Part 5: The Interview
This is Part 5 of a 5-part series on Interviewing. You can start from the beginning here.
You’ve made it! The day is finally here, and all your hard work has prepared you for this moment. Your interview is your first impression, and you won’t always get a second. You want to put your best foot forward, and leave the company with a firm understanding of the value added with you on their team.
Before you get started, let’s go over some tips to keep in mind during your interview:
Take your Time
Take your time telling them about yourself, as well as working through their follow up questions and problems. Be sure you fully clarify and understand a questions before proceeding. It’ll feel like you’re moving slowly at first, but that’s ok. What’s important is accuracy, not speed.
Remain Confident
No matter how much you prepare, you’ll be nervous. you’ll forget things. you’ll make mistakes. It’s ok, we’re all human. What’s important, is that you’re able to recognize these mistakes, explain them to your interviewer, and discuss ways to get back on the right track.
Never Give Up
No matter how hard the question is front of you, always try, never give up. It’s ok to say “I’m not familiar with this concept, can we discuss it more?”. It’s not ok to say “I’ve never heard of this before, what do I do? Can we change the question?”. Interviewers want to see how you think, and how you handle pressure. If you have to, tell the interviewer you have to use Google to understand concepts further. Using Google doesn’t show weakness, it shows resourcefulness. Show them regardless of the trials in front of you, you’ll do anything to solve the problems placed in front of you.
Express Yourself
Your personality is just as important as your abilities. While most of your time at work will be spent doing your job, Interviewers want to know you’re a person they’ll enjoy being around. You’ll be in the trenches with these individuals for months or years to come. Show them you’re more than just words on a resume.
Ask For Feedback Throughout the Interview
Too many times, I’ve waited until it was too late to ask questions. I’d either been too far down the wrong rabbit hole, or we’d run out of time.
While working through problems, say before you do. Ask for feedback. While interviewers are evaluating your performance, they’re also there to help you. Ask questions and see where they can help. This can help to break the ice, and may push you in the right direction.
Explain Your Solution
Once you’ve answered a question, explain the logic behind your thinking. This gives them insight into the deductions you made in finding your solution. This also brings up another situation — sometimes in interviews, you’ll come up against questions you’ve already seen. Before you request a new questions, try saying “I’ve come across this question before and have my answer on hand. Would you be open to me pulling it up and walking you through my solution?”. By doing this, you’ll be not only showing them you’ve been preparing for the interview, you’ll also be able to give them an example of your work, and show off the lexicon you’ve been developing during your preparation.
During The Interview
This portion of the article is specific to technical interviewing, as that is what I have the most hands-on experience with. Most technical interviews consist of 3 steps: Introductions, Coding Challenge(s), Feedback and Questions.
Introductions
Most people come into the interview focused on the coding challenge, but the introduction often can serve to build a rapport with your interviewer. Be careful to take your time in explaining who you are, and how your unique experiences have not only brought you here, but enable to add value to their organization. Work to find similarities between yourself and the interviewer, and take your time in expressing the impact you can make as a team member.
Coding Challenges
For coding challenges, I approach problems following a series of steps:
- If in person — Ask questions to ensure I understand the problem they want me to solve.
- If in person — Speak through potential solutions with the interviewer
- Write out comments, outlining every steps to complete the implementation of my algorithm. Take your time here. Think of this like your script, you want to make sure every line is correct, so you have a clear plan your coding to. If this is an online coding challenge, I’ll also use the comments to express all possible solutions to the problem, and explain why I chose my solution(time-constraints, etc.), alongside discussing the trade-offs (time and space complexities) of my solution.
- Code it up! — For this step, I take care to test each logical unit of my code. Debugging a small section of your code throughout your challenge is much easier than trying to debug your entire solution with 10 minutes left.
- Review and try again — One lesson I learned early on is, your solution is never correct the first time. Don’t make the mistake of answering “Yes” when your interviewer asks “Is your solution complete?” Your under pressure, your nervous, and we all make mistakes in this situation. Analyze your code line by line to ensure results in the expected output. Come up with some test cases and try your solution out!
Feedback & Questions
Following my solution submission, I always make sure to ask the interviewer how I could improve my algorithm. Your interviewer has more experience than you, and leverages this to critique your submission. Show that you can be taught, and open yourself up to criticism. It’ll help you in the long run.
Also, take this time to ask your interviewer any unanswered questions you have from step one.
Post Interview
So, you’ve spent endless hours preparing and studying for your interview, and after an hour, it’s all over. What’s next?
Document the questions/solutions
Save this for future reference, so you can see where you were, and how much you’ve grown later in your career.
Connect with the interviewer on Social Media
Express that you greatly appreciated their time, and would like to keep in touch and follow their careers well into the future.
Thank all recruiters and contacts
Reach out to all the individuals who helped you get the interview, and ask to keep in touch with them.
In Closing
The goal of this series was to give you a framework to land an interview at your dream company. While much of the experiences drawn from in this article are related to tech, the advice can be applied to any industry. If you feel someone could find value from this framework, please pass it along, as we all get better, together.
Also, if you have any specific questions, feedback, or just want to chat, feel free to drop me a line, mbtopinvestment@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from as many of you as possible.
