Buying an iPhone Landed me my First Job as a Developer

Just buying an iPhone (I have never been a fan of any brand, it is not related to the iPhone itself) helped me to get my first job in an interesting way back in the 2016 summer. This situation helped me throughout my career to have a different perspective.

Graduation

I had just graduated from College with a Computer Science degree and was applying for jobs in Istanbul. One of my applications was going great. It was a Young Talent program of one of the biggest Telecommunication Companies in Turkey and I was in 4th step of a 5-stage recruitment process:

1. Video Assessment

2. English Assessment

3. Talent Assessment

4. Group Interview

5. Meeting with Executive & Offer

   
   

If I pass the Group Interview stage, I will get an offer.

The group Interview was interesting; a case study is given to 8-10 people around a table. Everyone read the case carefully and suggested a solution for the given questions.

Group Interview

It was the interview day. I prepared by watching example cases on Youtube. There were 4-5 employees (I later realized that most of them were managers) and 8-10 candidates in the room. We were given a 2-page case, on the first page there were some graphs and on the second page, there was a description and a question at the end. I can't remember the graphs exactly, but one of them was something like the below:

There was also some demographic distribution of users and other market-related information.

Question: What are your ideas to increase our Online Store sales?

Mission: Explain your ideas and convince others about it. Also at the same time, inquire about others' ideas, ask them why they suggested them, etc. Your idea should be the best one while respecting others.

Note: Company was selling internet plans (GB deals etc.), headphones, accessories, tablets, and cell phones.

Success

Thinking time was up and now it was discussion time. One of the candidates started to explain his idea then I and others began to discuss:

• We should make discounts on physical products with sim card deals

• We should have cheaper internet deals than messaging deals

• ...

  
  

I did not write down too many ideas but one of them was interesting.

The year before I graduated, my father and his friends invited me to join their trip to the USA. It was in September and Apple had just announced iPhone 6S.

When we went to Apple Store in Washington I joined the long queue first time in my life. At that time, I researched the reasons for this long queue and learned that because of Apple's announcement policy, people were already prepared for the new phone’s launch. If you look in detail at the release cycles in the above picture, most of the releases are in September and October.

Back to the interview, I was thinking of the peak point in a specific picture. And suddenly I had an idea;

Is it possible people are checking if there is a new deal for the new iPhones?

When it was my turn to share my idea I mentioned:

• Apple releases iPhones every year around September (which I remember because of my trip and research after). It seems like people are looking for new iPhone deals on the store mostly around that month. We should highlight the iPhone deals around this month and have special offers if possible.

  
  

So far no employee had made any comment on our discussion. But when I mentioned this idea, 2 of the employees (managers) mention that they were impressed, not directly to me; just reflexively. Even after the interview was done some of the candidates came to me and said "you will be selected".

In the end, I got a job offer and started my first job as a Backend Developer.

Conclusion

• Never limit yourself to given data. Think about correlations and similarities of a problem you’re solving, with isssues in your life
• Try to take lessons from all events. It doesn't have to relate to programming, engineering, etc.

Also published here.