Probably not applicable to GitLab, but may be useful to some. I think too often FAANG and startup interviews are discussed here vs. major companies that aren’t

Probably not applicable to GitLab, but may be useful to some. I think too often FAANG and startup interviews are discussed here vs. major companies that aren’t primarily tech yet have 1,000s of developers. 1st level is HR. They don’t understand the job and are just matching key words to the posting. Sometimes we can get the HR person to just give us all the applicants, but often that list is so huge it’s not worth it. They’re basically clicking an auto rejection. Hiring managers are then not permitted to say “why.” They send the rejection to HR, who hits the button. There is 0 win for the company to say why, and it opens up a ton of legal risk. It doesn’t even matter if it’s valid or not, legal doesn’t want to spend time/money on defending a frivolous law suit. Now, the what to do if applying to a non-FAANG megacorp. My company is so concerned with bias, we can’t do technical interviews and are limited to a list of canned behavioral questions. Some do ask for technical stories. We can request additional ones, but the process is too onerous. The same questions have to be asked to every candidate, although prompting for more details is allowed. Have to have multiple managers who are the only ones allowed to ask. We can have technical folks sit in and feedback into manager scoring and help prompt, but cannot ask questions or score results. Make sure to cater your resume to the actual posting. Repeat the key words, not just related stuff obvious to technical people. You have to get through HR. It’s not common anymore, but I think it’s a good idea to say why you want THAT job. It stands out, especially for folks with little/no/different experience. We see too many spammed resumes. To prep for these interviews, read up on “STAR” and typical behavioral questions. Have a library of situations in your mind. Multiple conflict situations. Admitting failure is fine, don’t worry about sounding perfect. Don’t focus on blame. Focus on a positive outcome. You can say you f’d up, but then how you changed your behavior. And then make sure you say how that made things better. The “results” are the most commonly ignored part and they’re the most important to the nontechnical managers scoring. Technical folks sitting in are mostly there to call BS. Show leadership. You don’t have to “I” everything, but show your influence. If you have no experience, talk about times you volunteered, had a random job, worked on a group project, did some extracurricular. Non-tech is fine for behavioral questions regarding conflict, etc. Show in your skills section weird non applicable stuff you taught yourself. It shows interest beyond “I went to class.” Weird programming languages or projects always are cool to me.