212. How To Nail a Job Interview

How do I interview well? What things should I say or do in an interview to impress an interviewer? What pitfalls should I avoid when interviewing for a job? These are the questions we will answer in today's episode of Dev Questions.

Website: https://www.DevForge.com/ 
Ask Your Question: https://suggestions.iamtimcorey.com/
Sign Up to Get More Great Developer Content in Your Inbox: https://signup.iamtimcorey.com/

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey. Join us each episode as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development, understanding the industry, and new technology. If you're just starting out or you want to grow stronger as a developer, this is the place to get your questions answered. Now, here's your host, expert developer and online educator, Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

How do I interview well? What things should I say or do in interview to impress an interviewer? And what pitfall should I avoid when interviewing? In this episode, I'm going to cover the five things to do in interview, as well as the six pitfalls to avoid. But most importantly, we're going to establish a clear goal that you should have for every interview you enter into. So the goal of interviewing, the goal you should go into an interviewer with, is to show the interviewer that you can do the job well and that you can fit in well with the team. Those two things. Because your job is going to be to make their job easier. So if you're interviewing with a software development manager and you are looking to be a software developer level two, and so you come in to interview for this job, you know that your job will be to do software development so that more development gets done for that department, so that that software development manager can accomplish more, so that more things can be done so they can clear more off their plate. So you need to show that you can do the job well because that's gonna help them clear more off their plate, and you can fit in well with a team because you wanna make sure that you can show that you will not be a problem, that you'll not be, you know, maybe a great developer, but a horrible person that no one likes to work with, which makes you know division in the team. So your goal is to show you can do a job well and you can fit in well with the team. Those are the things. Okay? So let's talk about then what you should do in an interview to help communicate that. Number one, be confident and relaxed. This can be hard, but you know what will help? Practice. Once you've done this enough times, you're going to be more confident and more relaxed because you will know who you are. You will know what you can do. And you will be more confident and relaxed because you've done C4, right? If it's brand new, if you're you know uptight and stressed, well, that's be hard to communicate to the person that's interviewing you. So being confident and relaxed comes through practice. Have practice interviews with friends. Try and get practice interviews with coworkers or with other people that you know that can give you good feedback, that can even just listen to you talk and give and say, hey, relax until you finally get it. Number two, know what you say and then say what you know. Okay, so when you're talking about your knowledge about your resume and what you say you know, okay. When you say, hey, I I know C sharp really well. Okay, I've I've been doing C sharp for 20 years, I know C sharp great. Okay. Well, if they ask you a C sharp question, you go, uh I don't remember how to do a loop, like then you're not really, you're not really matching what you know with what you say you know. Okay, so make sure those two align. Make sure that when you say, I know JavaScript, you know JavaScript and haven't just used it once. When you say, I know CSS, that, or I'm an expert in CSS, or I'm very good in CSS, that you actually can do some more advanced things besides just saying a color or a font size. Okay. Which also means that you should be clear about what you're okay in, where you say, you know what, I have worked with CSS. And if they ask about it, say, I know how to set up font size, I know how to set up, you know, um different font types, I know how to uh lay things on a page, I know how to center a div. Okay, that might blow them away. But that's the things I know. I don't know in depth all the layers CSS3 stuff. Okay. Being very clear with that will again come back to being confident and relaxed because saying, here's what I do and don't know is helpful. But then also it allows the interviewer to be confident that what you said in your resume really is true. Number three, know what the company does. When you're applying for a job, maybe you don't know necessarily what they do right away, but if you get called for an interview, figure out what the company does. Read their website, read the job description really clearly. Figure out what the company does and then what your role would be inside that company. Know the main products the company works with, know the industry a little bit. Be able to talk intelligently, if at a very beginner level, about the company. A person who knows what the company is about comes across more confident, more knowledgeable, more relaxed. A person who goes, What do you do here? doesn't come across as clear, as invested, or as desirous of this position. Okay, so know what the company does. That'll also allow you to ask some good questions, by the way. Number four, know what the job description says. So let's just say you're a C sharp developer, but you've applied for a job that has C sharp as part of it, but it's really a data analyst position. Well, if you focus all your time on C sharp and what you know in C sharp, that's great. But that was a secondary thing they were asking for. They're asking for a data analyst. And if you don't realize that, then you're gonna basically look really good, but not right for this position. And that's not good. So you want to know what the job description says and then tailor what you say based upon that description. If the job description is mostly about SQL with some C sharp, then most of your time should be talking about SQL and what you've done with SQL and how you've worked with permissions and security and the different types of objects in SQL, like triggers and all these other things that you know optimizing SQL, but then you also pepper in some things about C Sharp that relate to SQL. So that way you come across as matching what they're asking for in the job description. Number five is ask good questions. So often in interview, the interviewer will say, Do you have any questions? Now you could say things like, How much does it pay? Okay, that's a reasonable question to ask, but that's not going to be a standout question. A standout question might be, what would your ideal employee do in the first 90 days to set themselves apart? Well, think through that question. What are you really asking? You're saying not just, hey, could I get the job? You're saying, hey, how could I excel at this job? How could I blow your socks off? How could I be the best employee you've seen? And you're not doing it in a bragging way. You're not saying, I'm going to be. You're not just saying all these things about you that kind of puff yourself up. Instead, what you're doing is saying, hey, what can I do to be even better? Right? Or another question might be, what are some characteristics of your most successful employees? Trying to identify how I can be a better employee for you. Questions like that are not asked often. And when they are, it makes the interviewer step back and think harder. When an interviewer says, that's a good question, you know that it's not a question that get asked all the time. And they start to think about it and they they answer you. Make sure, like listen carefully, even ask a follow-up question. Show that you're interested. But when you do that, you will stand out. Because it's not just that you're one more person that knows C sharp. You're not just one more person that knows SQL, you're not just one more person that has five years' experience in the field. You're the person who is figuring out how to be better. You're the person that asked that really great question that showed they were thinking beyond just writing code. So that those are the five ways that, or five things you should do in a job interview. Now, let's talk about what you shouldn't do. And yes, as an employer, I have interviewed a lot of people and I have seen all of these. Okay. And I can tell you, as a person who is looking to hire a person, I am looking at that person saying, can I see them doing the job? And I will take some of the traits from the interview and say, you know, apply that to how they do the job themselves. And yes, it's hard because an interview is a one-time occurrence, you can have a bad day, it happens to all of us. But try to avoid these things. Number one, appear unprepared. If you roll into an interview with me and you prepare, like appear to be unprepared. If I have asked you to review what we do and have any questions, and you have no questions, if I have asked you to bring three examples of portfolio pieces that you've done in C and you bring two, like if you've done these things that show me that you're not prepared for an interview, I'm going to apply that to what you'll do in your job and say, if they can't be prepared for an interview, how will they be prepared for a job? And the answer is they probably won't. Now you might say, well, Tim, you're not paying them for an interview. You're paying them for the job. Yes, but that's not, that's the interview process is figure out who stands out the best. I'm going to find a person who stands out as being the person that appears to fit what I want to see going forward. Appearing unprepared isn't one. Number two is lying. Now, there's many different ways to lie in interview. One is, you know, to bluff, where I ask you, how would you make a method that can be accessed by other methods in another project? And you say, well, I could write that in a way that, and you start going off this whole explanation where I realize you have no clue that it just make it public. Like you have no clue. So that tells me not just that you have no clue about the answer, but that you're gonna not tell me the truth. Because the reality is you should say, I don't know. Or I could look that up, but I don't know off the top of my head. That's a simple one, but that tells me something about your character. It tells me something about how you're going to treat me when I ask you a question in a meeting. I don't want a person who's bluffing or lying because I can't trust that an answer you give me is true. And if I don't know the answer, and you give me an answer confidently, well, I want to be able to trust that that answer is true. So don't lie, don't bluff. This means that when you talk about your experiences, you list all of your experiences on your resume. Make sure they're really experiences. I've had people put things like JavaScript or jQuery on the resume, and then I find out later, oh yeah, I saw it once. That's a lie then. You should not have put that in your resume. Okay, so that's number two thing to do, not to do. Don't lie. Number three is give one or two word answers. Now, this is often because a person is intimidated or they're scared or they're you know not feeling confident or comfortable. And so they will give one or two word answers. Um, how well do you know C sharp? Pretty good. Okay. You know, and so we have a couple of those answers, and what I realize is I can't really judge you. I can't really judge how much you know. But here's the deal when I can't judge you in an interview, if I can't figure it out, then the answer is no. Not, not, I guess I'll let you go through, I guess I'll hire you. No, the answer is no. If I can't figure out more about you, if I can't figure out how you stand out, if I can't figure out how you could be the best candidate, then I can't hire you. So giving one and two-word answers, don't do that. Okay, avoid that. Make sure you give complete answers. Talk about it without going too long, but talk about whatever they're asking. How well do you know C Sharp? Well, I've been working on it for the past five years. And in that five years, I started off building just console applications, but I kind of graduated to building back-end data access and business logic all the way up through an API. And for the past two years, I've been working on building APIs through the data access layer. That's a whole lot different than very good. Okay? So that's much more clear, getting much more to work with. Number four, how you come across is important. So, for example, if you're grumpy, if you're scowling, if you are kind of miserable, remember, you're not just trying to prove that you can do the job, but that you will fit in well with the team, including with me as your boss. Well, if you're grumpy, miserable, I don't want to work with that. And so even if you're a great developer, I go, but you're a miserable person to be around. Well, guess what? That has a weight to it. And yes, sometimes we hire grumpy people, but not often. We try really hard to hire people that will fit in well with a team, will build other people up, will be a team player. And when you can't even be, you know, at least respectful and neutral in an interview, that's gonna be problematic. Number five is to seem disinterested. I've had people in interviews where I really wondered, do they have a job offer somewhere else? Are they just practicing for interviews? Because it doesn't feel like they actually wanted the job. I asked, hey, do you have any questions about the position? Nope. Hey, do you have any questions about the pay or benefits? No, I'm good. Do you have any concerns about what we're gonna do on a day-to-day basis? No, I'm good. Are you interested or not? And if you don't seem interested, what does that mean? Well, first of all, it means why should I be interested in you if you're not interested in me in this position? But also, I start to wonder, is this where you want to work? Are you excited to come to work? Because really, if you're already miserable before you even start the job, why should I even let you start? Okay, so don't seem disinterested. Show interest in the interview process and in the job itself. Number six, and here's one again that relates to what you do in an interview, reflects on what I think you might do in the job. And that is don't be late. If you have an interview at 3 p.m., show up at least at five minutes early. Okay, at least. Show up early. If it's an online Zoom type interview, fine. Show up, you know, a minute early. Show up two minutes early. I would encourage you still five minutes, especially on Zoom, because Zoom always updates. It's always updates at the worst time, so give yourself some time for that. But show up early, don't be late. Because even on time where I'm wondering, are they gonna show up? They're not gonna show up. Are you gonna show up or they're not gonna show up? Are they gonna waste my time? I'm already starting to think through that process when the seconds are coming down to right on time. That's a problem because now my brain isn't thinking about, I can't wait to see this person. I can't wait to find out about their skill in this. Instead, my brain is thinking, are they going to waste my time? Are they gonna waste my time? And when they don't, that's great, but it it's I'd rather be thinking about all the things leading up to it and getting prepared and going, ooh, they're early. Okay, so don't be late. Now, an interview is your opportunity to show your potential employer what you would be like as an employee. Show them that you'll work hard, have a good attitude, and that you know your stuff. This can often outweigh a person who might appear to know more than you, but who does not come across as a good worker or as a good team fit. So you can use the interview to actually leapfrog ahead of other people who might be better than you. And the way to do that is by making sure that you interview well, by following those five things that I talked about and avoiding those six pitfalls. All right, so thanks for listening. I hope this helps. And as always, I am Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Def Questions. Tim is committed to making it easier for you to become a developer. If you would like to help make more content like this possible, please like, subscribe, rate, and share Dev Questions. You can also send your questions to questions at IamTimcorey.com. Until next time, remember, you are too smart and your time too valuable to waste it making all the mistakes Tim did. When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to imtimcore.com and enroll in a course.