What is your greatest strength and how do you know?
I would say that my greatest strength is my optimism. Not only in how I process thoughts, but in how I relate to people. One thing that I really believe in is to assume innoncence. Be optimistic that people are trying to do the right thing, but might have just made a mistake they didn't intend. Or maybe that there's a reason that somebody did something a certain way that may not be obvious. Doing this has helped me in past jobs relate to people better, and it's helped in my personal life with my family. I'm also optimistic in my thoughts or ideas, and tend to think that maybe doing something different will be better. This has allowed me in previous jobs to find better ways to do something. I know it's my greatest strength, because I feel it's one of the best things that has helped me to become a better person.
How do you work best?
I work best in a collaborative environment, where people expect themselves and others to help out when needed. I feel that doing so helps create a better relationship among people, which helps produce better work. That being said, I also work best by trying to figure something out by myself before asking for help. I think that the steps you take in order to figure something out is helpful for you in just learning something, compared to just asking for help the first moment you experience any hardship. So I like to work out problems by myself, and if it reaches a point where I'm still not getting it, I like to reach out for any help.
What is your greatest area of improvement?
I think my greatest area of improvement is with staying organized. I tend to keep a lot of thoughts or plans for things in my head, which doesn't always work the greatest because I'll forget something every once in awhile. Also, I tend to have an idea of how I expect my day/week/month to go, but I need to write it down or use some sort of tool to help me stay on top of it all. Organizing my thoughts, and what I want to do for the day will be very important while at Turing because of the volume of info and learning that we will be doing, so I'm going to be focused on improving this in the next few months.
How do you hope to maximize your strengths for your new career in software development?
I would say that my curiousity is one of my strenghts, so I hope to keep on developing that while at my time at Turing and beyond. I've always been one to try out a new button or feature on anything new that I'm using, or just trying to find out if there's another way of doing something. I hope to maximize on this in software development by trying to find different ways to solve an issue, or by seeing if a new release of software or code base could improve on something. I also hope to maximize my strenghts in general by just working on them everyday. Put some dedicated time to improve my knowledge of terminology or recall, which will help me in coding quicker and faster.
How might knowing about your strengths and working preferences benefit you as a software developer?
Knowing my strenghts and working preferences will help maximize the amount of knowledge and learning that I'm capable of. If I know that I work better in a collaborative environment, I can focus on jobs and different learning/study groups that really focus on that. Also, I tend to be more productive first thing in the morning, so I can structure my day to do more important things earlier, and maybe put off administrative things towards the end of the day when I'm not as productive. Everybody has different strengths, so if you refuse or don't try to figure out what yours are, you won't be able to grow as much as you possibly can.