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Interview advice that got me offers

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Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#61

Post by Traster »

It always surprises me that these articles do so well on HN. I would assume the people who want to be in the corporate giants are, and the rest of us... don't want to be? No offence to Google, but I just don't want everything that comes with being at Google. As for the advice, I think the better, more general advice really should be "If you want a job at Google, make the people at Google want to work with you" - it's not difficult to understand what that means, you need to be smart, you need to be someone people want to work with. That's all.

When people give the advice, oh well you need to be willing to learn? That's not advice for an interview - when you arrive on your first day you actually need to be willing to learn.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#62

Post by ivoecpereira »

saagarjha wrote: post #49
kortilla wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You usually have to be the first mover and be willing to give them a number you’re looking for.

This would limit your options, though.

That should be the purpose I assume, unless you are in a stressing position where you would be willing to accept a lower paying job.

From my experience recruiters prefer to be told the salary ranges you are looking for to no waste their time neither yours.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#63

Post by akdas »

vidarh wrote: post #18
macintux wrote: post #5

Tip 3 is huge. I ask hard questions during interviews, and I don’t expect a perfect answer. What I do want is the interviewee to handle failure without being defensive, and to ask probing questions.

Same here. Some of my goto questions are questions I don't expect a solution to. I'll tell people that - I know some people use similar questions without telling candidates that, but I don't think the extra pressure is necessary. I also explicitly explain to people that what I want to see is how they think, more so than the final solution. It tells me a lot about how a candidate will work within a team if they're cap…

Huge +1 on explicitly setting expectations. I've written on this topic[0], and there are a lot of different ways interviewers don't set expectations:

- Is the interviewer looking for syntactically correct code, or general algorithmic skills?

- For a warmup, is the interviewer looking for a basic solution, or an optimal solution?

- For architecture walkthroughs, what level of detail is expected?

The extra pressure is definitely unnecessary.

[0] https://hiringfor.tech/2020/03/02/are-you-asking-candidates-...

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#64

Post by paxys »

Traster wrote: post #61

It always surprises me that these articles do so well on HN. I would assume the people who want to be in the corporate giants are, and the rest of us... don't want to be? No offence to Google, but I just don't want everything that comes with being at Google. As for the advice, I think the better, more general advice really should be "If you want a job at Google, make the people at Google want to work with you" - it's…

> I would assume the people who want to be in the corporate giants are, and the rest of us... don't want to be?

If that was the case then the Google interview would have a 100% success rate, when in reality it is ~0.2%.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#65

Post by random5634 »

rkachowski wrote: post #36
klenwell wrote: post #16

One additional tip on recruiters: have a cheat sheet ready (web page or public Google doc) that answers the basic questions they'll have for you and makes clear your expectations. Here's the info I ask them to provide: - Job Title and Salary - Job Description - Company Overview and Location - Steps in Hiring Process Whenever I'm emailed by a recruiter, I politely thank them for reaching out, paste the link to the che…

Do you find that recruiters will typically give you a salary range beyond "competitive" before you've started the interview process?

I do hiring (not recruiting).

I generally want to understand what someone's ask is first.

After that I'm usually very upfront (ie, immediate verbal feedback) on how that falls into the position vs their apparent skill set etc.

If they have come in low (not uncommon for non bay area folks) I'll let them know that there are opportunities for growth beyond where they would start at. If they are someone we want we'll generally beat their ask as well to get them where they should reasonably be. Then usually there are two years of substantial pay increases. My own experience, these tend to be great folks to have on team if you can give them 3 years of nice growth.

If they are too high I'm usually upfront that at that rate they'd be flat compensation wise for a number of years or that the amount is simply too high relative to skill for position and our needs.

It used to be market was so tight, that if you found a great person you could go 2x what the planned budget was. Not sure if all orgs have that flex so that makes it a bit unusual.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#66

Post by saagarjha »

d4mi3n wrote: post #60
saagarjha wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would limit your options, though.

This limits options that are unwilling to meet your requirements; places you would have passed on due to insufficient salaries anyway. If you're willing to take lower salaries, lower your minimal salary requirements to receive more of them. Dictating salary reqs up front does two things: 1. Reduces time wasted on folks or orgs that don't want to pay your rate. 2. Immediately moves discussion away from a dance around…

It limits your options down. If you say you're looking for $100/hour, and the recruiter was planning on giving you $150/hour…guess what offer you're going to get?

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#67

Post by totaldude87 »

I recently got interviewed by a FAANG company, and it was not a nice experience, it had like 4 hours of back to back interviews with 4 different people and couple of them didn't even bother.. on the technical side, I was asked questions that didn't even fit my profile :( .

although am waiting for their response, regardless of whether i have cleared their "tech" rounds, at this point I dont even care about that interview anymore or their offer (if it did happen) :|

so the fine print is, be attentive in the interviews and see whether "they" really care about you, and if you dont feel comfortable about other side, dont bother!

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#68

Post by saagarjha »

ivoecpereira wrote: post #62
saagarjha wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would limit your options, though.

That should be the purpose I assume, unless you are in a stressing position where you would be willing to accept a lower paying job. From my experience recruiters prefer to be told the salary ranges you are looking for to no waste their time neither yours.

Well, of course they do. That gives them more information about you "for free", which would be useful to them if your salary ask is below what they had imagined you would want.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#69

Post by mgh2 »

kortilla wrote: post #48
rkachowski wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find that recruiters will typically give you a salary range beyond "competitive" before you've started the interview process?

You usually have to be the first mover and be willing to give them a number you’re looking for.

Never give the first number https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24588379

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#70

Post by paxys »

nrmitchi wrote: post #45
Bahamut wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm as a senior engineer at a FAANG. I've rejected people for showing negative non-technical traits but being ok technically, and recommended people for hire with not the best technical skills but with excellent non-technical/leadership traits. Life is too short to work with assholes if it can be helped.

> I've rejected people for showing negative non-technical traits I'm not an expert, but this can be a really slippery slope to implicit bias creeping in to your hiring decisions, especially if these traits are outside of your area of interview/expertise.

The "culture fit" interview which is standard in tech companies today is nothing but an avenue to introduce whatever bias the interviewer wants with no oversight, no explanation.
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