2nd interview with HackReactor today! This time it was an actual tech interview so I was even more nervous. Once again my interviewer was a pleasure to talk to and very calming. I also picked up my new favorite phrase: “You nailed it with a nail gun.” This was in regards to one of the functions I had to implement. It’s crazy how different my experiences with interviewing for two different schools where. AppAcademy just was not warm and fuzzy at all which I guess is OK, but they just never seemed to care who I was, just what I could do with code. I did OK (got a conditional acceptance pending a final interview) but I felt like they put so much emphasis on logic puzzles, which, heck, shouldn’t they be helping me with in prep to get me a job? I’m also not sure how I feel about the lack of finding out whether I’m some crazy mouth-breather who can’t even interact with people. I just wonder what types of people end up in the class.

HR on the other hand has been surprisingly FUN to interview with. It hasn’t been exactly easy, but it has been fun to play with JavaScript. The first interview was nice and lite and I got to show off that I knew what recursion was (but forgot to add a base case initially - d’oh). Then the take home work was well designed and pushed me along to learn some jQuery and how to pull data using AJAX. Then the last tech interview had me creating my own versions of some Underscore.js functions which was fun and thought-provoking and definitely tricky but not in a gotcha sort of way but more of a pushing me in the right direction to learn it myself. If this is what the class feels like, sign me up!! HR just seems so nurturing and I love to learn.

I should know if I got in (or if I have to try again, because goddamnit I’m trying again if I don’t make it this time) by Friday. Keep your fingers and toes and eyes crossed for me!