shows in there to make it more interesting.

Give me an example of a conflict you have had with a boss

I've actually never had a conflict with my boss because I would try to communicate potential issue first before it potentially turns into a conflict. But if I do, I would make sure to understand their point of view first. A lot of times, conflicts happen due to misunderstanding. Therefore I believe if I know where the other person is coming from, it would help me understand resolve the situation better

Walk me through your past work experience.

In my current job as a Vietnamese Translator, I have translated several documents from English to Vietnamese and vice versa, with the longest document being 13 pages. I helped my companies and Vietnamese clients understanding each other by translating both verbally and in writing. Currently, I'm a web developer intern for a startup company where I employed my coding skills to build an e-learning app for English Second Language Learner

Tell me about a conflict you had with a coworker / Tell me about a time when you worked with a difficult team member.

In my last position, I noticed one of my colleagues whom I worked directly with seemed to be more upset than usual and she would avoid my eye contacts or looked at me with annoyance. Since I need to communicate with her about work, I wanted to know what's going on, if it's something I did. So i did just that, as we worked, I casually asked her if I did something to make her upset. She seemed surprised and told me she has some personal issue and was upset about it. She told me not to worry and that it's nothing personal with me. After that, I notice she was making an effort to be more friendly and collaborative with me again. I learned from that experience that a lot of time it's good to just bring things up to clear the tension. If people didn't mean to, they will be more aware of it. And if it's something that actually bothered them, they'll talk about it.

What have you been doing in your most recent position?

In my most recent position, I'm working with a team of developers, UX and graphic designers, as well as the company's CEO to develop an e-learning app that enables users to import an e book and learn vocabulary and grammar from it. I'm responsible for building the interface from the wireframe created by our UX designer.

Give an example of a successful project that you were part of. What was your role? What made the project successful in your view?

List Rally. I was a front-end developer. The project was successful because we communicated well and helped out each other as needed. Everybody was doing their task

Why do you want to work here?

Marijuana is a booming industry and weedmaps is about the largest site for discovering and researching cannabis vendors. I would like to be part of the team that contributes to its growth. Additionally I like that your team is using the latest technologies such as Next.js and GraphQL

What are your greatest strengths?

My best strengths is my strong focus, love for learning and making progress and tendency to analyze things around me. I coded in my free time and occasionally skipped meals and often stayed up late because I was so enthralled with solving problems that I couldn't do before. I like to synthesize information and see patterns and what they have in common.

Tell me about a time you had a disagreement with your boss

My supervisor wanted me to take the kid out tao walk and practice safety everyday. However he was a 16 year old, much bigger and stronger than me. So I told my boss, "Boss, I'm concerned that I can't go for a walk with him everyday only mom is home on that day and I'm not strong enough to hold him back if something happens. What if I walk with him on MWF when his brother is home and can come along with us. Would that be okay?". My boss thought that was reasonable and agreed. As a result, I can address his walking goal while still keeping both me and him safe. Hey boss, if we did it like this. What if we did it this way? What do you think of it this way? In my experience, this is a better way to do XYZ . What do you think? Would this be okay? I want to run it by you first and get your permission to do that.

I notice you live in SoCal. Why are you willing to move to MountainView?

Reassure the hiring team that you're serious about moving to their specific place. The message that you'll move "anywhere" usually isn't nearly as powerful as saying that you're doing everything to move somewhere in particular—where the target organization is . You can prove this by talking about the time you've spent researching housing and other moving concerns

Tell us about yourself

Recent professional achievements: Client told me she would introduce other people to the company because she liked working with me Educational achievements: UCI psychology Applicable skills: Vietnamese translator Professional goals Reason for interest in the company The 'present-past-future' formula is a way to share key background points while ending on a high note. Begin with a brief overview of where you are now (which could include your current job along with a reference to a personal hobby or passion), reference how you got to where you are (here you could mention education, or an important experience such as a past job, internship or volunteer experience) and then finish by touching on a goal for the future. Bonus points if you're able to identify how the position you're applying for aligns with how you envision your future.

I notice you don't have much experience in tech. Why should we hire you given google is a tech company?

Remind the hiring manager that you're fresh out of school and that you have received fantastic training. For example, you might say "I've been so fortunate to receive an excellent education at..." Also, show that you're someone who wants to learn inside a great organization by saying something like, "most people would characterize me as someone who is a quick learner, and I'm especially interested in joining an organization where I can quickly onboard and make a positive impact with the team around me."

I have concern about your ability to work in a large team

Show them you're interested in joining an organization with more resources, structure, and reach. Large companies need people who are capable of working within a structured system and who are comfortable being managed by metrics. So if you're approaching a large organization, you'll want to highlight your ability to work well on teams and to respond to the organization's strategic initiatives

What is your weakness?

Sometimes I bite more than I can chew to the point of spreading myself thin and getting overwhelmed. But lately i've been improving that by having a schedule and calendar and assigning time to task. When I'm in the zone, I don't take break. And that would affect my thinking ability. To combat this, i started employing the Pomodoro technique when I work for 25 minutes and then take a 5 minutes break. Or choose a weakness that doesn't relate to the job or my skills/strengths

What's the biggest misconception your coworkers have about you and why do they think that?

That I'm quiet. I don't speak out much in group settings

Describe a time when you saw some problem and took the initiative to correct it rather than waiting for someone else to do it.

The backend was returning the wrong data. We only had one backend person and he was busy working on an important task. I didn't want to interrupt him and decided to look at the codes myself and debugged it. I was able to figure out the queries were incorrect. I wrote down the issue and brought it up to him alter when he was finished with the other task.

What accomplishment are you most proud of?

The final project was a stressful time for all of us. Our team was considered by the instructors as the as one of the most collaborative group that they've worked with.

Share an example of a time you needed to influence a team in some way

There was a technology that I was really excited to learn about and was hoping to incorporate it into our app. However, my team had skepticism about it due to workload at the time. I told them about the benefits of learning it and having it on our portfolio as it was something that many companies employed. I also sent them short tutorials to show them that technology does not have a steep learning curve. As a result, my team agreed to add it to our app.

Why is diversity important?

To achieve diversity of thought utilizing the differences in others When we brainstorm with colleagues within the same field, we come up with the same old ideas. I think diversity is important because when people from various background and environment interact, we have more ideas in the pool of thought. And that allows innovation to happen easier. We learn a different way of thinking and doing things that we have not known before. Furthermore, without diversity, there's a lack of perspective. Broader perspective is better for businesses that aims to appeal to a wider demographics. True innovation comes from not only one field of study but from the intersection from multiple disciplines

Give me examples that show you're self-motivated and take initiative

To prepare for this interview, I bought a VPN service to see what it's like to search from the perspective of a person living in Vietnam

Tell me a joke

What did the buffalo say to his son when he left for college? Bison What does Jay Z call his wife before he married her? Feyonce

How did you become interested in programming?

When I was working with special needs children, I was fascinated with how despite not being able to talk and groom themselves, they had no problem using the a computer or tablet. I originally was interested in UX/UI design and I found out that one of the best way to break into that field is through coding. However, once I actually started to learn how to program, I found myself skipping other hobbies and sometimes eating doing it. And therefore, I decided to pursue it as a career