dreaming of saturn
I had the first of my two scheduled technical interviews earlier today, and I bombed it. I expected as much, since I have not prepared for technical interviews at all, but I still feel the hot breath of shame on my neck.
I went into the interview anticipating a coding challenge, but the HR coordinator interviewing me simply asked me a few conceptual technical & behavioral questions and recorded my responses to forward over to the engineering team. The six technical questions she had weren't terribly difficult but still had me grasping at straws. I was so woefully underprepared, the whole thing was over in fifteen minutes.
I seriously considered canceling this interview. The job doesn't seem all that bad, but I don't want to code and accurately predicted that the technical interview would be a nightmare. I don't know exactly why I followed through with it, but I felt that even doing poorly on the interview would beat not trying at all. At least now I can learn the answers to the six questions they asked me in case I find myself in another technical interview later. I'm proud that I at least tried, I guess.
So I'm back to applying, trying to heed the advice I got to "think outside of the box that is [my] degree." My interview failure gives me a small jolt of motivation to keep looking, but it's been tough. I struggle to come up with places to apply, and most of the ones I can think of don't have any remotely suitable positions for me. I applied to a few jobs at my city's art museum and looked for openings in some other places (nature preserve, zoo, aquarium, stadium, theatres, local government, universities, schools). But I'm running out of ideas again. There are not a whole lot of places looking to hire full-time employees with no experience.
To make matters worse, I've been tasked with a large development project at work (my tutoring gig). My supervisor (if you can call him that?) sort of just plopped it into my lap yesterday night. I wasn't going to refuse, since the pay upon completion is quite good, but I'm apprehensive about it. The deadline is in less than two weeks and I'm not confident I can get it done before then. At the very least it will mean some long days and nights ahead, and likely more responsibility to come.