3 ms·

I had a few jobs interview recently. Here's what I got out of it: If you have something you want to promote (or is on your CV in general), be ready to talk abo

by Zababa 5y ago

I had a few jobs interview recently. Here's what I got out of it: If you have something you want to promote (or is on your CV in general), be ready to talk about it. I'm very lucky because I can talk about things on the spot very easily. If that's not you, make a list of the few main points that you want to talk about and try to memorize it. If you always get the same questions, it may be a good idea to address them before people even ask them, or to memorize an answer to them too. I really underestimate the amount of stress that can be felt when you're alone facing 6 people for a job that you want. I don't have a good answer on how to handle it, although I think having my canned answer ready helped. It got better once this started to be a conversation. The good part is that I developed a lot of empathy for people that talk about interview stress. It's going to be my first "real" job so these are probably obvious, but it might help someone so I'd rather share.

maxk42 5y ago
> I really underestimate the amount of stress that can be felt when you're alone facing 6 people for a job that you want. Practice. Go on interviews even when you don't need a job. Get that practice in and get comfortable with it. I went on 18 - 30 interviews a year for many years when I was a contractor and got very good at interviewing over time. I still get a bit tense when the job is particularly appealing, but with practice it gets to the point where they'll rarely throw a question at you that you don't know how to handle.
- solipsism 5y ago
  Ah, yes, purposefully waste people's time. Fuck them, right? I've seen this kind of attitude before, and it's usually justified with something about how the companies don't respect your time so why should you respect theirs. The thing is... the kind of people at these companies who don't care about your time are the kind of people who would do something like this.
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    Whiteboarding will continue until morale improves.
  - the_af 5y ago
    Sorry if I misunderstand you, but are you saying that it's wrong to interview for practice because it's wasting the company's time? Interesting, never thought about this. I think I disagree though; these are the people who (usually) play games with you and put you through some very stressful situation during the interview. I think candidates should be able to practice in a low stakes environment, i.e. one where they can't lose because they didn't really want the job. It's only fair. I'm not a great interviewer, but I always ask why the candidate is looking for a job, and more than once they've admitted they weren't actively looking but just testing the waters, and I didn't hold it against them...
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      Even if you are just practicing, it's still an opportunity for the company to convince you to change your mind.
    - KronisLV 5y ago
      > ...these are the people who (usually) play games with you... I don't think this even matters, to be honest. Not only is interviewing good for you personally (as you said), but also lets the company gauge the talent pool in the job market a bit better. Furthermore, if you have a positive experience with the company, there is precisely nothing stopping you from recommending it to your friends, should they be looking for work. However, for the most part i agree with you in response to the previous commenter's post - interviewing is good in general, even when you don't need a job at that exact time. There's also the possibility of just reaching out afterwards, if the situation changes.
  - sigstoat 5y ago
    > Ah, yes, purposefully waste people's time. Fuck them, right? as an interviewer, i'm far more concerned about the time spent sorting through piles of resumes from people who are just rolling the dice, and didn't read the job posting / aren't qualified. maybe upper management cares about the time spent, but i'd be happy to talk for 45-60 minutes to somebody who was an even remotely passable candidate who didn't actually want a job.
    - sgtnoodle 5y ago
      Yeah, getting a company to schedule a full onsite interview panel is a big time investment, and lame if there's zero chance of it going anywhere. If some random person emails me asking for advice on how to practice relevant skills or prepare for an interview, though, I'll schedule a video chat right away and talk for hours if they want. I'll also hop on a call a few days after rejecting someone and give them detailed feedback if they want.
    - Kalium 5y ago
      > maybe upper management cares about the time spent, but i'd be happy to talk for 45-60 minutes to somebody who was an even remotely passable candidate who didn't actually want a job. Yup. If the job I've got for them is any good, if the company is good, and if I am good, they might turn into a hire anyway. That a qualified person doesn't need the job does not rule them out. It raises the bar and reminds us that interviewing goes both ways.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - maxk42 5y ago
    I fail to understand how you equate "Go on interviews even when you don't need a job." with "waste people's time." The idea is to interview when you don't need a job so that you can easily negotiate for the best possible offer. If they won't beat your current compensation or benefits you can say "thanks but no thanks" and if they can you can say "I'd be delighted!" Nobody's time is wasted - the hiring company just has a higher bar to meet to entice you to join their team. If anyone's time is wasted it's yours when they can neither make a competitive offer nor help you to improve your skills in the interview. If you've only ever interviewed when you were desperate to take the first job that comes along then you're almost certainly under-compensated. Anyone who's not taking a better job when they get the chance is leaving money on the table.
- the_af 5y ago
  > "Practice. Go on interviews even when you don't need a job." I'm ambivalent about this kind of advice. On the surface it seems right, and I've never been more comfortable in interviews than when I was thinking "I don't need this job", at the same time interviews are incredibly stressful time wasters. For a lot of people, interviewing is one of the most stressful situations they are going to be in, barring life or death situations. Just the thought of 18 to 30 interviews a year makes me anxious and I don't even need to interview now. I'm not a young person anymore, and interviewing more is not going to help me either. It's like pulling my teeth: not something I want to practice.
  - cyberlurker 5y ago
    I think it can be good to see what’s out there, and interviews allow you to ask questions to the employer too. I’ve found it can be a good temperature check of how much I like my current job and organization, are my skills competitive, what’s my monetary worth, etc. I love the feeling of “I don’t need this job” during interviews but I feel a lot of stress when I want the job/need it for some reason. I feel for people who NEED to interview often.
  - unishark 5y ago
    > Just the thought of 18 to 30 interviews a year makes me anxious and I don't even need to interview now. That was their life as a contractor. I think the advice was just to do more than zero, not necessarily go to such an extreme. You can't really hold a full-time job and do that much interviewing unless it's just tiny screening interviews.
  - benhurmarcel 5y ago
    Isn't that the point? Stressful experiences become less stressful as you practice and get used to them. I used to be stressed out speaking in front of 20 colleagues or landing a small plane. Not anymore.
Jach 5y ago
Yup, I've always believed anything on my resume is fair game for someone to ask about, so I should be able to talk about each thing to some extent. As you accumulate more things it can be a useful filtering tool too as you just leave stuff off you don't want to talk about or where your recollection is too hazy. Getting into a conversation can be stress reducing for both parties (interviewers can get stressed too) though if the interviewee comes off as trying to control the discussion, interviewers pick up on that (even if they're new and bad at driving things themselves like they're supposed to) and will consider it a red flag... I hope after a while you get to experience the other side being one of the ~6 people interviewing someone for joining your team/the company, it's pretty eye opening too. Judging someone in such a short time period given at these bigger companies is tough, and when you actually want the candidate to join you don't want them to turn down an offer because of a bad interview experience with you. If you ever get involved I'd only encourage you try to improve things -- some ideas include trying to lower stress levels of candidates, or having more reasonable/useful and typing-instead-of-whiteboarding tests of "can you even program?", but there's many possible improvements, the goal of improving on what you have is what's important. (And there does sadly need to be some sort of "can you even program?" test in the pipeline, at least at the sort of companies that do the multiple-people-all-day interviews, because the input stages are even more broken than the interviews.) Even if there are many corporate constraints on what you can do, and even if you can't get management or other interviewers on board with your proposals, you can at least make your section the best it can be.

by Zababa 5y ago

maxk42 5y ago

> I really underestimate the amount of stress that can be felt when you're alone facing 6 people for a job that you want. Practice. Go on interviews even when you don't need a job. Get that practice in and get comfortable with it. I went on 18 - 30 interviews a year for many years when I was a contractor and got very good at interviewing over time. I still get a bit tense when the job is particularly appealing, but with practice it gets to the point where they'll rarely throw a question at you that you don't know how to handle.

solipsism 5y ago
Ah, yes, purposefully waste people's time. Fuck them, right? I've seen this kind of attitude before, and it's usually justified with something about how the companies don't respect your time so why should you respect theirs. The thing is... the kind of people at these companies who don't care about your time are the kind of people who would do something like this.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  Whiteboarding will continue until morale improves.
- the_af 5y ago
  Sorry if I misunderstand you, but are you saying that it's wrong to interview for practice because it's wasting the company's time? Interesting, never thought about this. I think I disagree though; these are the people who (usually) play games with you and put you through some very stressful situation during the interview. I think candidates should be able to practice in a low stakes environment, i.e. one where they can't lose because they didn't really want the job. It's only fair. I'm not a great interviewer, but I always ask why the candidate is looking for a job, and more than once they've admitted they weren't actively looking but just testing the waters, and I didn't hold it against them...
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Even if you are just practicing, it's still an opportunity for the company to convince you to change your mind.
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    > ...these are the people who (usually) play games with you... I don't think this even matters, to be honest. Not only is interviewing good for you personally (as you said), but also lets the company gauge the talent pool in the job market a bit better. Furthermore, if you have a positive experience with the company, there is precisely nothing stopping you from recommending it to your friends, should they be looking for work. However, for the most part i agree with you in response to the previous commenter's post - interviewing is good in general, even when you don't need a job at that exact time. There's also the possibility of just reaching out afterwards, if the situation changes.
- sigstoat 5y ago
  > Ah, yes, purposefully waste people's time. Fuck them, right? as an interviewer, i'm far more concerned about the time spent sorting through piles of resumes from people who are just rolling the dice, and didn't read the job posting / aren't qualified. maybe upper management cares about the time spent, but i'd be happy to talk for 45-60 minutes to somebody who was an even remotely passable candidate who didn't actually want a job.
  - sgtnoodle 5y ago
    Yeah, getting a company to schedule a full onsite interview panel is a big time investment, and lame if there's zero chance of it going anywhere. If some random person emails me asking for advice on how to practice relevant skills or prepare for an interview, though, I'll schedule a video chat right away and talk for hours if they want. I'll also hop on a call a few days after rejecting someone and give them detailed feedback if they want.
  - Kalium 5y ago
    > maybe upper management cares about the time spent, but i'd be happy to talk for 45-60 minutes to somebody who was an even remotely passable candidate who didn't actually want a job. Yup. If the job I've got for them is any good, if the company is good, and if I am good, they might turn into a hire anyway. That a qualified person doesn't need the job does not rule them out. It raises the bar and reminds us that interviewing goes both ways.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- maxk42 5y ago
  I fail to understand how you equate "Go on interviews even when you don't need a job." with "waste people's time." The idea is to interview when you don't need a job so that you can easily negotiate for the best possible offer. If they won't beat your current compensation or benefits you can say "thanks but no thanks" and if they can you can say "I'd be delighted!" Nobody's time is wasted - the hiring company just has a higher bar to meet to entice you to join their team. If anyone's time is wasted it's yours when they can neither make a competitive offer nor help you to improve your skills in the interview. If you've only ever interviewed when you were desperate to take the first job that comes along then you're almost certainly under-compensated. Anyone who's not taking a better job when they get the chance is leaving money on the table.
the_af 5y ago
> "Practice. Go on interviews even when you don't need a job." I'm ambivalent about this kind of advice. On the surface it seems right, and I've never been more comfortable in interviews than when I was thinking "I don't need this job", at the same time interviews are incredibly stressful time wasters. For a lot of people, interviewing is one of the most stressful situations they are going to be in, barring life or death situations. Just the thought of 18 to 30 interviews a year makes me anxious and I don't even need to interview now. I'm not a young person anymore, and interviewing more is not going to help me either. It's like pulling my teeth: not something I want to practice.
- cyberlurker 5y ago
  I think it can be good to see what’s out there, and interviews allow you to ask questions to the employer too. I’ve found it can be a good temperature check of how much I like my current job and organization, are my skills competitive, what’s my monetary worth, etc. I love the feeling of “I don’t need this job” during interviews but I feel a lot of stress when I want the job/need it for some reason. I feel for people who NEED to interview often.
- unishark 5y ago
  > Just the thought of 18 to 30 interviews a year makes me anxious and I don't even need to interview now. That was their life as a contractor. I think the advice was just to do more than zero, not necessarily go to such an extreme. You can't really hold a full-time job and do that much interviewing unless it's just tiny screening interviews.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  Isn't that the point? Stressful experiences become less stressful as you practice and get used to them. I used to be stressed out speaking in front of 20 colleagues or landing a small plane. Not anymore.

Jach 5y ago

Yup, I've always believed anything on my resume is fair game for someone to ask about, so I should be able to talk about each thing to some extent. As you accumulate more things it can be a useful filtering tool too as you just leave stuff off you don't want to talk about or where your recollection is too hazy. Getting into a conversation can be stress reducing for both parties (interviewers can get stressed too) though if the interviewee comes off as trying to control the discussion, interviewers pick up on that (even if they're new and bad at driving things themselves like they're supposed to) and will consider it a red flag... I hope after a while you get to experience the other side being one of the ~6 people interviewing someone for joining your team/the company, it's pretty eye opening too. Judging someone in such a short time period given at these bigger companies is tough, and when you actually want the candidate to join you don't want them to turn down an offer because of a bad interview experience with you. If you ever get involved I'd only encourage you try to improve things -- some ideas include trying to lower stress levels of candidates, or having more reasonable/useful and typing-instead-of-whiteboarding tests of "can you even program?", but there's many possible improvements, the goal of improving on what you have is what's important. (And there does sadly need to be some sort of "can you even program?" test in the pipeline, at least at the sort of companies that do the multiple-people-all-day interviews, because the input stages are even more broken than the interviews.) Even if there are many corporate constraints on what you can do, and even if you can't get management or other interviewers on board with your proposals, you can at least make your section the best it can be.