Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do I improve my answer to “Tell me about a project you worked on”

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 35 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do I improve my answer to “Tell me about a project you worked on”

#21

Post by syndicatedjelly »

Write down your answer to that question. If the project was particularly complex, or you were on it for a long time, the answer might be several paragraphs long. Read it out loud, and time how long it takes. The goal is to come up with two versions - one that is 90 seconds long ("elevator pitch"), and another that is 2-3 minutes long. That way you have two options depending on how much time you have to answer the question.

Anticipate questions a listener might have about your project. Write down your answers. Read them out loud. Try to prune those answers to 30-60 seconds.

I can relate a little bit to your last point. Writing in a journal (and writing coherently on HN) seems to help.

Re: Ask HN: How do I improve my answer to “Tell me about a project you worked on”

#22

Post by DarrenDev »

“Tell me about a project you worked on” is a great question for the person being interviewed, because you can and should have a strong prepared answer.

It's basic story telling. You have the opportunity to tell an interesting story about something you did to the people interviewing you.

Chances are the interviewers are devs like you and don't want to be there any more than you do.

So you get to make their jobs easier by telling them a story that has lots of opportunities for them to ask you questions that you have good answers to.

- A few months ago I worked on a project that does ...

- It was a complicated project because of ...

- I was the lead X on the project, responsible for ...

- This is what I did ...

- These were the problems we encountered and this is how I approached those problems ...

Every developer should have a couple of good stories just like this. The entire interview can hang off a good story and can be repurposed to fit different variations of that question.

And best of all, it's YOUR story, which allows you to control the conversation.

Re: Ask HN: How do I improve my answer to “Tell me about a project you worked on”

#24

Post by afidrya »

If the interview is structured in a way that overloads your short-term memory, which is often the case, you'll have problems remembering things from a long time ago. Ask someone questions about recent events for a few minutes, and they won't even be able to remember not only what they worked on in projects many years ago but also their grandfather's name. Everyone has this problem; it's just how memory works, and poorly structured interviews trigger this effect. A workaround is to prepare beforehand and keep a list of things to talk about nearby.

Another approach that can work is to give your memory a bit of time to adapt. For instance, if you're asked to share a story from the past and you don't have one prepared and can't recall anything, suggest starting by discussing your past in general. For example, list the projects you've worked on and briefly describe them. You will feel how, during this process, the ability to recall events returns.

Re: Ask HN: How do I improve my answer to “Tell me about a project you worked on”

#25

Post by chiefalchemist »

syndicatedjelly wrote: post #20
chiefalchemist wrote: post #2

I field that question but I don't like it. In a word, it's lazy. The interviewers has my CV, why not say, "Tell me about Proj X you mentioned..." I've had two interviews in the last week and I'm not sure why they bothered. Both came off as disengaged. Both probably didn't prep for the conversion. Both asked that question. Yawn.

How else is someone supposed to learn about your work experience, other than directly asking about it? How much research are they supposed to do ahead of time? Not everyone's code is publicly available on GitHub, and no sane interviewer has time to sit around reading every single line of code that each of their candidates has written. Summarizing each of your major professional projects of your career in a few minute…

"Tell me about a project you worked on..."

That's not asking directly. It's vague. It's ambiguous. It's lazy. It's a cover for not having taken the time to prepare for the meeting (read: interview).

On the other hand, "I see Project X on your CV. Sounds interesting. Tell me more about that...." Is a legit question.

And no one expects every line of code to be looked at. That said, my CV has a section with links to repos. And yet I still get, "Can you send some links to code samples?"

Engineers with an aversion to questions? How about engineers who are tired of showing up to interviews and the hiring person/peoples are unprepared? The questions are a tell, a signal. And too often it's a tell with a smell. The aversion is to that smell.

Re: Ask HN: How do I improve my answer to “Tell me about a project you worked on”

#26

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

PaulHoule wrote: post #4

Practice. Look for opportunities to give talks and make a talk complete w/ slides about something you did. Give the same talk or almost the same talk at a few different places. Write a blog post about it.

This is the approach to take. Getting better at conversations, impromptu ones in a low risk environment is going to help. Go to meetups or the like and talk to others about hobbies you have an interest in. Maybe its board games, go to a board game shop and chat with people. There are clubs that do this - Toastmasters I believe is the name of one from some time ago, although I haven't heard them mentioned post-pandemic.

Re: Ask HN: How do I improve my answer to “Tell me about a project you worked on”

#27

Post by tetris11 »

tekla wrote: post #15

How are you not able to answer this even in a minimal way? You have memory issues and the first thing you go to is "memorize my lines?" Even a child should be able to answer "what cool shit have you done" in a barely minimum way. "What cool shit did you work on this week" "I built this really cool lego set from blocks and customized it with stuff" Is this that hard?

Yes, because sometimes you switch between so many different projects that you forget the importance of them. You normalize yourself to the momentum of the work, and if it's barely more proficient than someone in the same field, it barely registers.

Sometimes it really is hard to see the mountain you've carved, when your neighbour has a carved a similar one next to you.

Re: Ask HN: How do I improve my answer to “Tell me about a project you worked on”

#28

Post by Someone1234 »

john-radio wrote: post #16
Someone1234 wrote: post #3

Here is what I did (I have no idea if this is helpful): - Pulled all my changeset comments within the range I care about. - Put them into Excel and strip dupes, shorts, and general cleanup (e.g. remove anything with "fix" + "bug"/"exception"/"crash" in it). - Put the remainder into ChatGPT and ask it to make me a bullet list of my projects. - Expand and clean up the resulting bullet list by hand. Then take that to in…

What are changeset comments? Like the git log?

Yes

Re: Ask HN: How do I improve my answer to “Tell me about a project you worked on”

#29

Post by otras »

For many reasons, I recommend creating a brag doc like Julia Evans mentions here: https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/

It can help you keep track of what you've worked on. Got an interview coming up? Take a few minutes to review your brag doc and look at the largest/most complex/coolest sounding projects to refresh your memory. Combine that with the practice that other commenters have mentioned.

Re: Ask HN: How do I improve my answer to “Tell me about a project you worked on”

#30

Post by totalthrowaway1 »

otras wrote: post #29

For many reasons, I recommend creating a brag doc like Julia Evans mentions here: https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/ It can help you keep track of what you've worked on. Got an interview coming up? Take a few minutes to review your brag doc and look at the largest/most complex/coolest sounding projects to refresh your memory. Combine that with the practice that other commenters have mentioned.

This is probably going to sound weird, but I was reading an old post on your website, and wanted to say thanks because it helped me out a lot. It was the post about pitch detection. Thanks, it helped a bunch with what I was trying to do.
Post reply on HN