Foot in the door (industry), how to prepare to progress?

Question

I have around 3 years in industry at the same company I joined when I graduated. I want to look at other options soon - how do I prepare for this at this early point in my career?

The obvious thing is to renew my resume to reflect my current experience (which I haven't touched in a while) and brush up on some behavioral Q/A.

But what else is suggested for someone with 3 years of experience? Should I start doing leetcode? Does 3 YOE not mean anything and I should prepare as I did 3 years ago?

kf1oolao · Accepted Answer

Have you heard of the STAR method used in resumes?

SITUATION

Describe the situation that you were in, or the task that you needed to accomplish. Give enough detail for the interviewer to understand the complexities of the situation. This example can be from a previous job, school project, volunteer activity, or any relevant event.

TASK

What goal were you working toward?

ACTION

Describe the actions you took to address the situation with an appropriate amount of detail, and keep the focus on you. What specific steps did you take? What was your particular contribution? Be careful that you don’t describe what the team or group did when talking about a project. Let us know what you actually did. Use the word “I,” not “we,” when describing actions.

RESULT

Describe the outcome of your actions and don’t be shy about taking credit for your behavior. What happened? How did the event end? What did you accomplish? What did you learn? Provide examples using metrics or data if applicable.

seeplusplus · Answer

Study thread here: https://www.levels.fyi/community/thread/kOvC13/study-plan-for-big-tech

traeenni · Answer

Hmm, first thing I would do is make a list of all the projects you worked on so you can start updating your resume. Hard to tell what you should do next technically but for the behavioral, practice telling stories. Every project on the list should speak to:

- technical challenges you encountered and skills you deployed
- people you worked with
- results and impact

msCSdegree · Answer

leetcode is a staple. grind as much as you can, especially if you are pursing a more technical role. there are other good guides to interview prep as well.

helluvaguy · Answer

What I generally see are people overconfidently going into interviews focused on technical skills but not paying attention to how they talk about their past experiences. If it helps, I had tremendous help in behavioral interviews with this deck https://9to5cards.com/product/the-behavioral-interview-deck/

Foot in the door (industry), how to prepare to progress?

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