Virtual Post Baccalaureate Technical Interview Develpoment for Black Software Engineers

Technical interviewing performance significantly hinders the recruitment process for underrepresented minorities at high-tech companies. An HBCU consortium launched a virtual post-baccalaureate program to increase black representation in software engineering positions by providing its students adequate practice and feedback for technical interviews. Thirty Black and Latinx students and recent graduates participated in the ten-week virtual program. The program employed data collection efforts to collect both summative and formative assessments. This work informs the literature by incorporating Open-Source software development with soft skill preparation, coding problems, mock interviews, and feedback into a program with Black computing students.