geekitarian

If you’re a computer science / information systems / computer engineering student, or if you’re working as a software engineer / developer / programmer, chances are that sooner or later you’re going to run into a coding interview: you’ll be given a problem and will be expected to solve it, face to face. Even if you can write great code, there are a few things you can do to increase your chances of impressing an interviewer. While different companies use a variety of styles, here’s some advice that should apply generally. Before the Interview Read up on the company and the position before you walk in the door. You don't have to go crazy - a few minutes spent searching the web can give you good results here. Find out about the languages and technologies they use - if you know some of them, leverage your strengths here. If you don't, try to fill the gaps as much as you can before the interview. You might not be able to learn everything you don't know by the interview, b...

The fall semester is a challenge - coming back to school after a summer off, it can be hard to get right back into the swing of things. Vacations, barbecues, parties, trips... there are lots of things to keep you out of the studying mindset for a few months and that can bleed into the fall semester. Unfortunately, lots of companies will have selected their summer interns by the time you've read the syllabus for all of your classes. This means that you've got some work to do to secure your dream job. Here are a few tips to hit the ground running. #1: Figure out what you want. If you're a freshman, you can learn a lot about companies you might like to work for at this point - there are definitely internships out there for after your freshman year, but if you don't feel like you're ready, you can still also collect lots of information. As a sophomore, next summer might seem like a long way away, but it's important to consider if you're going to want an in...

I've been teaching technology courses for almost a decade now, and I really enjoy helping students work on their careers outside of the classroom - whether it's trying to help them find jobs, improve interview skills, or helping with networking.  Resume help is a common request; technical resumes can be a bit different than others so I'm glad to share some of the things that I've learned.  It seems to me that a lot of students have a good base for their resume, but make some common mistakes; here are some issues I regularly notice and how you can improve upon them. #8: Ordering Problems with ordering are not the most common problem I see, but I see it often enough.  Since people tend to read resumes from the top to bottom, the order that you present your content sections can be pretty important.  There are no hard-and-fast rules about ordering on a resume; but because of the typical top-to-bottom approach, I think it's best to put the most interesting and compel...