Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. If you're new here I'm Temi a software engineer working in
the UK. I recently got my first job as a software engineer. So in this video I thought it would be
good to talk about my interview experience. I'll be focusing on behavioural interviews
for junior software engineers in the UK. As usual, any resources that I mentioned throughout this
video will be in the description box below. And before I jump into the video, don't forget to like
and subscribe to see more content from me. So the first stage is usually a call with someone from
HR or recruitment just to check through your CV. So this phone call will be an informal chat about
your experience, your CV and they might even talk to you a little bit about the company as well. At
this stage, you might be asked about your salary expectations for the role and my advice is to
hold off from giving them a number early on if you can do so just because you don't want to lowball
yourself early on. Most companies will have a salary range they can pay you so it's a good idea
to find out more about the responsibilities of the role and also find out a little bit more about the
average salary for that role in your area, before having a discussion about your salary expectations.
Once you've got to a later stage of the interview and you've done your research, then it's probably
a good idea to have a serious conversation about salary expectations. If your phone call with the
recruiter or the person in HR goes well, you'll then be moved on to the one-to-one interview, also
known as the behavioural interview. This stage of the interview is about the interviewers
getting to know your personality and understanding your experience a bit better. You could be being
interviewed by engineers from the company you want to work at or if it's a small company, you
might be interviewed by the founder. Most of the time you'll be told who's going to interview you,
so if you are, it's a good idea to do some research beforehand. Before each of my interviews I actually
had a look at my interviewers LinkedIn profiles on private mode and I just paid attention to any
experience that they might have and their field of expertise as well, just to get to know them a
little bit better. From doing your background research, you might be able to get a feel for
what kind of questions you might be asked based on your interviewer's field of expertise. If
you're being interviewed by non-technical people, then it's unlikely that you'll get any technical
questions if any. If you're being interviewed by any engineers then be prepared to answer
any technical questions that might be related to your role. Before you jump into the interview,
it's a good idea to ask the interviewer about themselves and how the day was just to break the
ice a little bit and to seem a little bit more personable. I'm about to go over some potential
questions that you might be asked and for these questions I'll normally plan my answers beforehand
and go through them several times with a friend or a family member, that way when I'm doing the real
interview, my answers are a lot more likely to flow fairly smoothly and be quite coherent. So the first
question you're guaranteed to get is, tell me about yourself. And the best way to answer this question
is to briefly talk about how you got to where you are now. So you can talk about your current
role at work and how long you've been there or if you're a university or college student,
then you can talk about the course you're doing and maybe any modules that you're enjoying. Then
you can talk about your educational background and any relevant experience that you might have.
Briefly talk about what you did after university and any experience that you might have obtained.
Then go into more detail about what you do at work and you can also talk about any related hobbies
that you might have. You can also briefly talk about anything that you might be passionate about
within software engineering, such as web accessibility or the cloud. You can then
finish off by talking about anything that you wish to achieve in the future. Another guaranteed
question is, why have you applied for this role? And you might get a follow-up question asking,
why you want to work at that company? Make sure you do extensive research using the company's website
so whatever answer you give is aligned with the industry that the company is in, then talk about
what you're particularly interested in. When researching about the company and its field,
is worth taking a note of any issues that the industry or the company is currently facing,
such as upgrading any legacy systems or making certain web pages more accessible for its users.
Keep a note of any technology that the company currently uses and try to find out more about it.
A lot of companies might have blogs on their website where they talk about any projects they're
working on, issues they're facing or any tools that they're using. So really look on their website,
have a dig around and read as much as you can. Anything you've written on your CV is fair game
so if you've talked about any personal projects on there make sure you know them pretty well. You
can also expect to be asked about any technologies that you've listed on your CV. So for example, you
might be asked about the limitations of any tech that you've worked with so that's something that
you might want to look up and research beforehand. My advice is to avoid putting anything on your CV
that you're unsure about or can't answer because not being able to answer questions about yourself
or your experience, doesn't look great. You may be asked about your strengths and your weaknesses too.
If you're asked about your weaknesses, make sure you give a real answer but try not to mention
anything that might put you at a disadvantage such as not being able to complete work on time.
Instead you could phrase it as, sometimes I struggle with managing a heavy workload
but I'm working on that by trying to prioritise tasks in order of importance. So whatever it is
that you say, just make sure you counteract that by saying what it is you're trying to
do in order to improve on your weakness. For your strengths, if you give examples and you're specific
about what your strengths are, then you'll avoid coming off as arrogant. So instead of saying
you took the lead on a project because no one else was capable, you can instead say that you decided
to step up and be team lead because you're good at organising, delegating tasks and time keeping.
You'll most certainly be asked, tell me about a time when you had to solve a complex task
under pressure. For this type of question, I highly recommend that you plan your answers beforehand
so that when you're giving your answer in the interview, you're talking in a way
that's coherent and that is easy to follow. For this type of question, I highly recommend
that you plan your answers beforehand so that you give a structured response that's easy to follow.
For these kind of questions, I normally approach them by using the STAR technique. So this is when
you answer your question by talking about the situation, the task, the action taken and then
the result of your task. For the situation, you should talk about the issue that you are facing
and for the task you should talk about what the complex task was that you had to do. Try to avoid
going into too much detail at this stage because the interviewer is unlikely to understand anyway
so the context is quite irrelevant to them. Then you should go into more detail about the action
taken because this is the most important part. So talk about how you overcame the complex task
and go into detail about what you did to solve it and lastly you should discuss the outcome or the
result of your task. If you're leaving your current company you might be asked why you're leaving. In
fact, I got asked this question at every single interview I did but I was never caught off guard
because I prepared my answers beforehand. For this question be honest without being disrespectful or
rude. If you were treated badly at your previous company then obviously talk about it but just
do so in a way that's respectful. So don't point fingers or try and put the blame on anyone as
it may rub the interviewer the wrong way, making them slightly reluctant to hire anyone who speaks
negatively of their previous workplace. Thank you all so much for watching, I really hope you found
this video useful. Don't forget to like and subscribe if you enjoyed watching this video and
feel free to leave any video suggestions in the comment section below. Bye see you in my next video!