A recruiter/HR found me on Handshake and sent a personalized email asking me if I was interested in their TLP (software engineering) at Target for their January class. 30 min prescreen call with basic questions about experience, interests, and telling me more about their TLP.
Next, 30 min technical screen/call with a software engineer. The questions were: Tell me about yourself, what are you comfortable with, what do you want to learn, tell me about your internship, tell me about your projects, what was a technical challenge you encountered and how did you solve it, what do you like the most, what data structure has a runtime of O(1), what are design patterns in Java (why would you ask this question to an entry level developer?), rate yourself on Java. Overall this interview was really easy besides the one OOP question.
I was invited to go onsite for a 2 hour interview. First 10 minutes with HR for a quick tour and took me to our interview room. I was met by a Sr. Engineering Manager for a 45 min behavioral interview. The guy was really easy to talk to and relaxed. He even showed me some of the questions on the script that he's "required to ask" me. He also showed me some of the technical things he works on with his team on his laptop. Questions: how do you stay up to date with technology? On a scale of 1-10, how much do you like Target? Tell me about your favorite project. How do you handle bugs? The next 45 mins was with a Sr. Software Engineer who was being shadowed by a software engineer on his team that recently completed the TLP. One question was to design a shopping cart class on a whiteboard or paper. This was really easy because I researched it beforehand and they were impressed. They had no concerns about my pseudo-code and threw some extra requirements at me that I handled easily. On a scale of 1-10, how much of a fit are you for our TLP? (hint: you should say 10, say that you like the idea of two 6-month rotations on different teams). What is your best programming language? (hint: most of their teams use Java, so this is a good answer). The rest of the questions were basic, generic technical questions. No OOP, algorithms, or data structures.
The last 30 mins I got a quick tour from a software engineer who recently completed the TLP and he took me to some of the tech offices to show me their workspaces. He was telling me a lot about things he learned, why he likes working there, the technology that he works with on his team, and how Amazon tries to poach employees from Target. He said that target used to be mostly contractors, but is now 90% FTE and 10% contractors. He said Target is becoming more of a technology company. Their workspaces are fantastic, open office layout with team tables/tv screens/whiteboards. Great for agile, I haven't seen this at any other place I interviewed, most places are still using cubicles. He said they typically work from 9-4, have nerf guns, and do puzzles. He said they do 80% work and 20% research, meaning that Fridays are "google days", where you practice/research/learn whatever you want. Very collaborative environments, you can expect to be in the same pods as your product owner, business analyst, scrum master, and other devs.
To sum up, the whole process was easy, relaxed, and enjoyable. The only "bad" part of the experience was the lack of feedback. I got a call from HR 2 weeks later saying "Sorry, we decided to pick other candidates". I asked why and she said company policy does not allow her to say. It's too bad, I know that I did great in the interviews and I felt like a good fit.
