Being Prepared for an Interview

27 Nov 2020

I’ve recently gotten back into conducting interviews at the company I work at. I have conducted numerous software engineering interviews in my career (more than some, less than many others). Something during my time interviewing candidates, has shown that many candidates do not take the time to prepare for an interview.

It strikes me rather strange that candidates are ill prepared for interviews. The interview process from the candidates point of view can be daunting, and most of the time during the interview you can be quite nervous. Being nervous means you may;

• Say something incorrectly
• Not remember something you actually know
• Not explain a concept coherently

Preparing for an interview does not mean that nerves go away, but they should be somewhat reduced. With nerves reduced, you can focus properly on what the interviewer wants during an interview. Remember each communication is a reflection of you, so remain professional.

But most importantly preparing for an interview is ensuring you present yourself in the best possible manner. After all the interview is to take the next step in your career, so make it a good step.

What can I do to prepare myself?

Ideally you have been preparing yourself for a long time by doing;

• Upskilling
• Mock Interviews
• Actual interviews without actively looking

Unfortunately not everyone can continually do this, so my recommendations to being prepared when you are interviewing are as follows.

Talk with the recruiter

Good recruiters are happy enough to give information to candidates, most companies have some sort of recruitment software that allows people within the interview committee to see communications. You should continually be in contact with them to understand;

• What is the interview going to be about?
• Who am I interviewing with?
• Where in the process am I?

These are basic questions, but will help frame how you prepare and what to expect in the interview.

I did a coding assignment

This is not some hacker rank coding challenge, but rather an assignment, which you usually have a time frame to submit being 1 week. These assignments are internal time boxed on actual work time between 2-4hrs, there might be some that go over this, but don’t spend more time than this.

Things to remember when submitting are;

• Keep communication clear
• Give some basic rationale behind some decisions made

If you are asked to do another interview, this interview will most likely touch the submission you did so prepare yourself for that, and of course. Talk with the recruiter to know what you should do within the interview.

Talking with a non-technical person

Some companies may want you to talk with people outside of recruitment and engineering. So do not expect anything technical in this interview, but be prepared for behavioural type questions.

You should prepare yourself to handle some of these types of questions

• Past career
• Objectives in your career
• What success you have created/been apart of
• What failures you’ve been apart of, and how you have learnt from them.

Try to aim yourself to answer these in story mode. You should try to structure your answer to follow a pattern, such as;

• Nugget — Start focusing the story
• Situation — Give basic details on what you did
• Action — What actions did you take, phrase like a list of bullets
• Result — Demonstrate why it worked/not worked.

I hope this advice is helpful, I have followed this in various forms, and have seen it work quite well, I’ve also not followed, and it showed. Remember that the interview is important, prepare like it is, and hopefully the next job is the right one to continue your career path.