interview gone wrong: whiteboard folies

Question

Back in March, I had my first interview for software engineering within the company I work as tech support. I didn't manage to get the job as I was shot off at the whiteboard coding challenge, which I found overwhelmingly scary (although my code was not 100% well, it wasn't totally bizarre - in my opinion, it only served to show I wasn't on top of my game when it comes to C). At the end, I didn't get a response to the interview, but interestingly, the QA people felt interested in me and asked me to flee over and have a second interview. I was tasked to describe some really basic python scripts in the whiteboard with graphics, and again, I didn't get it right. I must say I have no formal studies, I left school about 4 years before I could enroll into university (assuming a 100% successful rate in those 4 years) and I have a clear lack of communication skills and a bit of a nervousness problem as well as lack of self-confidence. Furthermore, English is my second language, so it all adds up. What I'm trying to find now is how to improve this "condition", what would be the best way for me to try and improve my ability to translate programs into graphics in a way that it is clear and/or represents the idea I'm trying to convey. I've done a few presentations before and I did get some of the graphics looking particularly good, but it is considerably different from doing it with a pen on a whiteboard. Is there any specific part of the university curriculum that requires a lot of these skills that may be worth for me to investigate? How do people practise describing problems in whiteboard drawings?

Answer 1

Look into learning UML

Answer 2

Practice makes perfect, just go to as many interviews as you can, even if you are not interested in the position. Since you are not really interested in the position it won't matter if you make mistakes, you will still get a sense of what people ask, play with the whiteboard, and after a while you won't even get nervous anymore.