Pre-apprenticeship: employment preparation

foundersandcoders / coursebook

The new coursebook

https://learn.foundersandcoders.com

Other

50 stars 23 forks source link

Pre-apprenticeship: employment preparation #544

Closed sofer closed 2 years ago

sofer commented 2 years ago

After the experience of running interviews over the last two cohorts, we are getting closer to a better process. In summary:

Start CV and GitHub profile preparation from Week 1
Start Employer Q&As from Week 2
Introduce at least one nominated interviewee from us, in order to ensure that everyone gets practice
Introduce a strong recommendation that employers use the projects (website/mashup/to-dos) as the basis for technical interviews

Things to think about:

Disrupting the Wednesday (or in future, maybe, Monday) sessions with employer Q&As may be less preferable than setting aside a separate 6pm slot for it on a different day
Initiate feedback from employers about what sort of projects they would like to see in future interview rounds

sofer commented 2 years ago

Broadly agreed for FAC24. I will check with @oliverjam before requesting any feedback from employers.

sofer commented 2 years ago

Curriculum outline: https://hackmd.io/AM273MEXRLqLv1ZvwMR5PQ

sofer commented 2 years ago

Update: I am considering removing CVs from the apprentice screening process and restricting employers to 1) screening questions; 2) GitHub profile, after screening and pre-interview.

sofer commented 2 years ago

more feedback from the cohort:

live coding challenges are being used by some employers, practicing them in pairs would be useful
one leetcode (or similar) per week, please, and starting early and with more guidance on how to approach a problem
more time on mock non-technical interviews
mock take-home tests as homework in 2nd half of course
more emphasis on side project early on
more opportunities for presentations

In general: keep working in pairs and small groups; create more opportunities for whole-class presentations; put more thought into the kinds and volume of problems being given for homework; give more guidance at the beginning.

sofer commented 2 years ago

Notes to self:

Set aside 1h10m (40+30m) for project planning+presentation session on the Thursday session in Weeks 2, 5 and 8
Set aside 1h10m for project review session on the Monday session in Weeks 3, 6 and 9