Part 4: Preparing for the Interview
This is Part 4 of a 5-part series on Interviewing. You can start from the beginning here.
“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”
– Archilochos
Who you know may be able to get you in the door, but what you know is what’s ultimately going get you the job. Regardless of where you are on your career path, there’s always more to know. Preparation today will prepare you for tomorrow.
From a technical perspective, Xiaohan Zeng does a great job outlining preparation and experience interviewing with the Big 5 in Tech in their article, so I’ll direct you that way for technical prep. Alongside them, Jamie Tolbert from Medium speaks to the grading rubic Medium uses in their technical interviews, and also offers to give mock interviews in individuals interested.
In general, you want to be able to answer 3 questions:
- Tell me about yourself
- What do you know about our company?
- Why are you interested in our company?
With each of these, you want to answer them in the language of the company, as we went over in Step 1.
Tell Me About Yourself
The purpose of the interview is to learn more about you, the candidate. While your interviewer may glaze over their role and achievements, the most important advice I can give is to take your time. Talk about all relevant past experience and roles. If this is will be your first role in industry, speak to any leadership or team experience you’ve had, whether that’s apart of an organization, group project, sports team, anything. Don’t just state roles, talk about the results and your impact.
An example of a strong sentence would be “I joined the National Society of Black Engineers at my University as the Finance Chair. During my time here, I worked with members to coordinate fundraising efforts with the campus community and local businesses leading to $3000 revenue on the year.”
Here, you not only say your role and responsibilities, but also the outcomes. A technical example would be “Completed a class project where we explored the trade-offs of various path finding algorithms. From this, I learned the proper application of Big-O Notation in Algorithm Analysis, and applied my knowledge to make algorithms more efficient in personal projects.”
Regardless the level of your experience, you have to find ways to sell yourself, and show off your potential impact as a member of their organization. While you’re interviewing to be hired today, companies are investing in your tomorrow.
You also want to tailor this towards the company or position you are applying for. Is there a part of the company’s mission or values you align with? Is there a company goal you have direct experience with? This gives them insight into the type of person you are, and who you can become as a member of their team.
What Do You Know About The Company?
This is where your notes come in handy! Tell them what their company does, their mission, what you know about their founders, and any recent announcements they’ve made. This will show them that you’ve done your homework, and you’re genuinely interested.
Look into company blogs, or documents released that outline a companies long term vision, or product roadmap. For example, The Platform Team at Slack releases their full product roadmap. Using this, you can say specifically which projects you’d be interested in being apart of.
Why Are You Interested In Our Company?
This questions answers a couple questions for the interviewer:
- What motivates this candidates? (Motivation)
- What are they interested in working on? (Team)
- Is their perception of our company aligned with the company’s true goals? (Longevity)
Use a mixture of your personal goals, values, and morals to find the right answer to this question.
Once you feel adequately prepared, it’s time to enter center stage, and put your training to the test.
