Job interviews: mistakes and learnings

April 07, 2021   16 minute read

Why interviewing time to time is useful and what I learned so far by doing so

On the joy of being judged by a stranger

Covid-19 blessed me with a lot of free time and the real possibility of finding myself unexpectedly back in the job market (which eventually didn’t materialize). As the average human being, I also love puppies and hate doing job interviews.

The latter is probably due to how I feel when an interviewer signals with his behavior that he may think I am not so good. Some argue that it doesn’t make much sense to feel bad about yourself because of the opinion of someone you have never met before (ie the interviewer). On the other hand, I think that it’s quite normal and in a way, it does make sense.

I think that how qualified/unqualified someone perceives himself/herself also depends on others’ opinions about him/her. As an example, if I have met 20 technical people so far and I got the impression that 18 of them were excited about my skills I will think that I am good (and viceversa if we flip the signs).Hopefully, with experience, your own judgment of yourself (and others) will depend more on what you think is good in absolute terms rather than what others think. More experience/knowledge should allow to reason in a more principled way.

Whether you think it’s reasonable or not feeling miserable for a bad interview, and despite how much you may rationalize this feeling a bad interview is likely to still hurt, at least to an extent. Rejection mostly hurts in any aspect of life. But, if properly managed, it’s also an opportunity for feedback collection and eventually growth.

Reasons why you should interview from time to time

Having agreed that for the most part being interviewed is not pleasant, I think that it is still valuable to do so from time to time (probably once per semester). Interviews are great for collecting feedback on any of the followings:

• How much you are worth according to the market. As long as you cannot get an offer for X,000 of your favorite currency it’s unlikely that you actually deserve that much (according to the market). As long as you cannot get an offer from a FAANG it’s unlikely that you are yet FAANG material. Not caring about these things is fine, and probably will give you a happier life, it’s mostly a matter of awareness. If you do care, it’s important to figure it out as soon as possible and start working on that
• How good you are in your field of knowledge, how much you actually know, and whether you are able to explain it clearly. Oftentimes your co-worker or friends will be “nice” to you and won’t tell you that you are wrong about something or have a superficial understanding of it, or that they don’t understand what you are talking about. Someone deciding whether or not to hire you is less likely to be that nice.
• What you don’t know, your colleagues don’t know, but you both should
• How much your achievements are worth according to others (Amazon is particularly good at making you think about this, but possibly narrow-minded in evaluating it). Being challenged from time to time on the impact of your choices and work is a good way of developing a sense of constant awareness about it, as well as a neurosis
• Whether the market is changing and your skill-set starts being obsolete
• How different companies value different things in potential employees and whether another company’s value system is more aligned with yours than the one at your current employer
• What hiring managers expect from you given the years of experience you have
• Whether your company is doing something better or worse than other companies

Things that made me fail interviews and that I definitely want to remember

A few years ago I picked up the habit of taking note of anything I didn’t do particularly well during an interview and that I wanted to avoid doing again in the future. Often these were the things that made me fail an interview. Other times, they were that bad, but still didn’t make me feel proud of them.

Now, before any interview, I make sure to read the whole list again. I like to believe that this practice helped me in getting better at interviewing.

Few people like talking about their failures, so, in a way sharing this list makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. At the same time, I think that it may be worth sharing what I learned and that the habit itself is good enough that is worth advertising it. Also, failures should be accepted as part of life. So, if by sharing them we can grow and help others grow, we really shouldn’t feel ashamed of them.

I by no means can behave as I preach during interviews. That’s also the reason why I read again this list before an interview, every interview is an opportunity to apply a bit more these ideas. So, it’s fair to say that I treat them as aspirational ones.

Points worth keeping in mind also for the work life

• Speak less rather than more, the less you speak the less likely you are to say something stupid. Good outcomes feel often the result of minimizing the number of stupid mistakes rather than coming up with few amazing exploits.
• Every minute the interviewer is giving you is an opportunity to impress them. You want your communication to be to the point and dense with valuable information. If your communication is dense with valuable and appropriate information, your thinking is likely to be so as well and you won’t make them waste time while working together.
• Whoever is hiring is trying to solve one or more problems. They hire you to solve these problems, try to understand what they are, and show how you can be (or have been) the solution for these
• They hire you to make money. You cost money. You need to generate more than you cost. Your past experiences can be used to show them the last point
• You will be judged by the impact of your choices and the things you decided to work on. It’s always worth emphasizing the impact and the reason why for the projects/examples you decide to talk about. I find this way of thinking very unnatural. Still, making a habit of thinking in terms of ROI when you decide how to invest your time is probably a good thing. The process you will have to go through in order to get an offer from Amazon will make you ponder about this, at least it did for me. It may be worth interviewing with Amazon even simply to experience this.

Other interview points

• Treat each interview as it’s the most important one in the selection process. There is not such a thing as “getting to know each other” interviews. Everyone is evaluating you all the time and ready to raise a red flag. Because of treating lightly “getting to know each other” interviews, after I passed the “hard” ones, I failed or got an unideal offer on at least two selection processes.
• Treat potential co-workers as you treat hiring managers during the interviews. They also want to be impressed. If they are they will support your case in the final decision
• When someone who worked at Facebook/Google says that you should be able to code certain data structures or algorithms in less than 10 minutes being blindfolded you should treat it as a fact. You have to, so make sure you can. I failed a very important interview because of this. I very often still fails live coding interviews, but that is another story.
• In small companies/start-ups doing a take-home assignment really well can make you earn a “forgive card” for the following interviews or a larger than average offer. In my short career, I have seen this clearly happening at least four times so far. Spending an extra 10 hours on an assignment (making the code clean, adding tests,….) can add a few (or several) thousand pounds to the final offer, very high ROIL.
• Do not assume that part of your answers is given for granted. Start from simple answers and build from there
• If someone doesn’t understand your answer to one of their questions, ask whether there is a specific part that was not clear, and explain it slowly again, maybe use an example, or an analogy
• Always have ready an answer for the following questions: 1)Explain to me something technical but not tech. 2)Tell me about the last thing you geeked out

Obvious, but not always so

• Always behave as if you want the job. This probably sounds controversial, so it may be worth adding a bit more context. For various reasons I found myself taking a few interviews not seriously enough. Either because I wasn’t sure whether I liked the job/company, either because I was demotivated or tired due to other reasons, either because I got the impression it wasn’t an “important” interview in the process. This attitude only brings downsides. As long as you were interested enough to schedule the interview, you should behave as you actually want the job. Your mood will get better and your weak interest may grow stronger after some of the interviews. Still, the poor excitement you displayed may have already been enough to lead to a rejection.
• If you do not understand a question you should ask them to repeat it. You may also rephrase and repeat the question to make sure you understood it
• When an experience interviewer ask a question often he has something specific in mind, try to figure out before starting to answer. By figuring it out and giving a context related answer you not only show that you have the knowledge that he/she is looking for but also that you actively listen to him, try to wear his shoes and solve his problems
• You should read about all the technologies listed in the job spec and have a decent understanding of them

Time taken to write post: approximately 6 hours Last update: 28-06-2022