Navigating the iOS Interview
Looking for an iOS job? This article gives you the best advice, tools and interview questions to prepare you for a successful iOS interview process. By Lea Marolt Sonnenschein.
Your Approach to the Behavioral Interview
It can be quite difficult and stressful to try to come up with these examples at the interview itself, so here are some ways to prepare:
- Create a document of some bigger projects you’re proud of.
- Write short descriptions of the projects following the STAR method.
- Take a look at our list of competencies on the interview repo.
- Think about and write down the story you’d tell to address each competency through your projects.
To do well in this interview, you need to get comfortable telling your stories in a compelling way. This means practicing out loud. It will help you understand where you get stuck, what you forget and how you can improve. But don’t memorize them; that will definitely backfire. Instead, become comfortable discussing them from multiple angles!
One last word of wisdom on this topic is that not all examples have to be related to your previous employment. They can also be examples from your personal projects, family life or community engagement. Pick the examples that best represent you!
Resources for the Behavioral Interview
Prepare for this interview with Gayle Laakmann’s Behavior Preparation Grid, or the more modern version of the behavioral preparation grid we put together on Airtable.
Other Job-Finding Tips
Of course, getting a job involves more than interviewing. We didn’t cover these things in this article but here are some links and quick tips to help you out:
Finding Remote Job Leads
Apart from your traditional job posts on company websites and LinkedIn, several other websites now cater specifically to remote workers:
- iOS Dev Jobs
- Uncubed
- Product Hunt Remote Job List
- WorkForThem
- Hire Tech Ladies
- Unicorn Hunt
- Work With Us
- RemoteOK
- Working Nomads
- Remote
- We Work Remotely
- Remotive
- Upstream App: Grow your professional network.
Reaching Out
If you’re passionate about a job or a company, my number one suggestion is to NOT apply through their site. Instead, try to reach out to a hiring manager or someone you know at that company. Genuine interest goes a long way and getting someone to vouch for you is worth 100 times more than the most brilliant resume. On top of that, most big and medium-sized companies offer referral bonuses for their employees to bring people in. So, if you can, get that referral; you might actually be doing them a favor!
Ask Questions!
Normally, there’s some time reserved for questions at the end of the interview. This is the time for you to be the interviewer! Start by asking some baseline questions about the company and their processes. Then ask them more specific questions that you have from your research and the interview process. You can ask about their tech stack, test coverage, code review practices or anything you need to know before making a decision.
Also, check out this list of questions from Julia Evans: Questions I’m asking in interviews.
Your Portfolio
Since iOS development is a skill that we can easily show off, it follows that companies will often expect a portfolio of projects you’ve worked on. If you’re just starting out, that might sound intimidating, but here’s a list of App Ideas by Florin Pop to get you started.
Another way to approach this is to look at some conceptual designs and actually make them a reality in code at websites like UI Movement or Dribbble. Who knows, you might actually end up collaborating on a real app?
Networking
No one likes it, but networking is an essential part of any job search process. In fact, a significant portion of the job search is just getting that interview. If you have a strong network, that’s much easier to do than if you don’t. I strongly recommend that you connect with your local iOS meet-up group, go to conferences, speak at meet-ups or submit your own talks to to conferences and contribute to open source to participate in the iOS community.
Take the first step today by joining the raywenderlich.com Discord server, or the iOS Folks Slack channel.
Where to Go From Here?
We truly hope you found this article helpful and that you can use it as a tool to prepare for your next job interview. Interviewing is tough, especially in these times of uncertainty, so don’t be discouraged if you get rejected. It can happen for a number of reasons you can’t predict or explain, so just keep trying, believe in yourself, and you’ll get there!
Once you land that dream job, I suggest you take a peek at:
- Living By the Code, to take a broader look at your career and learn from our experts.
- Review salary expectations with the Blind platform. On Blind you can anonymously connect with other professionals in your field to candidly discuss all career-related matters.
We’ve shared an abundance of resources throughout the article, so now it’s our turn to ask you to share your thoughts, experiences, tips and advice!
What are some things you like or dislike about the interview process? What would you want to improve? What are your strategies?
Join us in the forums to discuss further, and help us grow our repository of questions by submitting your favorites here: Favorite iOS question form. Thank you and good luck!