Preparing for the interview

So, we got a call from a recruiter saying they went over our resume and are interested in moving forward with us! This call means that we did a great job with our resume and succeeded in showing our experience and capabilities just the way we wanted.

But – the hard work is only ahead of us.

In Chapter 2, we will discuss the interviewing process, the different stages, and their primary goals, but now, I want to discuss the period before the interview.

Taking our time

When the recruiter wants to schedule your first interview, the first thing many candidates do is schedule as soon as possible because of the excitement of getting an interview. Well, that’s a bold mistake.

We should take our time and make sure we start this journey 100% ready. A time frame between one and two weeks should be enough to start the first stage.

Technical, personal, and logistics preparations

Being ready for an interview doesn’t mean just going over Swift questions. There are three levels we need to ensure we are ready: Technical, Personal, and Logistics.

Technical

Most of the books that talk about iOS interviews deal with technical preparations. In this period, the first thing we need to ensure is that the foundation of iOS development is strong and solid. Screwing up on the fundamental questions and tasks will devastate us and risk our job application more than anything.

The second thing we need to do is get a whiteboard to practice design and architecture questions. In design questions, we need to get used to drawing a UML or a system chart on a whiteboard. Even though drawing on a whiteboard sounds easy, it requires practice and experience.

Besides the drawing task itself (which is not that easy for many candidates), we need to know how to present a system, decide what we consider a module in our chart, and explain it verbally. We will focus on that in Part 4: Design and Architecture of this book, but we need to make time for that in our preparation plan.

The third thing is building our daily routine. Whether we have a daily job or are unemployed, without a daily practice routine, it’s going to be hard to move forward and close all the knowledge gaps. Are we night or morning people? Knowing who we are can help reserve a slot dedicated to practice in our schedule.

Personal

Our personality is another important side of the process. As part of the interview preparations, we must build our story as developers. What is our story? How did we get into the development world, especially iOS development? Why did we decide to work in the places that we worked in the past? How was it to work in a big or small company? Why do we search now for a new workplace?

The answers to these questions help the interviewer to build our developer profile, so we must not forget that in our preparation planning.

Logistics

This is the easy part, but we must not fall for this one. We first need to print our resumes. It is always good to bring them with us. Bringing our resumes shows that we are serious and have got nothing to hide. It also starts the interview by focusing on us, which is precisely what we wanted.

The second thing is to plan our arrival journey. Being early can never harm our odds of continuing the process, but late sure can. Never – never be late for an interview.

The third thing may sound weird and unrelated, but it is much more important than you think: make sure you smell good. Now, I mention the smell, because many people (interviewers, in our case) tend to associate a smell with the person they talk with. Now, just to be clear, the link between smell and people is not the interviewer’s fault; it’s just how our brain is built. There’s a direct connection between memory, emotion, and our sense of smell. It can be a good idea to put deodorant or perfume in our bag during our on-site interview.