Career Journal Reflection Questions

Paste these questions into your career journal and answer them at the end of each project.

The projects you complete at Turing will help you build proficiency in many skills you will need on the job. They’re are also extremely useful experiences to discuss in networking conversations and job interviews! Students and alumni who can confidently speak to their specific technical contributions and teamwork processes tend to be the most successful in the job hunt.

This takes practice. The prompts below are meant to mimic technical and behavioral questions you might be asked in interviews.

First Solo Project - Viewing Party

Technical Takeaways

When consuming an API you’ve never worked with before, how do you get started?

What are the steps to consuming a JSON API that requires authentication?

How did you ensure your code for this project was high quality?

Behavioral Takeaways

How did you go about asking for help while working on this project?

Describe your process for reading through and digesting the TMDB documentation.

Misc.

If you could start this project over with the knowledge you have now, what would you do differently?

Paired Project

Technical Takeaways

Compare and contrast the experience of consuming an API vs exposing an API.

What are some important considerations when designing your API endpoints?

Collaboration Takeaways

Reflect on your process for building out the Rails Engine API endpoints. In what ways would this process be different if you were building API endpoints in parallel to a front end developer writing code to consume said API?

Did you and your partner have any disagreements about design choices? How did you resolve them?

Misc.

What tangible steps could you take to further improve your confidence around API exposure?

Consultancy

Technical Takeaways

What is one feature or tool from the “List of Glory” that you chose to implement, and why?

What is one feature or tool from the “List of Glory” you didn’t implement, and why?

How did you ensure your code for this project was high quality?

Who is your user persona?

Collaboration Takeaways

Describe a technical contribution you made to this group project. What did you proactively take on?

Describe a non-technical contribution you made to this group project. What did you proactively take on?

Imagine you have been given a user research budget that you must spend before your next iteration of development. What questions would you ask a first round of product testers?

Misc.

Which engineering or personal values showed up the most in your work on this project?

Final Project

Technical Takeaways

Why do you think we required a POST request to the /api/v1/users endpoint to send a JSON payload in the request body?

Did you use a gem for serializing? Why or why not?

Collaboration Takeaways

Describe a quality of your documentation (project README) that you are proud of.

Misc.

Looking back at mod 3, how has your process improved when it comes to facing a new or novel problem?