Got rejected, but had a pleasant experience anyways

Pethaf · August 23, 2019, 9:31am

So I applied for a job, got a coding challenge that I kind of botched. There were soome issues with the HTML (to be expected for a job that was done in 2 days, I got the assignment in june but due to me beeing stupid I submiteted it in august but I had to rush it). I called the hiring manager up after the rejection and he was really pleasant, I asked for what I could improve to have another chance, and if they had a cool-down on reapplying. I got the response that it was probably good for me to get some experience building some real sites and working on translating sketches into real designs (i.e. basic HTML and CSS) but the javascript and react looked good. From his perspective I had taken a couple of months to complete it, and that was not ok, from my perspective I had completed it in 2 days and forgotten about QA.

Anyways, he was really nice and gave me some pointer on what to improve and said I could reapply any time when I felt I had improved sufficiently. So, the question is, how do I move on? I would really like this job.

ieahleen · August 23, 2019, 9:38am

I would say, take some time, maybe (if you haven’t already) do the take home projects in the interview prep section on the fcc curriculum
To not give the impression of trying again immediately kind of “Maybe this time I get lucky”
A couple of months then try again

Pethaf · August 23, 2019, 9:39am

Yeah, I’m not going to reapply immediately. I’m going to do some learning on my own first, but I still feel that being able to bang out a mostly functional design in 2 days says something about not having too steep a learning curve.

ieahleen · August 23, 2019, 9:43am

maybe working on time managment can also help
so next time you don’t give the impression of doing the work you do in two days in two months

Pethaf · August 23, 2019, 9:51am

Yes, you are totally right. What I am saying is that the hiring manager said he thought it would take me more than a couple of months to get up to skill, on the basis that I needed 2 months to finish the assignment and I feel that based on the fact that I made a design that was close to what was asked in 2 days I can do it much faster.