Want to stay technical and give back? Volunteer!

Last spring, on every other Wednesday for two months, I volunteered at Pursuit to conduct technical interviews for engineering fellows.

This was important to me for many reasons. In the tech industry there are not many people that look like me and I feel it is important to give back.

Furthermore, one of the most challenging aspects of being a manager is staying technical. Frameworks, languages, APIs, libraries, and more are always evolving. When you are in your day to day, how do you stay up to speed?

Well let’s talk a bit about staying technical while also giving back:

Why it’s important to stay technical

Our industry changes so rapidly, learn or die. Not physically, but career-wise. If you do not evolve, your career progression will stagnate.

What you do at work will not necessarily align with the current trends and ways of the industry. Many moons ago I worked on Adobe Flash when it was dying. In a past life, I was deep into Angular when React was eating the world. To prepare for interviews in 2019 and early 2020, with JavaScript as my strongest language, I still needed to take time to brush up on data structures and algorithms.

So staying technical is critical. As a manager? Even more so as our days are not spent coding or designing or architecting. But rather coaching, mentoring, executing, building teams, and setting direction.

For 6+ months, prior to volunteering, I was deep in the interview process with FAANGs, top tier tech companies, and high-growth startups. In working with Pursuit, I saw an opportunity to keep the learning going while also giving back!

Why it’s important to give back

To get to where I am I have stood on the shoulders of giants, had the support of family, armies of friends, professors, loved ones, coworkers, and mentors of all flavors. I would not be here without the support of others. I feel indebted and try as I can to pay it forward (and back) as often as I can.

And let’s keep it real, representation maters. Seeing Pursuit’s mission and passion to provide opportunities to the talent with the most need and potential to get their first jobs in tech and advance in their career, strongly resonated with me.

Throughout the interviews I met engineering fellows who were technically proficient, driven, hard working, and passionate about growing as software engineers. If by seeing someone in this industry who looks like them, I was able to inspire even in the smallest degree, then I would have done even more than I could have hoped for. Humbled I would be.

How I got involved as a volunteer for Pursuit

I met Alexis Medina, the manager of volunteering, at a networking event for engineering leaders in NYC. A pursuit fellow gave an engaging presentation on their work, what they learned, and the impact it had. I was hooked.

I signed my name up as a volunteer and started from there. A few months later we figured out a time and what volunteer opportunities would best align with my skills. I decided to support them in their technical interview process. Looking to volunteer, reach out.

What I did to prepare

For preparation, Pursuit provides the volunteers with an overview and a walkthrough of the interview process. There was a list of technical questions prepared by the Pursuit team for us to choose from. Questions like this one and this one (nah, these ain’t the real questions, I ain’t giving you those. I have been sworn to secrecy).

To make sure I was on point, I wrote up answers to each of the questions, following the same interview process as the fellows. Furthermore, I made sure I was familiar with the different ways to answer each question as well as the time and space complexity of optimal solutions.

The great part is that the fellows take programs in either JavaScript or Swift. So some of the candidates presented their answers in Swift, which I am not familiar with. I took this as an opportunity to brush up on Swift fundamentals. While I am no Swift expert, I can definitely knock out a “Hello World” or two and answer low level programming interview questions :).

As I was studying for interviews during this time I was already familiar with this process. However, as we were using Repl instead of white boards I wanted to make sure all of my code ran and compiled. No time to write unit tests, but I did think about how I would test my solutions.

How the interview process went

Each week I was set up with two candidates to interview over Google Hangout. Given the pandemic, each one hour interview was conducted remotely. We spent a few minutes saying hello and then jumped right into it.

I presented the question to the candidate and we used Repl as our “white board”. I offered hints where appropriate, took notes on how they approached the problem, asked clarifying questions, and ultimately determined if they were able to solve the problem. There were guidelines provided by Pursuit on how to provide hints and what to look for, so I was all set there 😀.

At the end of each interview I submitted my notes into a form and checked in with the volunteer lead.

What I enjoyed most about the interview process was meeting the fellows. Each one had a story, a reason for pursuing their passions. It was insightful to see how they approached each problem. As I was actively interviewing myself I could give pointers (after the interview was completed) and also reflect on where I could improve when I was in similar interview situations in the future.

Conclusion

I found volunteering a highly rewarding experience. Not only did it allow me to give back in a way that aligned with my values, but it also helped me continue to stay technical while I was interviewing and embarking on a career change!

If you have the time, I highly encourage you to volunteer. You will both be able to stay technical, provide support, and most importantly give back! Check out Pursuit and don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you want chat more!

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