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Most common mistakes during interviews

81 points by aitorvs 6y ago

fenesiistvan 6y ago
I like that there are no 10 points and boring conclusions chapter
ThePadawan 6y ago
Really nothing I haven't read before. Apparently these are all mistakes a candidate can make. I would appreciate it if companies finally acknowledged that interviewing is a two-way street. I have cancelled way more interviews due to red flags happily waved by companies than companies have rejected me because I failed one of the 8 algorithms questions.
- egfx 6y ago
  Yes I agree. A huge red flag is if the interviewer is leaning back in the video call trying to get you to see the spaceX logo embroidered on their shirt when they don’t work there anymore.
  - wolco 6y ago
    A bigger red flag is the same person no shirt but still showing off the spacex tattoo logo
    - egfx 6y ago
      touché
- aitorvs 6y ago
  I agree with that comment. I have a part 2 of the blog post where I address the issues I have seen in interviewers https://aitorvs.github.io/post/most_common_interviewer_mistakes/ https://aitorvs.github.io/post/most_common_interviewer_mista...
  - ThePadawan 6y ago
    This adequately represents the 1:1 experience of one technical interview. Let me cherry-pick an example: You mention that you don't read a candidate's CV before your one interaction with them (the technical interview). As you say, this is a debatable choice (I find it somewhat acceptable). At that point, has anyone else at your company read the candidate's CV and cover letter? Sounds stupid, but you would not believe how many people ask about specific topics ("So have you worked with a relational database before?") not in order to ask deeper questions about knowledge or experience, but just in order to tick off checkboxes on their HR form. (This is not made up, this has actually happened to me.) This bigger issue of a company never asking themselves "How do we as a company show that we actually give a shit about each candidate, and are not just looking for a butt in an office chair" is where in my experience, lots of companies are still completely failing at self-reflection.
    - aitorvs 6y ago
      Yes, the post focuses around just an on-site interview. At that point HR had already read the CV. Regarding not reading the CV, that is just what works for me, I discover what candidates worked on while asking questions and follow-ups if I want to go more in depth.
    - Izkata 6y ago
      > At that point, has anyone else at your company read the candidate's CV and cover letter? Sounds stupid, but you would not believe how many people ask about specific topics ("So have you worked with a relational database before?") My understanding is that this situation happens as a test to see that you were the one that wrote your resume.
      - ThePadawan 6y ago
        Huh, I didn't think this would be common enough for companies to start testing against. Thanks for the insight!
        6y ago
- devmunchies 6y ago
  > I would appreciate it if companies finally acknowledged that interviewing is a two-way street. you wanting the company to acknowledge that its a two-way street is evidence that it's not. It's very rare. > I have cancelled way more interviews due to red flags happily waved by companies than companies have rejected me You can boycott a business too if you don't like it, but that doesn't make it a two-way street. You have very little leverage over the business.
  - ThePadawan 6y ago
    > You can boycott a business too if you don't like it, but that doesn't make it a two-way street. You have very little leverage over the business. Yes I can? I can walk away from the interviewing process. They have invested in recruiting just as much if not more than I have in interview prep. Their employees are paid just the same for technical interviews than their normal work.
    - devmunchies 6y ago
      my point is that your ability to walk away doesn't make it an equal relationship. There are way more reputable candidates than there are reputable companies. It's one sided. The exception being candidates skilled at a rare niche, then it's stacked in your favor.
      - ThePadawan 6y ago
        > There are way more reputable candidates than there are reputable companies. Your mileage might greatly vary. I've only encountered companies that struggle to hire good people (so they end up not hiring many people at all, not enough to keep up with growth) and companies that struggle to hire good people (so they end up hiring everyone that passes Fizzbuzz and can't keep up their quality). But then this is an insular market (Switzerland) where there are tens of thousands of unfilled positions.
  - hrktb 6y ago
    It is already a two-way street in that as a candidate you chose the company, and expect specific things from them. If they don’t deliver on that part you will walk away. To me parent’s point is that any company acting as if you’d unconditionally accept their offer if they made one is a recipe for failure.
yowlingcat 6y ago
Ah, this topic always seems to stir the pot around here. I think these are decent call-outs from the point of the interviewer, so I'll add a couple of my own from the point of a candidate: 1) not screening the company during the interview 2) not preparing by doing "warm-up" interviews for roles you won't be too sad about if you don't get 3) not doing enough interviews to get multiple offers for negotiating leverage For my first point, you'll learn a lot about the company and how they work from the interview process. If the company has dysfunctional elements to its corporate culture, depending on the size, it's quite likely they'll be surfaced here. Not only is this one of the first impressions of you for them, but it's one of the first impressions of them for you. Pay attention to what your gut and intuition tell you here. Every time I've broken this rule, it's bitten me. For my second point, I think that people often forget that the only way to get better at interviewing is to just do it over and over again. It's a little hard to do that in a synthetic environment because it's hard to trick your brain into behaving as if it is real unless it actually is. But wait, you may say, treating an interview like practice is unethical! But I'd disagree. After all, if you really do well on the interview but you're not chomping at the bit to join, they might be more willing to negotiate and make you an offer that would make you reconsider. But, you likely know (and can force-rank) the roles you'd be most willing and least willing to take if you had the opportunity, so make sure to go through the sequence from least desirable to most desirable so that you have more leverage. My third point is probably the most crucial. You need the BATNA (best alternative to negotatiated agreement) of accepting something else or staying where you are to be able to negotiate. Otherwise, you have much less leverage. This is part of why timing and interviewing for less desirable roles is preferable, because you are more likely to negotiate with an offer for your more desirable role by the time you get there.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- wtracy 6y ago
  > screening the company during the interview Can you offer any advice or resources on what to ask or watch out for in this area?
  - 6y ago
yankjenets 6y ago
> can I multiply a number by itself This is a great clarifying question. Ambiguous from the prompt. > what shall I return if there are multiple numbers meeting the criteria This is a decent clarifying question. I think it is better expressed as a clarifying point instead of question--mention to the interviewer your thinking out loud; something like "if there are multiple options, I'll return an arbitrary pair". Ask if they are okay with that. > is the list sorted If I were the interviewer, this question would almost make me dock points off of the interviewee. Maybe not that strong as I do try and ensure people are as comfortable and open as possible in asking clarifying questions, but this barely qualifies as a clarifying question in my opinion. It is almost irrelevant to the prompt; if the lists were sorted and the interviewer failed to mention / there was some "trick" that they expected you to clarify, that would be an awful interview question. That being said, overall agree with the sentiment and yes you should try and always ask clarifying questions and ensure you understand the problem statement.
- laumars 6y ago
  I don’t think it’s fair to dock points for asking if the list is sorted. It might feel like a stupid question but clarifying requirements rather than making assumptions is one of the key differentiators between a junior and senior engineer.
  - collyw 6y ago
    This is the problem with interviews, it seems many of them are a circlejerk for the interviewer rather than actually trying to get a realistic idea of the candidate is up to the job.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  Clarifying questions may help or not depending on the interviewer. Some want you to clarify, others expect you mostly not to; they'll call that "taking initiative" in that you 'take ownership of the problem' and get something done. Otherwise they'll take that as a request to "spoonfeed you" which is a no-no. You can't tell in advance what they want, and I don't know which attitude is better.
- 6y ago
diN0bot 6y ago
> #2 - Not keeping your interviewer engaged > It is extremely simple, just think out loud Yes, "think out loud" is better than being completely silent, but given that many hiring decisions are based on how the interaction feels, including the quality of the communication _in order to assess thinking skills_, candidates can see huge returns by learning specific communication techniques. I make videos on this topic (technical and non-technical interview and negotiation skills), and happened to have just made a video on what to say while writing code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv42PpY-nK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv42PpY-nK8
- tdeck 6y ago
  This was a great video. It did leave one gap though - it assumes my handwriting is legible! Many companies (at least pre-COVID) still expect people to hand write code on a whiteboard, under immense time pressure Most people aren't used to writing on a whiteboard, and many interview rooms inexplicably have a combination of large markers and a small whiteboard, which often leads to my output being of marginal readability. Narrating what I'm writing can help move past that.
- roflc0ptic 6y ago
  Noting that I had a really intense negative emotional reaction to this video. It's possible that I'm just not your target audience, and certainly the depth of response felt... disproportionate, but I thought I might share my reaction in case it was useful to you. I think there was a combination of things that straight away disposed me negatively towards it - the negative title (stop X!), the negative introduction (stop x, again) and also the camera being so close to your face. It had the effect of feeling like I was being simultaneously negged and mansplained to by some overly aggressive dude (no doubt more an artifact of my own life experiences more than the video. Stop telling me what to do, Dad.). It felt very you-tube, but like, the uglier parts. I stopped watching pretty quickly. Glancing at your profile, it seems like you have a number of videos titled "Stop X". I'm noting here that you describe this video as "a video on what to say while writing code." There's a clear value prop there: What to say when writing code! But it doesn't exactly come through in the first exposure to the video. I'd watch a video on "what to say while writing code" because I have my own opinions on it, and am interested in comparing my mental model with someone else who's spent time thinking about good communication in a coding context. Feeling scolded by said video made it a solid pass. I think I read something purporting to be research about how closeup pictures on faces tend to elicit stronger emotional reactions. I did like that you were modeling perspective taking - "your interviewer is a programmer who can read your code." Building a capable theory of mind is long term work, and it's work that people who are drawn to computers often don't do. Anyways, thanks for sharing it, and taking the time to make those videos. It seems like a worthy project.
angarg12 6y ago
I agree with this, and I want to add to #3. When you prepare for the behavioural questions, give answers of real situations that you are very familiar with, and avoid "keyword soups". I've seen quite a few candidates failing interviews because they gave almost canned answers that seem to hit all the right points, but once you dig deeper they aren't able to elaborate more.
andersco 6y ago
Great list. Adding one of the most common mistakes I see during interviews: Not saying “I don’t know” when you clearly don’t know the answer to a question.
sg47 6y ago
Most tech interviews especially for engineers are a one-sided power dynamic that does nothing except make the candidate nervous and eventually rejects them arbitrarily. The ones that do get a job seem to think that that's the only way to interview people and this cycle continues. What happens is this becomes a boys club that excludes anyone else.
- rexer 6y ago
  Can you expand on why you believe these sorts of interviews don't offer good signal? Having gone through a couple of these interview cycles, I felt the behavioral questions adequately demonstrated how I'd perform in similar situations.
  - sg47 6y ago
    Behavioral questions are fine. Some like top grading are not. I had someone ask me about my choices right from my senior year in high school and my choice of college, etc. Well, I was extremely depressed in high school and didn't do well in my entrance exams, got into an average college but was actively programming by myself and turned my life around in my junior year in college. I wouldn't have fit into the interviewer's expected stereotype of someone who has been excellent since high school.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  This is more apparent for people with anxiety too. My mind shuts down during whiteboarding, yet people generally seem to think I'm smart outside any of those scenarios. I've already been employed for several years at different places, doing a whole range of things, and it's weird that I have to practice some arbitrary exercises in order to demonstrate to a company that I can work. This has led to me landing at companies that don't require the bizarre jumping-through-hoops that filters for the desperate and "committed". And so far, I've not only yet to see interview-style programming on the job, I've seen utterly atrocious practices.
  - sg47 6y ago
    Absolutely. There's no reason to do this. No one has written code on a whiteboard at work. To do this just for interviews is very silly. You've to also second guess what the interviewer expects from you. Not every interviewer is calibrated the same way. If I could it my way, I'd start with a 30-minute briefing session on the coding test that's to follow. 1-1.5 hour coding project - implement an API or something. 45 minutes where you review some code (maybe intentional bad code). 1 hour writing a design document. 1 hour presenting the design doc to a couple of team members. Couple of behavioral sessions with team members/manager.
vansul 6y ago
How useful are interviews in general? I've been led to believe that an interview is a very poor indicator of future performance[0], and that an interview biases the hiring decision in typically negative ways. [0] https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/will-macaskill-moral-philosophy/ https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/will-macaskill-moral...
- outtatime 6y ago
  This is true. This is the advice I've been following: do your best, but never forget that it's basically random chance. Also consider a career change to a field without hilariously ridiculous interview practices.
- alphabettsy 6y ago
  I think they’re great for analyzing communication skills if nothing else. Depends on the role, but for some positions that’s all or a big part of the job.
- Kwantuum 6y ago
  I've recently started doing interviews for my company, and while there are definitely candidates that we have been on the fence about accepting that would probably have been a great fit, in the end, the false positive rate is more important to us than the false negative rate. Maybe we missed out on some great candidates but the criteria we used to evaluate them also allowed us to avoid a lot of very bad candidates. The perfect interview process doesn't exist, we have to make do with the fact that whatever the interview process is, we will miss out on great candidates and end up making an offer to candidates that will not work out. But indeed: for candidates, this means that you shouldn't take rejections to heart too much: you might have been a great fit for the role and a bad fit for the interview process. If you're consistently getting rejected for positions for which you believe you are qualified, maybe you need to get better at interviews, or maybe you're not as qualified as you may think.
  - RandoHolmes 6y ago
    How do you know they were bad candidates? That's the entire point, you don't, you only think you do.
wolco 6y ago
"Who comes to an interview for a tech company not having done tons of leetcode problems, studying algorithms and data structures to the limit?" Most normal developers. Spending you time on leetcode means you want to get in a faang. Most people are going for other roles.
- azemetre 6y ago
  Eh IDK. Leetcode type questions are starting to slip into many industries and types of companies. I recently interviewed at large finance (not trading firms, retail banking/investment) and insurance companies. They both asked LC medium/hard. I was honestly taken a back. These companies aren’t known for “high” standards and make up for the lack of interesting work with WLB (or at least it comes across like that. Just like how everyone copied google Qs a decade ago (how many toothpicks can a tree yield...). I’m fully expecting everyone to copy FAANG like interviews because someone in HR thinks it might signal better hires, and why wouldn’t you want better hires right?
  - csboyer 6y ago
    Not at a FAANG company but I will ask stuff that might show up as “easy” on leet code. Examples: run length encoding problem or a bit extracting/setting question. I want to see if the candidate can formulate a simple state machine and they understand bit manipulation. I target the bit manipulation questions for firmware/embedded software roles, which very much involves reading and setting bits from hardware registers all day long.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    I work for a government and have interviewed for other governments. They have Hacker Rank stuff too.
  - decafninja 6y ago
    Yup, this. While I'm sure there is some corner of the US tech industry that doesn't leetcode you during interviews, it's getting smaller and smaller. Companies that wouldn't have leetcoded you 5, 10, years ago are now doing so. The difficulty of leetcode questions is going up too. Also, takehome problems are becoming more common - not instead of leetcode interviews, but in addition to.
rsecora 6y ago
Another of the most common errors is to lie or to exaggerate in a side work experience. If it's catch, it will jeopardize the interview. A common example is to fill the CV with buzzwords and when asked about them, the knowledge varies from shallow to non existent.
- EForEndeavour 6y ago
  Résumé: "Achieved state-of-the-art classification accuracy on MNIST dataset by implementing a residual attention convolutional neural network with Keras and TensorFlow on Google Cloud Platform" Reality: shift-entered my way through an interactive tutorial in Google Colab's free tier like I was button-mashing a videogame combo
smcg 6y ago
In my experience this article applies very well to competent small and medium sized companies. My experience with large companies with names like Floogle or Gloomburg is that the interviewer is just blindly looking for you to read their mind and is irritated with any clarifying questions.
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
Prior to getting an interview you read the job ad. They want original, problem solvers, dynamic, goal-oriented etc. etc. I've always wondered why they don't somehow all me to demonstrate this before it gets to an interview. Let the candidates winnow themselves out. It could be so easy, it should work, but they don't. IDK, perhaps it works only in theory.
29athrowaway 6y ago
I would say: budget your time. Try to ask: how many exercises do you have to solve, and how many parts does the current exercise have.
RivieraKid 6y ago
Regarding 2, I would simply solve it, and then maybe ask about using the same number twice to fine-tune the solution. In real-world problems I almost always think of corner-cases. So I think that the interview process is flawed - at least in my case - by assuming that not asking about specifics generalizes. In general, if the interview process is designed in a way that reading a random article like this on HN helps you pass it, I'm kind of skeptical how well it's measuring future job performance.
tester756 6y ago
Preparing for interview? I tend to avoid it except things that are "obvious" but I tend to forget, like you know - there's SOLID and everybody understands it differently and applies it differently, I never remember the theory behind it. I believe going without preparation means that you're "pure" - you're talking only about stuff you know or understand, not just seen 10h ago on some blog. When it comes to questions I really love open questions like design something or try find security issue
- atoav 6y ago
  I think the most valuable preparation you can do is asking yourself long and hard what the other side is looking for, and what you bring that they might be looking for. This is valuable for yourself as well, because you can avoid places where the role they have in mind for you doesn't fit your expectations
freddy418 6y ago
This post reeks of elitist/holier-than-thou attitude that the whole industry has unfortunately been feeding into. I also suspect that it is why there's so little diversity in tech and why there's this absurd notion that there's not enough "qualified" candidates to fill positions. 1) is something that I abhor because it allows the interviewer to assume very little of the responsibility for communication, which is an exercise for both people to come to a consensus of what the task is at hand. Instead of saying "did I communicate this effectively", it's saying "it's the listener's fault for not understanding me." 2) is very similar to 1) in that it also absolves the interviewer of any responsibility for communicate. It's also an absurd proposition because it's saying it is the interviewee's job to keep me, the interviewer, entertained. This is absurd because the purpose of interviews is to vet a candidate, if that's not the purpose, then the interviewer should make it more clear that an hour's worth of a jester's time is being requested. 3) is specifying a criteria that might make sense for recent college graduates or if the candidate knows what to prepare for. In my experience, no such guidance is typically given, the most I've seen is "prepare for questions that might be relevant to the role/job posting." The interviewer fails to consider does he/she have a full time job? Did the interviewer actually provide materials for he/she to study? If the questions the OP cited were not actually provided, how do they know to prepare for those types of questions.
- RandoHolmes 6y ago
  I think the point is that you can't control the interviewer, only yourself, so concentrate on what you can control. I think you're taking an overly unfair view of what the author meant.
  - freddy418 6y ago
    Then you're saying, "the system is broken, just live with it." We know what's wrong with that statement in this climate.
    - RandoHolmes 6y ago
      So if I decide to change my own behavior rather than trying to change my spouses behavior, it's because I'm really saying the marriage is broken? That's a non-sequitur.
MarkMc 6y ago
'Ask clarifying questions' and 'think out loud' are also two of the suggestions in this excellent video from Google showing an example of a great technical interview: https://youtu.be/XKu_SEDAykw https://youtu.be/XKu_SEDAykw
ipnon 6y ago
Are algorithm interviews just a legal loophole? They allow companies to do something that is nominally illegal: discriminate against candidates with anxiety disorders and women.[1] [1] https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/tech-job-interviews-anxiety/ https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/tech-job-interviews-anxiety/
- RandoHolmes 6y ago
  It's not possible to avoid "discrimination" against people with anxiety disorders, it's the nature of their disorder. It's a bit like saying the NBA shouldn't discriminate against short people. At the end of the day, the best performers tend to not be short, that's just reality. In the same way that anxious people tend to struggle in an interview. Obviously you shouldn't be going out of your way to discriminate, but the reality is what it is.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    The study suggests how to control for performance anxiety in interviews. Why do you believe it's not possible? NBA scouts evaluate how players perform in real games. Most tech interviews are nothing like the job. Many countries require employers to reasonably accommodate people with disabilities. Not going out of your way to discriminate isn't enough.
alexanderdou 6y ago
> Not keeping your interviewer engaged Ugh. I'm going through the interview process right now and this peeves me so much The presumption that I, the supplicant, need to be interesting and keep the interviewer, who has deigned to give me 30 minutes of their time (often 23 minutes because, "sorry I'm late but I also have a hard stop at the top of the hour") "engaged" makes the interview so lopsided, awkward, and just nonproductive That being said: > Not preparing for the interview Is completely legit. I have walked out of a couple of interviews wishing I had prepped a little bit more so that I could make the conversation a productive one

81 points by aitorvs 6y ago

I like that there are no 10 points and boring conclusions chapter

Really nothing I haven't read before. Apparently these are all mistakes a candidate can make. I would appreciate it if companies finally acknowledged that interviewing is a two-way street. I have cancelled way more interviews due to red flags happily waved by companies than companies have rejected me because I failed one of the 8 algorithms questions.

egfx 6y ago
Yes I agree. A huge red flag is if the interviewer is leaning back in the video call trying to get you to see the spaceX logo embroidered on their shirt when they don’t work there anymore.
- wolco 6y ago
  A bigger red flag is the same person no shirt but still showing off the spacex tattoo logo
  - egfx 6y ago
    touché
aitorvs 6y ago
I agree with that comment. I have a part 2 of the blog post where I address the issues I have seen in interviewers https://aitorvs.github.io/post/most_common_interviewer_mistakes/ https://aitorvs.github.io/post/most_common_interviewer_mista...
- ThePadawan 6y ago
  This adequately represents the 1:1 experience of one technical interview. Let me cherry-pick an example: You mention that you don't read a candidate's CV before your one interaction with them (the technical interview). As you say, this is a debatable choice (I find it somewhat acceptable). At that point, has anyone else at your company read the candidate's CV and cover letter? Sounds stupid, but you would not believe how many people ask about specific topics ("So have you worked with a relational database before?") not in order to ask deeper questions about knowledge or experience, but just in order to tick off checkboxes on their HR form. (This is not made up, this has actually happened to me.) This bigger issue of a company never asking themselves "How do we as a company show that we actually give a shit about each candidate, and are not just looking for a butt in an office chair" is where in my experience, lots of companies are still completely failing at self-reflection.
  - aitorvs 6y ago
    Yes, the post focuses around just an on-site interview. At that point HR had already read the CV. Regarding not reading the CV, that is just what works for me, I discover what candidates worked on while asking questions and follow-ups if I want to go more in depth.
  - Izkata 6y ago
    > At that point, has anyone else at your company read the candidate's CV and cover letter? Sounds stupid, but you would not believe how many people ask about specific topics ("So have you worked with a relational database before?") My understanding is that this situation happens as a test to see that you were the one that wrote your resume.
    - ThePadawan 6y ago
      Huh, I didn't think this would be common enough for companies to start testing against. Thanks for the insight!
      - 6y ago
devmunchies 6y ago
> I would appreciate it if companies finally acknowledged that interviewing is a two-way street. you wanting the company to acknowledge that its a two-way street is evidence that it's not. It's very rare. > I have cancelled way more interviews due to red flags happily waved by companies than companies have rejected me You can boycott a business too if you don't like it, but that doesn't make it a two-way street. You have very little leverage over the business.
- ThePadawan 6y ago
  > You can boycott a business too if you don't like it, but that doesn't make it a two-way street. You have very little leverage over the business. Yes I can? I can walk away from the interviewing process. They have invested in recruiting just as much if not more than I have in interview prep. Their employees are paid just the same for technical interviews than their normal work.
  - devmunchies 6y ago
    my point is that your ability to walk away doesn't make it an equal relationship. There are way more reputable candidates than there are reputable companies. It's one sided. The exception being candidates skilled at a rare niche, then it's stacked in your favor.
    - ThePadawan 6y ago
      > There are way more reputable candidates than there are reputable companies. Your mileage might greatly vary. I've only encountered companies that struggle to hire good people (so they end up not hiring many people at all, not enough to keep up with growth) and companies that struggle to hire good people (so they end up hiring everyone that passes Fizzbuzz and can't keep up their quality). But then this is an insular market (Switzerland) where there are tens of thousands of unfilled positions.
- hrktb 6y ago
  It is already a two-way street in that as a candidate you chose the company, and expect specific things from them. If they don’t deliver on that part you will walk away. To me parent’s point is that any company acting as if you’d unconditionally accept their offer if they made one is a recipe for failure.

yowlingcat 6y ago

Ah, this topic always seems to stir the pot around here. I think these are decent call-outs from the point of the interviewer, so I'll add a couple of my own from the point of a candidate: 1) not screening the company during the interview 2) not preparing by doing "warm-up" interviews for roles you won't be too sad about if you don't get 3) not doing enough interviews to get multiple offers for negotiating leverage For my first point, you'll learn a lot about the company and how they work from the interview process. If the company has dysfunctional elements to its corporate culture, depending on the size, it's quite likely they'll be surfaced here. Not only is this one of the first impressions of you for them, but it's one of the first impressions of them for you. Pay attention to what your gut and intuition tell you here. Every time I've broken this rule, it's bitten me. For my second point, I think that people often forget that the only way to get better at interviewing is to just do it over and over again. It's a little hard to do that in a synthetic environment because it's hard to trick your brain into behaving as if it is real unless it actually is. But wait, you may say, treating an interview like practice is unethical! But I'd disagree. After all, if you really do well on the interview but you're not chomping at the bit to join, they might be more willing to negotiate and make you an offer that would make you reconsider. But, you likely know (and can force-rank) the roles you'd be most willing and least willing to take if you had the opportunity, so make sure to go through the sequence from least desirable to most desirable so that you have more leverage. My third point is probably the most crucial. You need the BATNA (best alternative to negotatiated agreement) of accepting something else or staying where you are to be able to negotiate. Otherwise, you have much less leverage. This is part of why timing and interviewing for less desirable roles is preferable, because you are more likely to negotiate with an offer for your more desirable role by the time you get there.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wtracy 6y ago
> screening the company during the interview Can you offer any advice or resources on what to ask or watch out for in this area?
- 6y ago

yankjenets 6y ago

> can I multiply a number by itself This is a great clarifying question. Ambiguous from the prompt. > what shall I return if there are multiple numbers meeting the criteria This is a decent clarifying question. I think it is better expressed as a clarifying point instead of question--mention to the interviewer your thinking out loud; something like "if there are multiple options, I'll return an arbitrary pair". Ask if they are okay with that. > is the list sorted If I were the interviewer, this question would almost make me dock points off of the interviewee. Maybe not that strong as I do try and ensure people are as comfortable and open as possible in asking clarifying questions, but this barely qualifies as a clarifying question in my opinion. It is almost irrelevant to the prompt; if the lists were sorted and the interviewer failed to mention / there was some "trick" that they expected you to clarify, that would be an awful interview question. That being said, overall agree with the sentiment and yes you should try and always ask clarifying questions and ensure you understand the problem statement.

laumars 6y ago
I don’t think it’s fair to dock points for asking if the list is sorted. It might feel like a stupid question but clarifying requirements rather than making assumptions is one of the key differentiators between a junior and senior engineer.
- collyw 6y ago
  This is the problem with interviews, it seems many of them are a circlejerk for the interviewer rather than actually trying to get a realistic idea of the candidate is up to the job.
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
Clarifying questions may help or not depending on the interviewer. Some want you to clarify, others expect you mostly not to; they'll call that "taking initiative" in that you 'take ownership of the problem' and get something done. Otherwise they'll take that as a request to "spoonfeed you" which is a no-no. You can't tell in advance what they want, and I don't know which attitude is better.
6y ago

diN0bot 6y ago

> #2 - Not keeping your interviewer engaged > It is extremely simple, just think out loud Yes, "think out loud" is better than being completely silent, but given that many hiring decisions are based on how the interaction feels, including the quality of the communication _in order to assess thinking skills_, candidates can see huge returns by learning specific communication techniques. I make videos on this topic (technical and non-technical interview and negotiation skills), and happened to have just made a video on what to say while writing code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv42PpY-nK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv42PpY-nK8

tdeck 6y ago
This was a great video. It did leave one gap though - it assumes my handwriting is legible! Many companies (at least pre-COVID) still expect people to hand write code on a whiteboard, under immense time pressure Most people aren't used to writing on a whiteboard, and many interview rooms inexplicably have a combination of large markers and a small whiteboard, which often leads to my output being of marginal readability. Narrating what I'm writing can help move past that.
roflc0ptic 6y ago
Noting that I had a really intense negative emotional reaction to this video. It's possible that I'm just not your target audience, and certainly the depth of response felt... disproportionate, but I thought I might share my reaction in case it was useful to you. I think there was a combination of things that straight away disposed me negatively towards it - the negative title (stop X!), the negative introduction (stop x, again) and also the camera being so close to your face. It had the effect of feeling like I was being simultaneously negged and mansplained to by some overly aggressive dude (no doubt more an artifact of my own life experiences more than the video. Stop telling me what to do, Dad.). It felt very you-tube, but like, the uglier parts. I stopped watching pretty quickly. Glancing at your profile, it seems like you have a number of videos titled "Stop X". I'm noting here that you describe this video as "a video on what to say while writing code." There's a clear value prop there: What to say when writing code! But it doesn't exactly come through in the first exposure to the video. I'd watch a video on "what to say while writing code" because I have my own opinions on it, and am interested in comparing my mental model with someone else who's spent time thinking about good communication in a coding context. Feeling scolded by said video made it a solid pass. I think I read something purporting to be research about how closeup pictures on faces tend to elicit stronger emotional reactions. I did like that you were modeling perspective taking - "your interviewer is a programmer who can read your code." Building a capable theory of mind is long term work, and it's work that people who are drawn to computers often don't do. Anyways, thanks for sharing it, and taking the time to make those videos. It seems like a worthy project.

angarg12 6y ago

I agree with this, and I want to add to #3. When you prepare for the behavioural questions, give answers of real situations that you are very familiar with, and avoid "keyword soups". I've seen quite a few candidates failing interviews because they gave almost canned answers that seem to hit all the right points, but once you dig deeper they aren't able to elaborate more.

andersco 6y ago

Great list. Adding one of the most common mistakes I see during interviews: Not saying “I don’t know” when you clearly don’t know the answer to a question.

sg47 6y ago

Most tech interviews especially for engineers are a one-sided power dynamic that does nothing except make the candidate nervous and eventually rejects them arbitrarily. The ones that do get a job seem to think that that's the only way to interview people and this cycle continues. What happens is this becomes a boys club that excludes anyone else.

rexer 6y ago
Can you expand on why you believe these sorts of interviews don't offer good signal? Having gone through a couple of these interview cycles, I felt the behavioral questions adequately demonstrated how I'd perform in similar situations.
- sg47 6y ago
  Behavioral questions are fine. Some like top grading are not. I had someone ask me about my choices right from my senior year in high school and my choice of college, etc. Well, I was extremely depressed in high school and didn't do well in my entrance exams, got into an average college but was actively programming by myself and turned my life around in my junior year in college. I wouldn't have fit into the interviewer's expected stereotype of someone who has been excellent since high school.
gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
This is more apparent for people with anxiety too. My mind shuts down during whiteboarding, yet people generally seem to think I'm smart outside any of those scenarios. I've already been employed for several years at different places, doing a whole range of things, and it's weird that I have to practice some arbitrary exercises in order to demonstrate to a company that I can work. This has led to me landing at companies that don't require the bizarre jumping-through-hoops that filters for the desperate and "committed". And so far, I've not only yet to see interview-style programming on the job, I've seen utterly atrocious practices.
- sg47 6y ago
  Absolutely. There's no reason to do this. No one has written code on a whiteboard at work. To do this just for interviews is very silly. You've to also second guess what the interviewer expects from you. Not every interviewer is calibrated the same way. If I could it my way, I'd start with a 30-minute briefing session on the coding test that's to follow. 1-1.5 hour coding project - implement an API or something. 45 minutes where you review some code (maybe intentional bad code). 1 hour writing a design document. 1 hour presenting the design doc to a couple of team members. Couple of behavioral sessions with team members/manager.

vansul 6y ago

How useful are interviews in general? I've been led to believe that an interview is a very poor indicator of future performance[0], and that an interview biases the hiring decision in typically negative ways. [0] https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/will-macaskill-moral-philosophy/ https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/will-macaskill-moral...

outtatime 6y ago
This is true. This is the advice I've been following: do your best, but never forget that it's basically random chance. Also consider a career change to a field without hilariously ridiculous interview practices.
alphabettsy 6y ago
I think they’re great for analyzing communication skills if nothing else. Depends on the role, but for some positions that’s all or a big part of the job.
Kwantuum 6y ago
I've recently started doing interviews for my company, and while there are definitely candidates that we have been on the fence about accepting that would probably have been a great fit, in the end, the false positive rate is more important to us than the false negative rate. Maybe we missed out on some great candidates but the criteria we used to evaluate them also allowed us to avoid a lot of very bad candidates. The perfect interview process doesn't exist, we have to make do with the fact that whatever the interview process is, we will miss out on great candidates and end up making an offer to candidates that will not work out. But indeed: for candidates, this means that you shouldn't take rejections to heart too much: you might have been a great fit for the role and a bad fit for the interview process. If you're consistently getting rejected for positions for which you believe you are qualified, maybe you need to get better at interviews, or maybe you're not as qualified as you may think.
- RandoHolmes 6y ago
  How do you know they were bad candidates? That's the entire point, you don't, you only think you do.

wolco 6y ago

"Who comes to an interview for a tech company not having done tons of leetcode problems, studying algorithms and data structures to the limit?" Most normal developers. Spending you time on leetcode means you want to get in a faang. Most people are going for other roles.

azemetre 6y ago
Eh IDK. Leetcode type questions are starting to slip into many industries and types of companies. I recently interviewed at large finance (not trading firms, retail banking/investment) and insurance companies. They both asked LC medium/hard. I was honestly taken a back. These companies aren’t known for “high” standards and make up for the lack of interesting work with WLB (or at least it comes across like that. Just like how everyone copied google Qs a decade ago (how many toothpicks can a tree yield...). I’m fully expecting everyone to copy FAANG like interviews because someone in HR thinks it might signal better hires, and why wouldn’t you want better hires right?
- csboyer 6y ago
  Not at a FAANG company but I will ask stuff that might show up as “easy” on leet code. Examples: run length encoding problem or a bit extracting/setting question. I want to see if the candidate can formulate a simple state machine and they understand bit manipulation. I target the bit manipulation questions for firmware/embedded software roles, which very much involves reading and setting bits from hardware registers all day long.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  I work for a government and have interviewed for other governments. They have Hacker Rank stuff too.
- decafninja 6y ago
  Yup, this. While I'm sure there is some corner of the US tech industry that doesn't leetcode you during interviews, it's getting smaller and smaller. Companies that wouldn't have leetcoded you 5, 10, years ago are now doing so. The difficulty of leetcode questions is going up too. Also, takehome problems are becoming more common - not instead of leetcode interviews, but in addition to.

rsecora 6y ago

Another of the most common errors is to lie or to exaggerate in a side work experience. If it's catch, it will jeopardize the interview. A common example is to fill the CV with buzzwords and when asked about them, the knowledge varies from shallow to non existent.

EForEndeavour 6y ago
Résumé: "Achieved state-of-the-art classification accuracy on MNIST dataset by implementing a residual attention convolutional neural network with Keras and TensorFlow on Google Cloud Platform" Reality: shift-entered my way through an interactive tutorial in Google Colab's free tier like I was button-mashing a videogame combo

smcg 6y ago

In my experience this article applies very well to competent small and medium sized companies. My experience with large companies with names like Floogle or Gloomburg is that the interviewer is just blindly looking for you to read their mind and is irritated with any clarifying questions.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

Prior to getting an interview you read the job ad. They want original, problem solvers, dynamic, goal-oriented etc. etc. I've always wondered why they don't somehow all me to demonstrate this before it gets to an interview. Let the candidates winnow themselves out. It could be so easy, it should work, but they don't. IDK, perhaps it works only in theory.

29athrowaway 6y ago

I would say: budget your time. Try to ask: how many exercises do you have to solve, and how many parts does the current exercise have.

RivieraKid 6y ago

Regarding 2, I would simply solve it, and then maybe ask about using the same number twice to fine-tune the solution. In real-world problems I almost always think of corner-cases. So I think that the interview process is flawed - at least in my case - by assuming that not asking about specifics generalizes. In general, if the interview process is designed in a way that reading a random article like this on HN helps you pass it, I'm kind of skeptical how well it's measuring future job performance.

tester756 6y ago

Preparing for interview? I tend to avoid it except things that are "obvious" but I tend to forget, like you know - there's SOLID and everybody understands it differently and applies it differently, I never remember the theory behind it. I believe going without preparation means that you're "pure" - you're talking only about stuff you know or understand, not just seen 10h ago on some blog. When it comes to questions I really love open questions like design something or try find security issue

atoav 6y ago
I think the most valuable preparation you can do is asking yourself long and hard what the other side is looking for, and what you bring that they might be looking for. This is valuable for yourself as well, because you can avoid places where the role they have in mind for you doesn't fit your expectations

freddy418 6y ago

This post reeks of elitist/holier-than-thou attitude that the whole industry has unfortunately been feeding into. I also suspect that it is why there's so little diversity in tech and why there's this absurd notion that there's not enough "qualified" candidates to fill positions. 1) is something that I abhor because it allows the interviewer to assume very little of the responsibility for communication, which is an exercise for both people to come to a consensus of what the task is at hand. Instead of saying "did I communicate this effectively", it's saying "it's the listener's fault for not understanding me." 2) is very similar to 1) in that it also absolves the interviewer of any responsibility for communicate. It's also an absurd proposition because it's saying it is the interviewee's job to keep me, the interviewer, entertained. This is absurd because the purpose of interviews is to vet a candidate, if that's not the purpose, then the interviewer should make it more clear that an hour's worth of a jester's time is being requested. 3) is specifying a criteria that might make sense for recent college graduates or if the candidate knows what to prepare for. In my experience, no such guidance is typically given, the most I've seen is "prepare for questions that might be relevant to the role/job posting." The interviewer fails to consider does he/she have a full time job? Did the interviewer actually provide materials for he/she to study? If the questions the OP cited were not actually provided, how do they know to prepare for those types of questions.

RandoHolmes 6y ago
I think the point is that you can't control the interviewer, only yourself, so concentrate on what you can control. I think you're taking an overly unfair view of what the author meant.
- freddy418 6y ago
  Then you're saying, "the system is broken, just live with it." We know what's wrong with that statement in this climate.
  - RandoHolmes 6y ago
    So if I decide to change my own behavior rather than trying to change my spouses behavior, it's because I'm really saying the marriage is broken? That's a non-sequitur.

MarkMc 6y ago

'Ask clarifying questions' and 'think out loud' are also two of the suggestions in this excellent video from Google showing an example of a great technical interview: https://youtu.be/XKu_SEDAykw https://youtu.be/XKu_SEDAykw

ipnon 6y ago

Are algorithm interviews just a legal loophole? They allow companies to do something that is nominally illegal: discriminate against candidates with anxiety disorders and women.[1] [1] https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/tech-job-interviews-anxiety/ https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/tech-job-interviews-anxiety/

RandoHolmes 6y ago
It's not possible to avoid "discrimination" against people with anxiety disorders, it's the nature of their disorder. It's a bit like saying the NBA shouldn't discriminate against short people. At the end of the day, the best performers tend to not be short, that's just reality. In the same way that anxious people tend to struggle in an interview. Obviously you shouldn't be going out of your way to discriminate, but the reality is what it is.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  The study suggests how to control for performance anxiety in interviews. Why do you believe it's not possible? NBA scouts evaluate how players perform in real games. Most tech interviews are nothing like the job. Many countries require employers to reasonably accommodate people with disabilities. Not going out of your way to discriminate isn't enough.

alexanderdou 6y ago

> Not keeping your interviewer engaged Ugh. I'm going through the interview process right now and this peeves me so much The presumption that I, the supplicant, need to be interesting and keep the interviewer, who has deigned to give me 30 minutes of their time (often 23 minutes because, "sorry I'm late but I also have a hard stop at the top of the hour") "engaged" makes the interview so lopsided, awkward, and just nonproductive That being said: > Not preparing for the interview Is completely legit. I have walked out of a couple of interviews wishing I had prepped a little bit more so that I could make the conversation a productive one