Now that you’ve seen where I’m coming from in terms of tips and advice, I feel it’s time to introduce my top six pieces of Kenji® branded recruiter advice. Handle with care!1. Your interview is a two-way street: You should want to know as much about the team, product and position you’re interviewing for as the team wants to know about you. If not, time to take a step back and question why you’re interviewing in the first place. Sorry, I know the economy is horrible, but just wanting a job is not a good enough reason. 2. Be prepared: Do your research. Though job descriptions (in my opinion) are usually a poor representation of any job,
Microsoft Office 2010 Pro, it’s a good idea to read the job description before interviewing and understand the basics for the team and position you’re interviewing for. Know up front if you’re interviewing for a SDE, SDET or PM position, and try to do a search on the team name to learn more about what they do. Better yet – if the team is product focused, see if you can find it and download it/try it out. I could go on and on about this one topic alone (and just might – hint,
Microsoft Office 2007 Product Key, hint). 3. Your interview is a conversation: Make sure you understand the question that’s being asked before answering, and create a dialog. Don’t be afraid to ask questions to clarify,
Office 2010 Professional Key, state assumptions or restate the problem. (This applies to problem solving, coding,
Windows 7 Professional Product Key, testing, even HR questions.) 4. Your interview should mimic real life: Okay, so I get that you just probably aren’t going to get many of the coding or problem solving questions again in your day-to-day job. But the focus here is on the interaction itself. Stepping through a coding question on a white board should emulate how you might collaborate and problem solve on the job. How do you explain your thoughts? Why did you choose path A instead of path B? Do you jump at the answer or step through and arrive there logically? This is kind of an extension on bullet three. 5. Don’t try to impress the interviewer – just be yourself: This kind of goes back to what I was saying about integrity in my previous post. But there’s also a more technical point to this. As I said, we want you to be your very best, but it’s not an uncommon mistake that a candidate gets so caught up in trying to impress the interviewer that they go on a time consuming tangent or try to give an overly complex response to a simple answer. A better strategy is to give a concise, to-the-point answer and then offer up detail or optimizations. (Again, this applies to either HR or coding questions.) 6. Don’t give up unless you mean it (or are told to): Be complete in your responses. Not to confuse with my last point, but understand the difference between a concise answer and an incomplete one. For some topics (like listing ideas or test cases) don’t stop until you’re out of examples or the interviewer tells you to. There you have it. For what it’s worth,
Office 2007, this is the advice I feel every candidate should know going into the interview. So, tell me: Did I help you be a better ambassador or did I give away the farm? -Kenji