Preparing for Interviews

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>Ok, these are just some things about interviews I have picked up through my limited interviewing experience (12-16 phone interviews and 3-4 in-person interviews). </p>

<p>I did poorly on my most recent interview (first one this year -- dream company for me) and just recieved an e-mail rejection. If I were to have another shot, I would have done these things better:</p>

<p>1) Try to create a set of qualities you want to convince the interviewer to believe you have and try to demonstrate that you have them through each interview response.</p>

<p>e.g., Ingelligent, eager to learn, hard working</p>

<p>So if they ask you why you want the specified job, tell them that you are passionate about blah blah blah and that it is challenging and that it involves lots of learning (including what you expect to learn). Tell them how passionate you are about learning, etc.</p>

<p>2) Have notes in front of you in a phone interview (I fortunately did this)</p>

<p>So you can recall your experiences from your resume and to minimize the chances of accidentally contradicting something you had written in your resume.</p>

<p>3) Think through the "puzzle" questions and ask a lot of questions</p>

<p>So you have to provide more than simply the correct solution, perhaps many different ways something can be done; the tradeoffs of one approach vs another. Ask questions to clarify what they want -- perhaps they are intentionally vague to see if you will ask quesitons. Try to think about the edge cases. Analyze every single word of the question and try to include that into your analysis for the respond.</p>

<p>4) Try to relate things to your prior experiences when applicable</p>

<p>5) Relax and don't stress</p>

<p>6) Try to suit your answers to the position.
I interviewed for Software Development Engineer and Software Development Engineer Test. In my interview, I mentioned I don't use beta software. This is something I regret. Also, when she asked me to mention an application I use, I mentioned using Notepad to have my notes open. Again something I regret.</p>

<p>I would like others, especially those who have more professional experience than me, to share their views about how to ace an interview.</p>

2

<br>

<br>

<p>In general, don’t tell them that you are passionate about learning.
Interviewers will pick up on that from your resume, transcript and
your demeanor in the interview. They may toss you a random question to
see how you respond.</p>

<p>One of the reasons why interviewers ask you why you want the job is to
see where you want to go in the future. Companies put a lot of effort
into training and they don’t want to do that for someone that is only
going to be around for a year or two. It may happen anyways (we have
hired many college grads that only stuck around for less than two
years) but you’d better not give us any hint that you’re going to
leave for grad school, or want to move to the other coast or move to
another country or change careers.</p>

<p>Some candidates have indicated that they want to move into management
in the near term. Sometimes this works if the company is looking for a
future manager or someone with a lot of ambition but sometimes it
doesn’t work, especially in a very lean organization. In some
respects, you’re telling your prospective manager that you want his
or her job.</p>

<br>

<br>

<p>I’ve never been on either side of a phone interview but you should
know your resume cold after all, you lived it.</p>

<br>

<br>

<p>Very important.</p>

<br>

<br>

<p>The beta software question was probably related to the test position.
A beta tester is expected to try the software and report on bugs
found. A development engineer may contact the beta tester for help
with reproducing and diagnosing the problem and then verifying that
the bug is fixed after the code has been fixed. You can see that this
experience would be helpful as a test engineer.</p>

<br>

<br>

<p>You mentioned that you’ve used IBM’s tools before in another thread.
ClearCase is a hardcore development environment. I assume that you
had this on your resume so they already knew about it but talking
about Notepad as an important application isn’t something that a
software development organization wants to hear.</p>

<br>

<br>

<p>Monster has a few videos on preparing for interviews and I’ve seen
other good videos on interviewing but these are generally for
in-person interviews.</p>

3

<p>A simple yet important piece of advice, if you don’t know something, say you don’t know it. Don’t try to BS your way through it, the person asking you will know you don’t know and it’s a red flag.</p>

4

<p>Great advice, everyone.</p>

5

<p>Well don’t be hard on yourself. The job market is pretty weak these days. It’s like playing a game of musical chairs…</p>

6

<p>Another thing I’d like to add:</p>

<p>Turn weaknesses into strengths. Interviewers are sometimes fond of the “what are your three biggest weaknesses?” question. You don’t want to say a weakness and then just leave it there. Say something like, “I pay too much attention to detail” (which can be a good thing in certain situations) and then follow it up with an explanation on how you are trying to improve yourself in that regard. Basically, fill in the “but” part of the sentence.</p>

<p>I’ve had limited interview experience, but this is advice from a recruitment manager for a technology startup company, so I feel okay about proffering it here.</p>

7

<p>

</p>

<p>“Creating” qualities in an attempt to give the interviewer a “created” picture of yourself is a bad idea. They’ll see through that in a heartbeat unless the job you’re truly suited for involves acting.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>The word “passionate” is so overused that I cringe everytime I hear someone use it. You don’t need to say you’re passionate about something, you demonstrate it through your application and they way you answer questions presented to you in the interview, and in the manner in which you ask questions yourself.</p>

8

<p>The interviewer wants to know the real you and, to some extent, they are trying to get around the picture that people think that the interviewer wants to see. They do want to see some polish, what you wear, how you speak, etc. But they want to know what you know, what you can do, are you going to hang around for a while, will you do things that aren’t necessarily fun.</p>

9

<p>The interviewer is probably looking for 3 things

  • Smart
  • Gets things done
  • Not a jerk/good match/someone I’d like to work with.</p>

<p>The first comes from grades, classes taken and maybe puzzles.
The second comes from project work, ideally out of the classroom, but major open-ended classroom projects can have value. They should ask you a lot about them.
The last comes from just the discussion and how they feel about you.</p>

<p>That’s it. Keep in mind what they are looking for it makes the whole thing go more smoothly.</p>

<p>(There’s a book: Smart and Gets Things Done that’s about high-end CS hiring and interviewing. Nice book to read for the CS folks).</p>