Projects I made for job applications
Intro
Making it through the gauntlent of finding a new tech job can be tough. One of the most important things a company can do is find out if you have the hard technical skills or not.
In most interview processes you’re asked to create an application to show off your skills. During a good interview process this kind of app can be used to kick off a meaningfull conversation about coding.
I’ve been asked to crated many apps like this in all my interview processes. However, at the end of the process whether there is an offer or not you’re left with this little app in your Github repo.
In the interest of showing up and coming developers what these projects could potentially look like I’d like to share some of the apps I’ve created.
Darkside to being asked to make an app 😕
I’m super sensitive to the amount of time being asked of me from an interview process. I understand that the company needs to have some idea of what my skills are, but this is not the primary care in my opinion.
I think it’s fair to be asked to make something that takes around four hours max. Anything more than that starts to feel like abusing the power dynamic between the applicant and the employeer.
An alternitive to giving someone a project to create would be for a company to dedicate their developer resorces to having a coding interview where there is live coding. This also has it’s downsides but it addresses the time issue.
Last notes before the projects
- Not going to say the names of the companies
- Not going to say the outcomes or if I turned in the projects
- Trying not to give away any info that’d point to the company at all
I understand that some companies spend a lot of time making these project requirements and I don’t want to spoil that.
On to the projects 🤠
Berlin Weather Next ⛅️
This is a good old weather app. The company gave me an API to use to get the data. A user story to help me with the development of the app and some tech requirements. For example this app had to be made with React or Angular.
This was a fun project for a few reasons. I used this app to experiment with react-query. Going forward wherever I have a chance to toss in react-query I will.
Perils App 🎭
I like this one. It was fun to mirror the actual app in which I was applying to work on. I kept the tech stack on this one pretty safe. Used only tools that I was super familiar with. I think that had a pretty positive impact on the final product for sure.
Proper Next App 🦾
This is an example of an app that I was not super happy with. However, I still had fun and found interesting things about it while creating it. For example I thought creating this little search feature to filter the table was pretty cool. I also like the style of the app. Quite clean with touches of color.
In Review
Writing this post was a really nice way to overview all these little apps i’ve created. It’s also brought to my attention things that I can do more consistantly to have a better end result more times than not.
Of course these are not all of my projects but if you’re interested in seeing all my repos and finding others check out my Github. They’re all there, I try not to hide anything