interview Slay
where do you wanna be in 5 years
im interested in this area and wanna learn and grow n b w a company that has opportunities to advance and get more responsibility and contribute more to the company
how would your boss describe you?
micah: thoughtful, opinionated, concise, and good instincts jula: reliable, hardworking
communication examples
- 24 hours on empathable -- situation: empathable offered new content on a daily basis: developers want to know whether to set "daily" to be 24 hours after completion of the previous day's task, or reset at midnight -- role: touchpoint for questions that could stall development -- action: quickly clarified that we wanted the timer to reset at midnight result: development didn't stop until my boss got around to answering the question--which could have taken a while facilitated meetings w people, talked between designers and developers
proactive/learning examples
- FORGE -- situation: no classes at uva ab ux -- role: student who wanted to learn ux -- action: searched out other ways to educate myself, found that forge, cs club, offers classes -- result: took a class and learned ab ux, and got to complete ux projects w my team - internships before i needed them - taking classes seriously abroad: i want to KNOW the content
what is your greatest weakness?
- as a organizer, sometimes i get obsessive about making sure things fit together perfectly, even when some problems don't have perfect, neatly wrapped solutions - but the bad ideas article actually helped me with this mindset. problem-solving, like anything else in this field, is iterative. sometimes it's more important to get to the next stage than it is to make sure this stage is perfect, and that's what bad ideas and iteration is for
what is your greatest accomplishment?
- at empathable, i researched duolingo and made recommendations to the team for how to incorporate features similar to duolingo's successful features into the app - problem: we want to reward using streaks, but worry that we don't have enough content to keep a streak going for very long - fleshing-out: doing the audit on duo, thinking about which incentives we could use and which ones wouldn't eb appropriate - solution: we could add other, low-effort interactions for the user to have with the app. the idea I presented--what if every day, we sent out a questions of the day, asking users to reflect on their learning, an experience, a situation, or another prompt.
Tell me about yourself
- cogsci compsci at uva, grad in may - became interested in tech in hs, and did cogsci in college to gain cs background, but also have the opportunity to study people in psych/neuro classes, and problems and arguments in phil - got involved at empathable, they were in the process of building an app, i became interested in shaping digital products, solving problems of users - last summer = viget, i was able to lead a team of six other interns in researching, designing, and developing a web app. I loved defining the features of our app and working with developers to outline requirements - hoping to do more of this in my future! - im a problem solver, team player, and quick learner
what do you like to do in your free time
- collaging is good, get to exercise creativity - last sem i also got to travel a lot, and i thought it was really fun to decide each week where we were going, and to get to look into what we would be doing there. i'd love to incorporate that same sense of adventure in my life back here
problem solving examples
- duolingo -- situation: want to implement streaks in our app, but don't have enough content -- role: researched duolingo features that worked and could work for our app -- action: proposed introducing low-effort content (question of the day) to easily give users more to interact with on the app -- result: presentation of this idea, and others from duo audit, to full team - writing articles, reorganizing other peoples articles - physics problems - empathable: drafting out our metaphors, colors, themes, and how all of them intersected - preparing for interviews and job searching
Can you tell us about your academic background and any relevant coursework or projects that have prepared you for a role as a Business Analyst Consultant at Ventera?
- empathable: part of a team that was developing MVP of daily DEI education app. got first exposure to software team and agile approach (Willowtree), involved with in-house feature definition and got my hands on a couple tickets - viget: led a team of 6 other interns in 9-week research, design, and development of a web app that inspired people to get out of their house and explore their surroundings. honed feature definition, requirements gathering, leadership, teamwork, and communication - school: taking classes at intersection of design, computer science, and people. solving multitudes of problems, and taking every class offered in UX/the like. involved in two school projects: one to design a new website, one to revamp an old one - in all roles, honed my communication and teamwork skills. had experience working with and learning from developers and designers. at viget, also had experience working with a faux client, where I led meetings and written communication w them
Describe your experience with Requirements Gathering or Analysis, either in your academic studies or in a professional capacity. Can you provide specific examples of how you've applied these skills?
- empathable: worked in-house. most of time narrowing MVP scope and prioritizing, with the opportunity to get my hands on a couple tickets. learned from mentors different strategies of writing them, and how to write good ones. - viget: expanded on experience. worked with the team to define and prioritize our very own MVP features. also worked with the devs to map out all tickets, then wrote and prioritized them - school: heavily involved in the definition and requirement gathering in these projects
The job description mentions exposure to Agile Methodology as a plus. Have you had any experience with Agile, and can you explain how you've used or interacted with Agile concepts in the past?
- first exposure at empathable, dev team used agile approach - at viget, tried to be agile-ish. many of my teammates didn't have experience with agile or MVPs or iteration, so i sent out a reading list, and went over the main concepts. we decided together what parts of agile we wanted to implement and what we wanted to do our own ways - I do believe in iteration, frequent check-ins, and cross-disciplinary work. I think it's important to get designers/devs/anyone else in a room to make sure people are cross-checking each other's work - I'm actually hoping to learn a lot more about working effectively in iteration. how can I structure a timeline, build-out plan, and write tickets that are friendly with being reworked without wasting time and energy, and throwing out a lot of work?
Tell me about a time you failed
- first friday shift at new restaurant - got totally weeded, running all over, so overwhelmed - didn't ask for enough help and things got away from me - i learned: it's really important to ask for help, my teammates want me to be doing well too - and i often helped out my coworkers when they were weeded, it was a two-way street
what are you looking for from this position
- i aim to learn, my main goals are: - to gain a deeper understanding of the development cycle and practice within it - to learn from people with many different jobs
Do you prefer working independently or on a team?
- i enjoy working on a team - i love to learn from peers and people who know way more than me - it's always lovely to work with experts in different topics, they bring so much to the table - its nice to have people to bounce ideas off of, and people to look over your work and give suggestions
what i learned from informational interview
- i jsut conducted one and was really worried, lost, this article helped me gain an understanding of what mindset I should have, adn how best to learn from the person i was talking with - what my goals should be during an interview
what i learned from 9 things
- i learned about advocating for your teams and your product, and about complexity - i learned about why app development is iteratiive
What type of work environment do you prefer?
- i like to be able to learn from peers and people who know way more than me, so for this reason I enjoy working in teams - i think teams are most effective when you're familiar with your teammates, so i like to work at smaller companies where theres an emphasis on community
why do you want to be a pm?
- i love being at the middle of a problem and whiteboarding out a solution - my major is interdisciplinary, and i enjoy taking classes across departments, i enjoy being well rounded - i love living at an intersection, and this position at the intersection of design, dev, and more than i couldn't even imagine - i'd love to maximize my learning, and think this is the way to go. i'd look forward to working with a whole team of devs, designers, strategists, brand people, marketing - i really enjoyed these parts of my internship and i would like to learn how to do more stuff like that
How do you deal with pressure or stressful situations?
- i take a step back and i organize. i like to visualize everything that needs to get done, and then map out how to do it all. I'm always way calmer once I come up with a plan - for example, during finals season I always come up with a schedule for studying
why should we hire you?
- i'm a problem-solver - i'm a good collaborator and communicator - i'm a good mentee i work hard, at school, i'm scrappy, ive had jobs and experience for days, i pay attention and im independent, if the asnwer to your question is in an email i won't ask you, i can google
why did you go to uva/why did you chose cogsci?
- interested in uva's mix of both techincal and creative sides of what im interested in- interested in getting a broader experience, i have broader interests- has good reputation, interested in getting to know the people- highlights liberal arts interests- international program; lots of opportunity to study abroad- didn't know i was interested in UX orginially, wasn't sure what i wanted to study, gace me broad experience to different areas- comp sci, chinese, psych, art, interdisciplinary
do you have any questions for me?
- is there anything that we haven't covered yet - how does the mentorship for this role work? - do interns work on real projects or on an intern project - what's your favorite part of working at viget? - what have been some of your favorite projects that you've worked on
The job description mentions the importance of interpersonal skills and teamwork. Can you give us an example of a situation where you demonstrated strong interpersonal skills and worked effectively within a team to solve a problem or achieve a goal?
- my entire time at viget, lowkey - one time in particular, we were at the end of our 9 weeks and trying to create a presentation to show off our project to the whole company - people were wrapped up in trying to finish the project, and we were having trouble focusing on one goal for our 15 minute presentation covering 9 weeks of work - we were unsure if the presentation was supposed to be about our process, or our finished result - some team members were upset, because their work would get cut, or absorbed into different people's parts - we had to sit down as a team and decide on the story for our presentation. found a way to divvy up the presentation so everyone could showcase their work, without the presentation being repetitive (since this was a highly iterative process) - we organized ways to pick up each other's slack. our designer created slide templates for us, and tweaked all of our finished slides - I practiced w people, and cut their scripts
what is your greatest strength?
- my problem-solving - i'm very organized, and really good at fleshing out problems - i prefer to do it on paper, but i have a big whiteboard at home thats good too - im a clear communicator - i've been practicing writing my whole life, and through journalism and some tough english classes, i've learned a lot about prioritizing and organizing information, being concise, and explaining things as simply as possible
leadership examples
- onboarding -- situation: need an onboarding for app -- role: leader in producing the onboarding -- action: met with team to map out the onboarding and create illustration/instruction pairs -- result: an onboarding video that clearly laid out the goal of the app and how to use it - the leader of my HCI team: coordinating schedules and ideas - editor of my hs newspaper
How did you hear about this position?
- shacho (kiss)
What did you do in the last year to improve your knowledge?
- taking classes at uva - taking classes at forge - internship w empathable, getting more and more involved as my time progressed - been conducting informational interviews
risk taking examples
- talking in meetings in empathable, giving my opinions
what i learned from bad ideas
- the "bad ideas" phase is important for working through the creative stages - it's important for processes to be iterative - helped me overcome perfectionism, because the first idea doesn't have to be the best one
teamwork examples
- theogony -- situation: many editors all trying to coordinate the paper -- role: online editor -- action: breakdown of tasks to people who were most skilled at different things. Some editors in charge of providing edits to writers, some in charge of brainstorming new story ideas, some in charge of layout -- result: nobody's toes got stepped on, and all tasks got assigned to a person--less things were dropped - empathable was very team-focused, every week i'd go to the design meeting and we would all tackle issues together - beta testing: worked w cheyenne to create beta questionairre, and coordinate beta testers - my HCI class: big group project - FORGE: worked with a team to redesign our college's lms software and create a website for a local restuarant
constructive criticism examples
- theogony writer and editor - learned a lot by being wrong at empathable. i would express an opinion and learn that it wasn't accessable, which taught me a lot about accessability adn how to implement and prioritize it in development
Are you applying for other jobs?
- yes - im excited about viget because - small company and teams - learning environment - intersectionality
