Ace the Interview: 5 Overlooked Things People Don’t Do!
Read Time ~ 6 Minutes
During my time as a technical instructor at a coding bootcamp, the number one thing I saw students struggle with the most was not the coding, or the algorithms, or even the mathematics, it was the interview. Taking everything you know about the field you want to enter and distilling it down to a 30 minute conversation can be tough. On top of that, students tended to focus completely on the technical aspect of the interview while neglecting some of the not so obvious focus areas. Let’s fix that!
Here are the top five things I tell my students in order to have the best shot at acing the interview.
#1: Mock Interviews
If there is nothing else you take away from this article it would be that interviewing is a skill and practice makes perfect! This was one of the hardest things for my students to understand while I was teaching. It’s not just about practicing coding, or statistical testing, or leveraging some tool but that their practice SHOULD INCLUDE INTERVIEWS. You put in countless hours honing your craft just to fall short because no time was spent practicing on conveying those skills.
Interviews are weird. You are being asked questions from more or less complete strangers, given very little amount of information, and then judged based on your answers. It’s no reason that people tend to freeze up, say stupid things, or panic.
The way to overcome this, like anything else, is PRACTICE!
First, do a quick Google search for some interview questions about the specific type of job you are applying to. These don’t have to be perfect as you are rarely going to get the exact same questions that will be used in an actual interview, just find some that sound likely to be asked as well as some behavior questions. Also, If your interview is likely to include white board coding then account for that as well.
Second, find someone who will help you out by playing to role of the interviewer, preferably someone who will give you honest feedback. If they understand the questions they are asking that is even better but it is not required. Just the act of being asked pre-planned questions is enough to help you get better at interviewing. Don’t have anyone who can help you out? Use a mirror and film yourself. Watch the recording and see what feels off and what areas can be improved.
Third, PRACTICE! Do this at least once a week while you are searching for jobs and you will be amazed at the difference of how you feel when interviewing.
#2: Be Personable
It’s not all about having technical acumen!
Whenever I am asked to sit in on interviews for potential hires, one of the biggest questions we all ask each other after the interview is “Can we work with this person?". A number of times a candidate had great technical skills and awesome work experience but lacked in the personality department. This might also be known as “culture fit” but generally comes down to how well you get along with your interviewer. Try to connect with your interviewer on a personal level, even if it’s just asking how their day was. It shows you are interested in more than just the job.
If you find it hard to connect with someone quickly and you know your interviewer’s name before the interview try to look them up on LinkedIn or other social media platforms. You can find a lot out about people by the small amount of information you can gain on the open web and use it in the interview. For instance, if you see your interviewer went the same school as you, try to bring it up in conversation during the interview.
#3: Reference Projects and Experience Over Theoretical
You know what’s better than the right answer? An example of you using/doing the right answer!
Let me explain what I mean using the following scenario: I was once asked in an interview if I had any experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP). Here are three ways in which to answer that question.
Yes, I have about 2 years of experience in NLP
Yes, I have about 2 years of experience in NLP and employed a number of techniques to include Text Classification, Topic Modeling, and Sentiment Analysis
Yes, I have quite a lot of experience in NLP. I actually just got done with a project where I used Beautiful Soup to scrape LinkedIn Job posts to build a corpus and used it to preform Text Classification, Topic Modeling, and Sentiment Analysis. The goal was to find the job that I would be best suited for.
All three of these answers get the point across that you have NLP experience, but the third one shows what type of NLP experience you have as well as how you employed it.
#4: Leverage the Job Description and Requirements
Job descriptions and requirements are there for you!
It gives you an idea of what the job is like but moreover, it allows you to prepare for the interview by focusing on the areas listed in the description. This seems like a no brainer, but I can’t tell you the number of times a student disregards all but the title of the job posting and then tries to study for everything, just in case.
It also can inform you where some of your weak spots are and keeps you from getting blindsided in the interview.
#5: Ask Questions
Interviews go both way!
This sound familiar? A long interview is wrapping up and they ask If you have any questions? Your response, “Nope”. I have been guilty of this as well but this is your best shot to figure out a few things:
Job specifics to clarify.
Company culture
How success is defined and what future promotion possibilities there are.
Are there any red flags pertaining to pay, benefits, job responsibilities, etc?
Next steps
Asking questions also shows that you are interested in more than just the job but also the people and the company as a whole.
Wrapping it up
Everything I just went over had very little to do with the technical aspect of the job you might be applying to and thus tends to get overlooked. Make no mistake, these things will make or break your interview.
I hope these tips will help you in landing your dream job.
Until next time.
Andrew-
