With the new year may come a new job. As you are performing your job interviews, here are some tips to help you do a better job of impressing your new boss and coworkers. In this article by Steven A. Lowe, we find he has several tips to help you perform better during your interview.
If you’re an IT pro, chances the job interview is at — or very near — the top of your list of personal hells. Why not? Tech job interviews can be grueling experiences, rife with esoteric puzzles, uncomfortable pauses, landmine questions, and the aching underlying feeling that maybe you don’t belong.
Throughout the process, you will be talking with strangers via phone and video, taking tests, answering challenging and often uncomfortable questions, traveling on sleepless red-eye flights, and enduring multiple anxious periods of not knowing what is going on, how you’ve been received, or what will happen next.
To really ace the interview and minimize your anxiety going in, you must be prepared to an almost otherworldly extent, on many fronts at once. This means deep research on the position and company to decode what to expect during the interview process and to understand the company dynamics at as near the level of a current employee as you can.
Still sure you want to pursue that new job?
1. Don’t be afraid to reach out early
2. Don’t believe everything you read on Glassdoor
3. Find employee blogs and read them in depth
4. Research social culture – it’s as critical as technical focus
5. Understanding the underlying principles of interview puzzles is the key to crushing them
6. Connect with current employees
7. Don’t tilt at windmills
8. Dress as if you already work there
9. Let your personality out
10. Beware the “interviewing the interviewer” trap
11. Help the interviewer imagine you in the position
12. Always speak favorably about former employers
13. Ask for the job
My personal technique to breezing through interviews and leaving a positive impression is asking the interviewer questions about themselves on the subjects they want to talk about. Interviews are almost like a date, and people want to talk about themselves when on a date. No one wants to hear someone talk about themselves for an hour. Give the interviewer an opportunity to talk about themselves. Ask them why they came to work at this company, how long have they worked here, what they like about the company, what projects they have recently been involved with, etc. That is not all you want to talk about, but make sure you ask these questions as part of the interview.
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