To get a job at Luxoft, I went through 6 interviews and passed 3 tests: continuation of the story of developer Sasha Kopaygorodsky

This text is a continuation of the story of Sasha Kopaygorodsky ( Alexander ), a former blogger, editor and musician. A few years ago, Sasha moved to Poland and decided to retrain as a developer. In the first text , Sasha told how he studied and automated processes in the company where he worked. In the second part, he tells how he got a job in the Polish division of Luxoft.

“I myself suggested resuming the process in a couple of months”

In the last text, we stopped at the fact that I interviewed at several large companies - EPAM and Motorola. At Motorola, I reached the last stage, they tried to send me to one team, then to another, but apparently something didn’t work out and a better candidate was found. I had a desire to gain experience working in a large company, understand processes, delve into legacy code, and work with microservices. One year of experience in such a team opens doors anywhere. At that time, at my previous job, one of the clients suddenly asked me to write a mobile application. I didn’t understand how to do it at all. I had knowledge about React JS, although my profile is in the backend. Nevertheless, I took on the project. At this time, a recruiter from Luxoft wrote to me and offered me an interview. I passed the first interview, and they wanted to conduct an additional interview with me to discuss additional questions. At some point in this process (it lasted a week and a half), I realized that I simply would not have time to complete the project at my current job, but I was very interested in it - it was a cross-platform application for a mobile phone, written in React Native. When I realized that I couldn’t cope, I told Luxoft that I couldn’t continue the process and offered to resume it in a couple of months. They told me: “Yes, of course.”

“Damn, did you even become a Java programmer or did we mix something up?”

After 2 months, I responded again and was scheduled for a technical interview again. The first time I was interviewed by “our” people - from Russia or Ukraine, I don’t know exactly. The second time I was interviewed by a senior developer from Brazil. He had all my data: what I told in the last interview and what I couldn’t answer. The interview was almost identical to the first one, only the test task was different. The developer said that I have improvements. Of course, they were, because I repeated everything that was at the first interview and prepared very carefully. The interviewer said that I fit the definition of a strong junior because the projects I was involved in were not big enough. He also added that I could be hired as a junior, but within 3-4 months I could grow to become a regular ( in the hierarchy of developers there is a strong junior who is close to the position of a middle developer - ed.). After this interview, I was scheduled for a call regarding the offer. I didn’t understand this, because Luxoft is an outsource and if you pass the first interview, then you only communicate with the client. After the offer call there was a series of interviews with various projects. I had only 4 interviews with different projects: all of them were related to outstaffing, essentially working for another company through Luxoft. At the first project for which I interviewed, there was generally some nonsense in the style of working with low-code ( low-code is an approach to creating, customizing and modifying systems and applications that practically does not require writing program code- ed.). The problem is that I would not have grown as a programmer on this project at all. The second interview was the most stressful and interesting. It was conducted by two Russian guys, one has a higher education in computer science and is very proud of it, the second does not, but is also proud of himself. They started asking me questions and at the same time arguing among themselves about terminology. Then they asked me to write an implementation of the stack, simultaneously mocking each other and me at every point. So they kept me for 2.5 hours. And at the end one of them said: “Damn, did you even come to become a Java programmer or did we mix something up?” I didn’t understand whether this was a joke or not, but I realized that my patience had come to an end. Moreover, every interview at the company is accompanied by feedback, so I could not afford to answer “to the fullest.” I told them that I was ready to learn and that the team lead who hired me would quickly understand what was what. There are different types of interviews: some want a programmer to write implementations, others give tasks on logic, and some (like the last project) ask questions - the goal is to ask as many questions as possible and get as many answers as possible. I quickly jumped in and loved it. I answered a lot of questions, but I missed some. I was told that they would think about it and report the result. Literally two hours later the recruiter wrote to me that I was being hired for the team. I was very happy about this, but on Monday they sent me a test task. It was very stressful: it seemed like they had hired me for the project, but then there were some checks. I did the test and successfully got the job. To summarize, I passed 6 interviews and 3 test tasks at Luxoft. Luxoft was the 10th company I came to for an interview with, and the first one that told me “Yes.” They will tell you yes if you work on your mistakes.

Tips for juniors:

1. Leave a good aftertaste from the interview with you, prepare a short speech. After the technical interview, I made a self-presentation. It sounded something like this: “On the one hand, I understand perfectly well that my experience may be irrelevant at some points. On the other hand, I made a bunch of applications myself. I implemented my own project. I know one thing: if I spend a lot of time on something, then I do it consciously. Whoever takes me into the project will get a very motivated person who will compensate for ignorance with great desire, time and the ability to think logically.” Subsequently, my line manager told me that one of the reasons they hired me was my motivation for work and this speech after the interview.

2. Don't wait until you are 100% ready for the interview. If you wait until you are prepared, you may never dare to apply for a job. You can be unprepared, but it is important to have minimal experience in order to answer your CV. I sent more than 100 CVs without work experience and it didn’t give me anything.

3. Get at least minimal work experience:

   • Я долгое время не понимал, что такое open source-проекты и How в них залезть. Я влез в эту тему, когда делал приложение на React: нашел человека, который написал определенную библиотеку и мне она частично подходила, так что я начал копаться в codeе и кое-что менять. Тогда-то я и познакомился с таким понятием, How “контрибьютить” (от англ. — вносить вклад во что-нибудь). Создатель библиотеки сказал: “Так давай, законтрибьють изменения, будет прикольно, добавишь функциональности”. Тогда я понял, что это просто. Можно просто загуглить такие open source-проекты и попытаться закоммитить. Это то, что может дать вам необходимый опыт.

   • Если на вашей нынешней работе есть задачи, связанные с программированием, то определенно идите к начальнику и предлагайте что-то полезное: можно автоматизировать процессы, написать сайт. Это будет очень круто, когда вы поймете, что ваш code полезен. Даже если вы работаете на СТО or мойке, предложите запorть сайт с возможностью выбора услуг и калькулятором цен. Потом вы получите возможность саппортить это приложение or сайт за дополнительные деньги. К тому же, такие проекты прибавляют уверенности в себе.

4. Изучите “вопросы и ответы на собеседованиях”. Читайте на русском, а потом пробуйте читать на английском. Обязательно прокачивайте свой английский.

5. Найдите в себе сильный навык, ваш уникальный профиль. Пусть это будет ответственность or навык управления людьми.

6. Когда получите работу, задавайте вопросы коллегам, общайтесь с ними максимально плотно. Ведь они тоже будут давать фидбек, когда у вас пройдет пробный период. Когда человек на контакте со всеми, пытается разобраться и не впадает в панику, то это хорошо скажется на его оценке.

7. Не впадайте в панику, когда получите работу. Если речь идет о больших корпорациях, не надо переживать, если вы уже попали в компанию. У них есть трехмесячный пробный период, но разработчик не будет изначально писать ничего важного, пока он не пробудет там месяца полтора-два, потому что только ожидание доступов к системе можно ждать месяц.