Joseph K. Alumni Spotlight

JOSEPH K:

What helped most in preparing for the interview? I don't know. You’ll never be ready. 

I’ve held like a couple web developer roles. That's where I got interested in coding and I was looking into like learning more in depth. And I decided to join Sabio. 

Q: What was your experience like at Sabio?

JOSEPH K:

Mine was online, but the lectures were good. They were good at explaining stuff. If you ever get stuck, then I can always go on the queue. Even your cohort can help you and anyone in your cohort. 

Q: What did you work on in your cohort?

JOSEPH K:

It was a web application where they wanted to provide users with like wellness information. They wanted to provide like newsletters, events, stuff like that, to their users. My end result was they can make an event and if they want to do a live hosting on Zoom for that specific event they were able to just create a Zoom meeting by just clicking a button and they were able to email the links to the subscribers. 

Q: What was the job search process like?

JOSEPH K:

After graduation, I think I averaged about 15 resumes per day. Sometimes I just kind of lost all the motivation, I just kind of laid down and didn’t think of anything. But yeah, out of a 100, I guess, I think I had like five actual interviews. Out of those five I got this one which I'm starting in two weeks.

Q: What would you tell yourself if you had to go through the program again?

JOSEPH K:

I would tell myself to not jump to the next step unless you really understand what you're coding. I know the pace is pretty fast and you have to learn so many things in a short period of time. But I did make a mistake of like rushing to finish the lessons and homework and stuff like that, but that kind of bit my ass later on because like on the interview I knew how it worked, but I couldn't really, like lay it out and explain it in my own words. So I did try to study up on like data structures and algorithms. I know you guys have a lot on your hands, but if you want, you can try to set aside...Like, say your class starts at nine, then maybe you can get on your computer at 8:30 and try to solve one or two LeetCode problems just to get yourself ready. And it can kind of helps you like warm up your brain before you start the lesson. 

Q: How did you prepare for the job interview?

JOSEPH K:

For me, I was never ready. I did study. Like there will be like study material that Sabio will provide. I think the mock interview...You ask Sabio, like you want to do a mock interview. You can do it as many times as you can. So people who get on there really help you understand what kind of answer the interviewers expect. If you get the question wrong or you don't know the question, then they will explain it to you. And that really helped in the next interview. 

Q: Were you asked any behavioral questions?

JOSEPH K:

So behavioral questions, I think I was never asked like why I wanted to become a developer. I think everyone asked... when you were talking about your last project or your job, one thing they always asked was what kind of problems did you face and how did you overcome it?

Q: What are your roles and responsibilities at your job?

JOSEPH K:

The position is for software development, but my title is a systems something integration engineer. At the time I was just looking for anything. I wasn't really looking at the title. But yeah, I mean, I am happy. I think it's something I was looking for. I was told that I will be working on like 100% back end. 

Q: Can you talk about your salary and benefits package?

JOSEPH K:

Mine is fully on-site. Benefits, PTO, health insurance, dental, vision, everything. My salary ranges around $80k-$85k. I asked for that number and they gave me that number.