What is Interview Prep And Why You Need It

Problems With the Interviewing Process

There is a high demand for talented engineers in the technical space, but there is also an abundance of exceptional engineers looking to fill those roles. Oftentimes, during interviews, many engineers struggle with properly demonstrating the skills they possess, which leads them to doubt themselves and to struggle with finding the right job.

Interviewers have high expectations for candidates, but they sometimes design poor interview questions that do not allow the candidate an opportunity to demonstrate their skills. Other times, the interviewers ask the right questions of candidates, but the candidates do not provide answers in the way the interviewer wants. Whether the interviewer is asking effective questions or not, it is up to you, the candidate, to find a way to exhibit the skillset the interviewer is looking for.

Having a Bad Interviewer

Have you ever been in an interview where it seems like the interviewer hasn’t given much thought to the questions they are asking you? Does it seem like the questions they are asking you aren’t put together properly or like they are not articulating them well? Unfortunately, many interviewers sometimes fail to ask candidates the right questions.

So what are the right questions? These are questions that allow the candidate to exercise their engineering skills to come up with the right solutions. This could come in the shape of a coding question, a systems design question, a debugging question, and many other forms. Many interviewers fail to ask a question that will give the candidate the opportunity to display the skills that they’re looking for.

In these situations, it’s your responsibility to find a way to display your superb engineering skills. The challenge may be daunting, but there are several ways to display your skills, even when being asked bad questions. To help the flow of the interview, you can :

• Ask the interviewer to elaborate

• Guide the questions to a familiar topic

• Steer the conversation to questions of mutual interest.

Techniques like these push the interviewer to ask you questions that allow you to display your arsenal of skills. Even if you have a bad interviewer, with the right techniques, you can still have a good interview.

Having a Good Interviewer But Failing to Display Your Skills

While there are many unprepared interviewers, there are also many great interviewers. These interviewers ask multi-faceted questions that come in various shapes and sizes. These questions allow the candidate to exercise and demonstrate their superb engineering skills to come up with an answer. Unfortunately, many engineers focus too much on the destination and less on the journey. For many interviewers, the answer isn’t as important as the thought process which leads the engineer there.

Many interviewers are looking for specific problem-solving skills from a candidate, which shows them that this candidate has a great way of approaching challenges and working out a solution. They want to know that your problem-solving skills can be applied anywhere.

There are various components to these skills and many ways to show them off. Your goal isn’t necessarily to find the right answer, but, rather, to exercise your engineering skills and prove to your interviewer that you can find the solution, no matter what the problem is.

What is Interview Prep

Now that you know some crucial aspects of what interviewers are looking for, you need to do the hard part: learn how to display your skills. But how do you do that? What skills are interviewers looking for? How should you approach problems? How do you separate yourself from other candidates? Like with most things in life, it requires practice.

If you want to increase your chances of landing your dream job, you need to practice for your interviews. If you are getting rejected by employers that means that you need to improve your game. Why would you continue to interview with other potential employers without fixing the holes in your game? Without fixing these holes, you will continue to make the same mistakes and employers will continue to turn you down.

There are various techniques that you can use to properly prepare for interviews. We will take a look at them below.

Stop Wasting Your Opportunities

It is daunting to figure out how to present your skills to employers, but you do not want to practice your interview skills with potential employers. There are a few reasons for this:

1. Every interview you fail is an opportunity you missed, an opportunity you could have capitalized on with the right preparation. The opportunity you missed versus the offer you accept could be the difference of tens of thousands of dollars. Investing in interview prep can land you a higher-paying job.

2. The people interviewing you are more than likely not going to point out your strengths and weaknesses. They are simply going to interview you and make a decision. If you don’t know what mistakes you’re making, you’re going to continue making them, which will lead to more missed opportunities.

3. The more interviews you fail, the lower your confidence will be, which may influence your performance in future interviews.

4. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. If you’re failing interviews constantly and aren’t taking the time to identify, analyze, and fix your mistakes, then you shouldn’t expect a different result for your next interview.

5. Preparing for and attending interviews takes a lot of time and energy. It’s best not to waste that time and energy, instead, you should maximize it by preparing properly.

Do’s and Don’t During an Interview

While interviewing, make sure you are keeping the following in mind.

1. Do not rush. This is critical, oftentimes, candidates are eager to answer questions, so they start rapidly going through their answers. This often leads to them not providing coherent answers. Make sure before you answer every question to take a second, breathe, and thoroughly think about your answer. This will show the interviewer that you take your time to think, to coherently solve problems.

2. Take frequent pauses. When answering questions, make sure you frequently pause and allow the interviewer to digest that part of your answer. Also, it’s always a good idea to ask the interviewer if they understand your answer, or if they need further clarification. This goes a long way as it shows the interviewer that you make the effort to make sure all parties are understanding your solution.

3. Keep your thoughts linear. When answer questions, try to avoid jumping around within your answer. If you’re trying to get from A to E, go from A → B → C → D → E. Avoid going from A → C → D → B → E.

   1. A good example of this would be the following. If you are asked how you do laundry, you should answer in the following way:

      1. I would gather my clothes, and put them in a laundry bag.

      2. I would take them to the washer.

      3. I would put my clothes in the washer, and add detergent.

      4. I would start the washer.

   2. You don’t want to answer in the following way:

      1. I would put my clothes in the washer

      2. But oh, first I would put them in the laundry bag.

      3. Then I would start the washer.

      4. I forgot I would also need to detergent in my clothes before I start the machine.

   3. This is why it’s so important to slow things down and think of your answer. Although the second answer is correct, the thought process is not linear, and it makes your answer hard to understand.

4. Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know”. If you don’t know something, or if you don’t know it well, be open and honest. If you try to act like you know something the interviewer will clearly know, and this is a major reason people get rejected. No interviewer expects you to know everything, but they do expect you to be honest. Something I like to say when I know something at a trivial level is, “I have worked with docker (some technology) by running containers locally to test application (within this capacity), but I have not written Dockerfiles, or docker-compose files (Be honest about what you don’t know). I would love the opportunity to expand my knowledge and do those things (show them that you are eager to grow and improve).

5. Smile. When I am focusing I have the angriest face in the world. When someone is meeting you for the first time, make sure you put on a smile frequently. Not smiling shouldn’t negatively impact you, but being friendly will only positively impact your chances of getting the job.

How To Prepare

1. Mock Interviews With a Qualified Interviewer

1. Find someone in the technical space who might have experience conducting interviews. You’re going to want someone who has worked or hired for the position you are currently pursuing.

2. Mock interviews will help candidates get some jitters out of the way, along with gaining practice for interviews in an environment that won’t negatively affect their employment chances.

2. Going over Real And Mock Interviews

1. If you are able to record interviews that you are having with actual employers, then you should do so. Afterward, your practice interviewer can go over the interview and give you feedback.

2. After an interview (real or mock), candidates should have a separate session, where they can go over the interview with their practice interviewer (if possible). Here they can note down things they are doing well, things they need to work on, and technologies they need to learn.

3. This feedback is critical, as it will give you direct insight as to how you are performing under pressure. This will also give you insight into what you need to practice before your next real interview.

4. Finding these weaknesses in your game is necessary. Do not go into the next interview until you have fixed the mistakes from your previous interviews.

   1. It is better to spend more time in practice, getting better, gaining confidence and improving, than it is to go into multiple interviews making the same mistakes, and failing every time.

3. Figuring out What Skills and Technologies You Need to Work On

1. As you interview you will learn that there are many tools and technologies that you have never heard of. While no interviewer is going to expect you to know every tool, they are going to expect you to know some of the more popular ones. Furthermore, they are going to like it if you know what the tool they are talking about does, even if you don’t have real-life experience with it. Check out some popular DevOps tools that you can learn to better position yourself in your technical career.

2. Once you figure out these weaknesses in your game, it is critical that you create some sort of lesson plan. This lesson plan should go over the things you need to work on and plan out the ways you will work on them. Whether it be via reading articles, taking online courses, or practice, you need to actively fill in the holes.