Do I suck overall, am I horrible at interviews or does this happen to everyone else?
I am a recent grad (graduated with around a 2.9 GPA) but have been working at my current company for about 7 months now, but before I got this job, I had done a whole lot of interviews. I appled to almost every company I could find on Handshake, Linkedin, Glassdoor, etc all over the U.S. I had done calls from Linkedin recruiters as well as many of them had reached out to me. I also gave interviews at each and every FAANG company, but all I got in the end was one offer from a consulting firm. So all in all, my question is: Is this normal? The software engineer industry is booming and it shouldn’t be this hard to get a job as an entry level engineer. Also, what is your advice to how long I should stay at my current company before people become less harsh on those interviews and stop caring about GPA?
Your resilience is a great skill. Keep going at it and you will succeed
Why do you have a 2.9 GPa? That would scare me about your grasp on fundamentals if I were a recruiter.
He may have done well in his CS courses and not so well in other courses. His major gpa May be higher than the cumulative gpa. In that regard, taking gpa as an indication of good CS fundamentals is wrong.
My problem actually was not that. I struggled in CS early in my first two years causing my GPA to shatter. It was hard to bring it up to a 2.9 but on my transcript but there was a significant level of improvement, just not enough to get to a 3.0. It was also because classes got harder too as I started my upper level CS courses around then.
Your gpa is not a problem else u not have interviews
Pretty sure OP thinks a phone screen counts as an interview
I did have a lot of phone screens but getting past that was easy. I think my biggest problem was explaining code and how I came up with the solution every time a problem came up. It is still something I struggle with. I can code well but I can’t sell it.
If you managed to get an interview at every fang then your gpa was not the problem. It was your interview skills.
Agree
Just because the software industry is booming doesn't mean getting an entry level becomes easier. The competition is actually much more intense compared to a few years ago because there are more and more students majoring in CS or related fields and want to get in to software industry.
“I also gave interviews at each and every FAANG company, but all I got in the end was one offer from a consulting firm.” You identified your own issue. Those companies that gave you interviews were **willing to overlook** your GPA. You just didn’t perform well enough on the interviews.
Says u are in data. Are u looking for DS roles or SWE? Are u looking at DS roles? That may be a problem if your DS trying to get SWE role. How’s your LeetCode?
Data Science or SWE roles work well for me. It does not matter too much however as I am still very early in my career and I just want to focus on learning as much as I can.
Also, I’ve done a lot of Leetcode, still have a bit of difficulty solving the hard questions but I can do all of easy and medium leetcode questions.
Why don’t you just leave your gpa out then ? You aren’t a fresh grad anymore so might as well just leave it out
It was a mistake to finish your degree with a 2.9. You should have done a 5th/6th year to fix your holes in your transcript or dropped out. You can’t fix it now by spamming interviews, bust your ass at your job and get real experience. Your next window for a big upgrade is with 15-24 months experience but you’ll likely get most value from internal promotions unless you actually level up.
Drop out rather than finish a degree with a 2.9 GPA? I don't think that's good advice