4 ms·
Ask HN: How do I interview better?
Over the past 4 months, I've spent dozens of hours talking to internal recruiters, developers, and product managers while interviewing to various tech companies. Apart from an offer that I regret turning down from half a year ago, I haven't made any progress or gotten offers at the companies I want to work at.
##Details
First, some details about me.
- Programming seriously since high school
- Graduated in 2012 from middle tier CS school.
- Working for almost 2 years.
- come across as young at 23.
- Lots of Android/AOSP/Java experience, moving towards: automation/web scraping/"data science"/"machine learning"/Python.
2. Organizer of 2 separate programming meetups in NYC.
1. Meetup #1 is educational + adults
- Consistent weekly meetups.
- Going on for 11 months, since January 2013.
- At least 500 attendees, possibly much more.
- I helped start it up as subsection of bigger meetup.
2. Meetup #2 is educational + kids
- Once a month 3-hour workshops.
- Somewhere on the order of 500 attendees for 2013.
- We create our own curriculums.
3. No outside work projects.
- I talk about the projects at my current company.
- interesting projects I've seen other people work on.
## Feedback
I've done some analysis on myself. Here's what I've deduced.
1. I suspect I'm too bubbly or enthusiastic. Maybe I come across as really young? I've been rejected from companies because I don't have enough experience.
2. Algorithms and technical questions are a bit of a chore. I'm weak at this.
3. I interview better when I express less interest. It's a little parodoxical for me.
4. Not going through my personal network. I am a significant part of 2 meetups, I should take advantage of that.
Can I get some feedback regarding this?
- jacksondeane 13y ago* I am assuming you are applying/interviewing for developer jobs. Stop worrying about being "too bubbly or enthusiastic", coming across young & organizing meetups. Start worrying about not having outside work projects & being weak on technical questions. You need to be able to prove to a potential employer that you can do the job. Organizing meetups is nice but does not show anything about your development skills. A github profile with a few projects related to the type of development you want to get into will do much more for you than anything else.
- fizzaci 13y agoThanks for replying, Jackson. Well, I do have a share of nontrivial projects on github, I just don't think they'll attract companies. I've done a fair share of web scraping as projects (like scraping GSMarena for phones, or the Apple store for information + reviews). It's not exactly the sort of stuff to display though, in the way that someone who does iOS/Android/web dev can display. I did want to create a web frontend to the GSMArena data, maybe I should extend that with something on the frontend.