Let's Prepare for an Interview Together

INTRO

Follow enough recruiters on twitter and linkedin and you’ll see this type of post daily:

Read that carefully. There is a major difference between the two.

Interviewing is a completely different skill than doing the actual job. Until someone comes up with a better & more consistent way, it’s going to stay like that for a while.

There are multiple types of interviews to prepare for, from behavioral, scenario, technical, and coding. You have hiring teams asking senior engineers entry level computer science questions they haven’t touched in a while years. You have hiring teams giving you a scenario you may or may not have encountered (but may possibly on the job) asking what you would do and the logic behind it.

Below I’ll use a real example from last year about two software engineers I wanted to place. I submitted both candidates to the same job, both really wanted it, but one of the candidates clearly had the advantage because of interview prep.

Why do I need to prepare?

Let’s take two candidates. We’ll call them Sammy and Sarah. Both are senior software engineers coming out of X Company, applying to get a job at Y company. For arguments sake, we’ll also say they have the same exact years of experience, project experience, and both are A-Players.

Sammy knows he’s one of the best software engineers out there. He decides not to take his interview prep seriously. He doesn’t ask the recruiter any questions because he thinks they won’t be able to provide any more value to him.

Sarah knows she’s one of the best. But, she really wants this job as it aligns with her career goals and doesn’t want to chance anything. Sarah over- communicates with her recruiter (in a good way) to make sure what type of interview each round is, who she is speaking to, and asks for any tips to succeed.

*Newsflash, recruiters WANT to give you this information. We get compensated and/or judged on our success when we fill roles.*

Research

Before each round, Sarah researches each of the interviewers on LinkedIn. She connects with her recruiter and they discuss tailoring her responses to the audience she is speaking to. She now knows to get granular in her responses to the individual contributors and to keep things high level when she speaks to the manager and director.

Sarah also researches the company, it’s recent events, & market performance to use as talking points and to show how her skills & experience can help push them forward.

She studies the group line-of-business and project description for the same purpose as well.

Sammy on the other hand, thinks to himself he’s one of the best so he doesn’t need to put in this extra effort.

Technical

For the technical round, Sarah asks the recruiter what to prep for. As annoying as it sounds, the recruiter let’s her know they like to start with “computer science fundamentals”. They start with junior/entry level stuff and then move up the ladder as the questions progress.

Knowing this, Sarah prepares for questions on topics she may have worked on 5+ years ago as well as the current tech stack she’s working on now.

Sammy, on the other hand, didn’t take the recruiter’s prep seriously. He was caught off guard by the junior level stuff since he hasn’t touched those topics in years, and fails on those questions.

Scorecard:

Sarah: 1

Sammy: 0

Coding

This team also has a coding round. For argument’s sake, we’ll say this is a live coding test that takes place right after the verbal/technical interview questions are done.

Sarah remembers that when she spoke to the recruiter, she remembered that not only do they want to see the proper code, but the logic behind it. Knowing this, she talks through her logic and solutions, and the interviewing team is clearly impressed.

Sammy starts the coding round. He’s running the logic & solutions in his head. He’s talking and mumbling to himself, but not to the interviewing team. However, gets the coding down 100%.

He thinks he nailed it - which he did - but fails to realize Sarah outperformed him because of the tip she got from the recruiter to talk through her solution out loud.

Scorecard:

Sarah: 2

Sammy: .5

Behavioral

The next round both Sarah and Sammy are going to be talking to the hiring manager.

Sarah remembers the tip she got from the recruiter. Although this is the hiring manager, she is still hands on and technical. So while she shouldn’t get as granular in her responses as she did with the IC’s, she keeps a balance in her responses staying technical but still at a level high enough for the manager to see the big picture.

Sammy, on the other hand, didn’t want to schedule the prep call with his recruiter for this round because he thought he nailed the coding test. He wasn’t prepared too prepared for the behavioral questions. He answered them how he knows how to best - very technical. And while this manager is hands on, it was still way too granular for her as his answers wasn’t catered to his audience.

Scorecard:

Sarah: 3

Sammy: 1

Scenario

Now it’s time to talk to the director. The director has an idea that both Sarah and Sammy have great reputations in the industry.

So far the feedback has been while Sammy is very technical, Sarah has blown the interviewing team away so far. But - the director still wants to speak to both before giving an offer.

Sarah prepares again with the recruiter. She knows to keep her answers as if it’s a 30k foot view. High level audience, high level answers.

Sammy finally decides to take the recruiter seriously. He knows he was caught off guard by the last round and doesn’t want to mess this up, especially since it’s the director. He wants the job, made it to the final round, prepares for the interview.

Both Sarah and Sammy do great on the final round. Both prepared with the recruiter, kept the answers high level on these scenario questions to show they had what it took to do the job.

Scorecard:

Sarah: 4

Sammy: 2

Analysis

As we all suspected behind the curtain, Sarah got the job.

Where did Sammy go wrong?

He killed the final round and the coding round. The difference was with the tech lead (first round) and the hiring manager (3rd round). The difference was that Sarah researched and prepared the whole way, every round, and put her ego aside, while Sammy didn’t.

Call To Action

Now - there are many cases where a candidate like Sammy will get the job offer. He’s an A Player with a great reputation. But at the same time, he’s not the only jacked up software engineer on the job market - especially these days with layoffs coming each week.

The point is just because you’re great at your job, doesn’t mean you can get away without preparing for an interview. Sure - chances are you’ll still find a good job. But, if you are in the process for an amazing opportunity you want, don’t chance it. Prepare with your recruiter.

Because the last thing you want is to think you know it all only to get beat out by Sarah who took preparation seriously.

By the way…

1. If you’re preparing for an interview for next week, check out my *free* interview prep guide. You can also find *free* resume templates. randomrecruiter.gumroad.com

2. If you want to gain even more leverage in your job search, there’s the job seeker e-book. This outlines the exact plan I’ve used with my candidates to place 600 of them in 8 years.

3. Here’s a photo of my other dog! Share one of yours in the comments :)