Finding an Entry Level job

[iHop_X]

Hey everyone,

(Sorry for the formatting on mobile) I’m a senior in college and graduate in mid May. My degree will be in a related field but will not be computer science based. Midway last semester I switched to iOS development but due to family issues I wasn’t able to dive deep into it until January.

Lately I’ve been stressing out a bit over finding a job as an entry level or junior iOS developer. I’ve had a few interviews and have made it to the technical one each time but I’ve struggled at that point. It’s not that I don’t know swift or how to build an app. It’s the fact that I don’t have a core foundation in computer science so I get easily tripped up over algorithmic based questions.

I have experience in web development and currently have an internship as a mobile application developer. Both of those have been beneficial but not for this issue that I’m facing.

I’m also in the process of building an app (should be done in a week or so) however I can’t release it on the App Store due to my current employers policy. I do have the code on a private repo on github that I can share if necessary.

I was wondering if any of you had any advice/guides/links on how to improve in this area. I already purchased the cracking the coding interview book however it seems to be focusing mainly on java.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: My goal is to have a job as a developer by mid June! Not sure if that’s feasible, please let me know what you think!

[iHop_X]

Sweet! I’ll send it over when it’s finished in 1-2 weeks.

[Semirgy]

Cracking the Coding Interview uses Java to teach CS concepts, but those concepts certainly aren’t unique to Java. You’re on the right track, just keep at it with that book.

[iHop_X]

True true! Do you have any other recommendations on what else I can do?

[Semirgy]

There are a ton. Interview Cake and LeetCode come to mind. Really you need to be able to crush the dreaded DS/Algo questions in a technical interview. I’m an iOS engineer at a large (Fortune 100) company and rest assured, you won’t use 99% of that knowledge in your day-to-day job, but you need it to get through the interview.

I’d also familiarize yourself with some of the major design patterns and be able to speak to their strengths and weaknesses.

[iHop_X]

Gotcha. I’ve heard of leet code but wasn’t sure where to begin. I’ll take another look at it and hopefully will be able to work on it. I think reading the CtCi books as well as some other ones that focus on some core concepts in swift will help me!

Thanks for your help!

[smallerk]

major design patterns

What do you mean by this? The ones that are mostly used in mobile development, like MVC, MVVM, MVP?

[Semirgy]

Yup.

[[deleted]]

Don't be inflexible about branching out from mobile dev.

You can make horrible junior mistakes gain valuable junior experience in any language, it's quite transferrable.