Tech Interview Notes

Notes about my tech interview experience

Photo by Bannon Morrissy on Unsplash

Be careful! This is not a tutorial for handling technical interviews. This article aims to formalize my knowledge and experience.

Today I finally completed the “Tech Interviewer Certification” at EPAM. The final exam was an interview that was assessed, and the mentor should decide whether I’m ready to get a certificate. It was not a problem for me as I’m practising interviewing for the last 2 years. And this certification program was just a justification of my skills to myself.

So! Let’s go through the main topics.

Preparations

This is a good ritual to explore that candidate’s personality and his experience. I even prepare topics I’m going to cover during the interview. Why? Just because there is no sense to discuss topics the candidate hasn’t experience with. As the main target of the interview — recognize strong candidate’s features. And then after that — weaknesses.

If you are new to handling interviews, you can create a list of questions rather than topics. This will allow feeling more confident. As a session may be stressful for interviewees as well, not only for a candidate.

Participants introduction

Every participant should introduce himself: interviewers and interviewee. It is really a terrible thing when an interviewee has not an imagination of the persons who are assessing him.

Keep calm

Just remember the last interview you participated in as a candidate. Were you good with every question? Not sure. There are no ideal candidates who have exhaustive answers to all the questions. And, a bad answer is not a reason for getting irritated.

But what if the candidate is completely bad? Maybe, is it a good alibi for being rude? Not at all! The world is narrow, and that person who sucks on the interview can be your teammate in the future. So please keep calm.

Make video recording

I believe that it is wrong to do notes during the session. This may distract you and other participants. After the session, you can take that recording and review the session from the aside. This enforces more clear and unbiased feedback.

Also, I like the idea of “sleeping over the idea”. I always use this rule. As feedback right after the session may be biased. And the session recording will help you to remember all the details.

Don’t forget to ask for video recording consent from every participant.

Friendly discussion, not trial

Try to keep a friendly atmosphere. There are people that may feel nervous because of interviews. And this is natural when someone is under a magnifying glass. You can keep a friendly atmosphere using different techniques like:

• Smalltalk at the session start.
• “Relaxing” questions in the middle of complex and target questions.
• In some special cases — even friendly jokes.

And maybe something else. Improvising may help here. Every session and candidate is unique.

STAR technique

This is an easy but useful technique for telling something. Applicable for small stories. So, you can rely on it listening to a candidate’s stories. Or even provide a behavioural task.

• Situation (context). E.g., “I was an engineer in the…”.
• Task (challenge). E.g., “and I faced a situation…”.
• Action (a role you played). E.g., “I did following action to solve…”.
• Result. E.g., “my actions helped (or not) to solve…”.

Here you can find a better description of this technique.

Bioscience Careers

Clear and useful feedback

Feedback should be useful for a team, customer and candidate.

• Describe the cons and pros of the candidate (important for a hiring side).
• Try to clearly describe the level of checked skills (important for all sides).
• Create a list of recommendations to fill recognized gaps (important for the candidate and interviewing side — this may be an entry point for improvement plan).

Actually, that’s it! There are main points that allow me to handle tech interviews effectively and with no stress. Keep in mind that the session should be beneficial for every side: interviewee, interviewers, hiring party.

I’m not going to provide tons of useful links for this topic. This is a field that requires a lot of practice. And theory will not help to be a good interviewer. I suggest you gradually look at the theory during your tech interviewer way.

Here you can find this article in my personal blog. Don’t judge it too strong, it is at a very early stage.