Don’t do this during your programming interview

Welcome back! When I first came out of college a few years ago I did what i’m pretty sure everyone else does, mass apply to a bunch of jobs. Now, I think this is one of the smartest things you can do (in my opinion), but if you’re lucky enough to break through and get an interview with a company, please do not do this.

Act Like You Know Something When You Don’t

This seems pretty obvious right? Why would you lie in an interview, but you could just put out a random lie that can cost you the whole interview without even realizing it, let me explain. During my early interviews that I would do, I would essentially act like I was 100% capable of every single thing of that job, even if that wasn’t the case. As I mentioned, I don’t do this anymore (since i’m many years into my career at this point) but starting off, I was pretty desperate to get any job I could get my hands on. The problem was that I thought I could outsmart the interviewer by acting like I knew something when I didn’t, here is an example of what this would look like:

Interviewer: So, have you ever used insert a language I may have never used before?

Me: Yes, I’ve used that a lot throughout the last couple years