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Can confirm. My work life has been smooth and fairly boring, and I have piss-poor autobiographical memory anyway, so I pretty much have to make those up to have
by ashark 10y ago
Can confirm. My work life has been smooth and fairly boring, and I have piss-poor autobiographical memory anyway, so I pretty much have to make those up to have anything worth telling. Maybe start from some half-remembered kernel of truth, but it's all BS from there, because it's all I've got. Have to rehearse them so I'm not making shit up on the fly--too much risk of tripping up, or making it too flashy, or accidentally saying something in a way that makes it seem like I'm shifting blame, or taking credit I shouldn't, or anything like that.
Especially the "tell us about a time you had a conflict with someone" question. Ugh. I guess I just need to seek out some assholes to work with because I've got a big fat nothing to talk about on that one. I ought to start writing down the crap I make up for it so I don't have to do it again every time I interview.
- hobls 10y agoThey don't have to be big monumental conflicts or fuckups or whatever. And yeah, you should totally have a pre-canned answer. It can be something minor; "I once spent a lot of time implementing feature X, and then I realized I could have just done feature Y in a quarter of the time." Or, "Bob wanted to build X, and I thought Y would be better, so we disagreed about it, and ultimately Z." (And make sure the story doesn't end in, "and I was super wrong.") I know it's phony, but job interviews are sales pitches. Preparation helps.