My latest podcast episode is on interview tips, based on decades of experience of being on both sides of the table, applying and hiring. In these Covid times when many of you may be out in the job market hope it helps.
For those of you who won’t listen to the podcast.
The scope is principally technical interviews, which is my area of experience. Most important thing to remember: your technical knowledge isn’t directly getting evaluated in an interview, there is too little time for that.
The scope is principally technical interviews, which is my area of experience. Most important thing to remember: your technical knowledge isn’t directly getting evaluated in an interview, there is too little time for that.
What the hiring manager is evaluating (often without being aware of it themselves) is whether they can work with you, whether you actively listen, whether you ask the right questions, and when you fail a technical challenge, how do you fail.
Sometimes if you are asked a question and you know the answer perfectly, the hiring manager doesn’t get a lot of insight into you. It’s a memory cache hit. You may find your friend who “fumbled” their question might get the job. This is a huge source of heartburn.
A hiring manager learns more from a fail. Does the person shut down, give up, just say “ I don’t know”, do they try to work it out on a blackboard, do they try to talk you through how they think, are they listening to your hints & are they smart enough to catch on?
Most mature hiring managers know that no one not even an expert knows everything, it’s far more important to look how someone learns on their feet, under stress, how their brain and their mouth both work without short circuiting.
In real life, there is always Google & stackexchange for things you don’t know or to ask someone senior at work, but once you get a bit of direction, can you run with it or do you need constant hand holding. That’s what is being evaluated.
There are many more such tips in the podcast: when interviewer asks “do you need a bathroom break or should I get you something?” what you should do (yes that’s part of the interview too), why you should never interrupt, what’s the answer to “why have you applied to this company?
What to be aware of during a Zoom interview, what kind of research you should do before interview and why in an interview you should continuously be evaluating the interviewer also.
