Good stuff. Yeah I would have hated Zoom U.
Interviewing is a skill. You get better every time you do it. Here is some sage interviewing advice I have put together over a few decades.
Take every interview you are offered. Get in front of somebody and fail at it to learn how to do it better. You're gonna suck at first, but look at it like a game skill. Level it up.
Look up the organization before you go. Are they a public company? Are they a Mom n Pop? How old is the company? What do they do?
Whenever possible, make them do most of the talking. People love to hear their own voices.
Answer directly, do not lie.
If you don't know something, try to relate it to something you DO know.
Do you know the AJAX .net Framework?
no but I learned JQuery and JavaScript a little on my own, I'm sure I can pick it up.
If you have no indirect experience, just say so.
No, sorry. Looking forward to learning it though.
Don't ask questions about salary, vacation days, etc. that will all be in the offer letter.
Make them suggest a salary level. When they say "Hey, how much salary are you looking for?" There are 2 possible outcomes.
You lowball it and end up working well below scale.
You shoot the moon and they freak out - you lose the opportunity.
My first answer is always "Make me an offer". They will press me again and I'll say "Look, I have no idea what your benefits package looks like, that stuff is worth something to me." Get them to state a range for this position, and if it seems OK with you say, yeah, I can work with that. DON'T agree tot he lowest number. Let's say they tell you the range is... $40K to $75K. Just say if you're comfortable with that, and tell them to get you an offer letter. Most of the time they will not come back at the low boundary.
When you're done, THIS IS CRITICAL: Ask the interviewer "Thanks for your time, how did I do?"
if the answer is "You did great!" then the interviewer just heard his own voice say this guy did great.
if the answer is "Well, you're a bit weak here" then take the opportunity to shore up the notion that you can pick it up and you're eager to learn.