Internships are great ways for you to expand your knowledge and experience in any field. It is also a good way to make a start in the industry one foot at a time.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had questions around my journey to becoming an Intern at Shopify and also around my experience so far as a Shopify intern. I’ve been answering people individually but I think it would be of more benefit putting some of my thoughts in writing so other people can also see them.

It's going to be covering the application process, interview process, and my offer. I will be including some personal takeaways as well. In a later article, I will be sharing my experience so far as an Intern at Shopify. So let's get right into it.

Application

I saw the Shopify internship application on Twitter in one of those doom scrolling periods while at home with my family for the Christmas break. Here was the tweet I saw:

In case you don't know JML (Jean-Michel Lemieux), he's the current CTO (Chief Technology Officer) at Shopify. I didn’t follow JML at that time neither did I even know who he is. Someone I followed retweeted his tweet and I saw it while doom-scrolling on Twitter.

I was prompted to give it a shot for the fact that I’m completing my Bachelor’s degree in February 2020 and I’ve been on the lookout for job opportunities specifically outside the country. I also think that night that it may actually be a good way to start off my full-time career as a Software Developer. I wasn't really a Shopify fan at that point anyway, I've always been a WooCommerce fanboy due to my PHP background.

I checked the website in the quoted tweet and submitted my application that same night. The form to fill was quite straight forward and not long at all. I’ve always had my CV updated so I was quick on getting that. I also had a cover letter sample I quickly adjusted that night for the internship application.

After my submission, I got a confirmation email (most likely automated) that my application has been received. I applied in December and in January I got a mail to schedule my first interview which is the Life story interview.

Interview process

The interview process I went through was just as described in the posting. The interview was in 2 stages - a Non-technical and Technical interview.

An aspect of the interviews I found particularly good for me was the fact that I was carried along ahead of the interviews to the point that I know my interviewer ahead of the interviews. This aspect gives me the opportunity to know them ahead or even know a bit about what they’ve done in the past or where they’ve worked.

Life story interview

The Life story interview is the Non-technical interview part of the interview process. It’s an interview where you get to talk about your journey so far. This interview was scheduled to last for about 45 minutes. From the interview, the interviewer gets to know you from your story. The interviewer also gets to ask you some questions about your journey or experiences so far.

For me, the life story interview didn’t just revolve around my life in Tech but also around my family and my life even before I got into tech.

I’ve always been eager to share my story with people so it wasn’t really a challenge for me to start sharing. Speaking hasn’t really been a challenge as well since I’ve always like to talk and share my thoughts when given the chance.

I was quite opened to share my story and I think the interviewer liked it as I can infer from the flow of our conversation. I couldn’t really say specific things that are being looked out for in the life story interview but I have a feeling that sharing your journey and experience can help shed some light on who you’ve been and who you have the potential to be since your story revolves around the choices you’ve made. And I think with that the recruiter would look out for pointers that align you with Shopify’s objectives, things around Impact, autonomy, etc.

Having the opportunity to know my Interviewer ahead of time, I was able to know just a little bit about her off LinkedIn and that gave me the opportunity to ask her questions also. This aspect made the life story interview fun since I wasn’t only being asked questions, I was able to ask some questions as well.

Technical interview

After the life story interview is the Technical interview. I received a mail that I did well in the Life story interview so I will be having a technical interview. Sincerely, I expected the mail because I actually enjoyed the life story interview. But even with that, I was happy to see it. If you do well in the Life story interview, you will be invited for a Technical interview.

The technical interview, as I inferred, is meant to evaluate your problem-solving skills as well as if you have relevant hands-on experience by doing something yourself. This can be seen from the 2 stages of the Tech interview.

For this interview I was paired with 2 Senior developers from Shopify and as usual, their names were shared with me ahead of the interview. With that, I got to know their roles in Shopify via LinkedIn.

In the first part, I was requested to submit a project I worked on myself or one to which I heavily contributed to. Being the creator of PHPSandbox, I submitted that, with a link to a public repository containing the code. The project has gone live for about two months so I shared the live URL as well.

When this part of the interview began, the two Senior devs scanned through the source code and was asking me some questions about the codebase. Things asked ranged from reasons for some choices to scaling questions about the project I submitted.

Since I worked on PHPSandbox a lot during that period it wasn’t very difficult to answer questions about it and why I did certain things. The devs I was paired with were super friendly and I wasn’t pressured in any way they listened carefully and were very much ready to make themselves clear in some cases I didn’t understand the questions immediately.

In the second part of this Technical interview, I was presented with a problem on Google Docs and asked to explain how I’m going to approach it if I’m to solve the problem. In my own case, it was an actual project not something around Algorithms or Data structures.

I spoke of my freewill and started in the way I choose and since the devs didn’t specify what should come first. Just imagine it as a technical design preparation with them.

As I expand on my approach, I discussed with the devs and they ask more questions to get clarity on what I’m saying. I wasn’t really being coerced to having a feeling of the right way or the wrong way, rather as discussed with them, it got more clearer on what I think should be done. Since the concern wasn’t really the “right” or “wrong” way to solve this, I felt confident to continue speaking about my thoughts.

This part was Language agnostic and wasn’t really of concern to the language I used or convenient with. I did sight examples of how I would implement a certain part of my approach if it is PHP since I write PHP predominantly.

I would say I felt more nervous in the second part as there’s this part of me who was worried about my approach. But the feedback from the devs as I proceeded was showering me with some confidence.

The entire technical interview was over a phone call as opposed to the life story interview. Initially, I was scared because of the state of mobile networks in my region which can get unstable sometimes. But that wasn’t the case that day as everything went well.

Submitting References

Since the day of my life story interview I have been briefed about how my entire interview process is going to go and a fixed date I should be expecting to be made an offer if all goes well.

With this in mind I did look out for the outcome (positive or not so positive) of the technical interview and as expected I got a mail concerning the outcome. In my case, I got a positive outcome. The mail said my interviewers enjoyed the interview and with that, I would be required to submit my references and they will use that to decide if I will be made an offer or not.

I was pretty happy about this, knowing I’m going to be able to get some people I’ve worked with to give feedback about my work with them.

I was given a time frame to have the references submitted and I did. My references were contacted the same day and they gave their feedback concerning me.

The Offer

Since I knew the date the offer may come in all things being equal, I was counting down to it having submitted my reference. I later got a mail from my recruiter to schedule a call so she can discuss the next steps with me. The mail came with a neutral feeling, more like I don’t know if the outcome would be an offer or they won’t be going ahead with me. But who makes calls to reject you anyway? I immediately set the closest available date and looked forward to it.

Some days later I had the call at the specified time and my recruiter told me they’ve decided to make me an offer and that the devs I had my technical interview with would be my Mentor and Lead respectively for the duration of the internship.

I was also told that since I’m done with my studies, they would be offering me the 8 months version of the internship since interns have options of 4 months and 8 months duration for the internship. She also took the time to explain to me the perks and benefits in full.

She highlighted I’m part of the people who will be benefitting from the JML sponsorship for the period of the internship and highlights the things covered in the sponsorship. She offered to arrange a meeting with JML if I would like to, I immediately accepted the offer to meet him.

Finally, she said I can take my time to think through the offer to know if it’s something I want to consider. I took some time to think about it and the rest becomes a story.

Meeting JML

The meeting with JML was scheduled and I finally met him. I had a wonderful conversation with him.

Personal takeaways from going through these processes

• Know enough about the project you're presenting during the technical interview.
• Life story interview is valuable, you have a good chance to let them know you as well as know about the company. It's a good point to start understanding if you would like to work for the company or not.
• Be open to talking about yourself during the life story interview. If you haven't been doing a lot of talking, you can have a session with your friends where you share your experience and journey.
• Be free to take your time to make up your mind on the offer if you need to. This worked for me personally as I had another offer around the corner at the time Shopify made the offer. Having the time to think helped me made up my mind without feeling like I'm making the wrong choice.
• The language you write or proficient in doesn't really matter even though Shopify is known for Ruby on Rails and React.
• You don't need to know how Shopify works or even build a Shopify store to apply.

I have been able to elaborate on the whole process that led to my Internship offer at Shopify. If you're applying for the internship, I hope it's able to help you in your own process also. If there's any part of the process you think I didn't cover, you can let me know in the comments, I will be willing to update this article.

In my next article around this internship experience, I will be talking about my experience so far in the last 4 months of the internship.

Thank you for reading.