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Interview advice that got me offers

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Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#81

Post by borroka »

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.

Was it clear for the candidate what you were looking for, like "if it happens you don't know the answers or else, I'd like to know how you think about it"? Because that is what I do in the beginning of the interviews I lead, I dislike the approach "let's slap this guy and see if she calls her mother". It puts the interviewer on the throne and the candidate of their knees, it is an interview and not the "real" job, and the candidate may have studied for months and might be rightfully defensive when they see their months of work go up in smoke after your "slap".

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#82

Post by tidbits »

tootie wrote: post #58
dolebirchwood wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had a technical interview where I stumbled the whole way through, but I kept my attitude lighthearted, asked plenty of dumb questions, and am pretty sure I even said "Oh, geez, I'm an idiot" at one point. They acknowledged that I was a weak candidate, but they liked me enough to extend an offer amounting to a 33% salary increase over my current job--and with an additional 33% bump after 6 months if I can p…

That doesn't seem to apply at FAANGs. I had some positive interviews where I went out of my way to build some rapport and it got a lot of smiles but no offer. It definitely worked at the completely not FAANG company that I work for now. I think I'm probably better off this way.

It seems that it depends on the interviewer. I nailed 3 out of 4 of the rounds for a FAANG job earlier this year, but absolutely bombed the system design question. I was offered one more interview round to redeem myself (didn't know they did this). Did so-so on the extra round but ended up having a fun conversation about surfing after the interviewer pointed out my surfboard in the background. I have no way of knowing but I'd like to think that my personality got me the job considering my poor performance towards the end.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#83

Post by Traster »

paxys wrote: post #64
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%.

The success rate at Google has nothing to do with how many people on HN want to work there, and the artcile provides a pretty confounding factor - that 0.2% success rate includes people applying to interviews for practice. Personally I don't think that many people applying to Google are in that 99.8% because they don't know how to learn during an interivew, it's because their application got scrapped on review stage.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#84

Post by mcqueenjordan »

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.

Not selecting or evaluating for soft skills is worse than potentially slightly increasing exposure to implicit bias.

Furthermore, I would bet that in the long run, selecting for soft skills helps drive down real observed implicit bias. (People with better soft skills are probably better at managing their own implicit biases.)

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#85

Post by redisman »

This doesn't really go against the Leetcode till you die advice. It's just assuming that you're baseline really good at Leetcode style questions so that you can focus on soft skills. I do not believe you can get a job in any top 100 company in this day and age without being able to regurgitate Leetcode mediums in your sleep.

So yeah be nice to people and all that, but you also must pass the tech screen and the 3-4 Leetcode sessions.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#86

Post by jerezzprime »

paxys wrote: post #70
nrmitchi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This isn't necessarily true. You can have rigor around your value/culture fit questions. In our process, we require strong reasons for both yes and no decisions (especially for culture fit). If an interviewer says no "because X" we look for similar signal to have shown up in other parts of the loop (performed by different people). If only one interviewer sees a signal, we are careful to analyze it for bias.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#87

Post by totaldude87 »

Bahamut wrote: post #10
_benj wrote: post #2

> Your mad technical skills no longer matter to them. If anything, humility and an openness to learning will show you in the best light. I've been interviewing for the last couple of weeks and I agree with this. Being a "good" human being, i.e. candid, humble, kind, friendly, seems to be valued a lot more than what I thought before. At the end of the day is people working with people, and the more humans that interac…

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.

almost on the same lines, if you feel like interviewer doesnt care about you -

"Life is too short to work with assholes if it can be helped."

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#88

Post by enriquto »

random5634 wrote: post #79
mgh2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you can't articulate your own sense of your worth, it's very hard to engage with someone I've found. Note - I've always given my number first (and all consultants tend to) and it's worked out fine. Note, most people don't like dealing with places that are not upfront with the number to purchase the item / time etc. So if you are selling your labor, have some sense of its value /price.

> If you can't articulate your own sense of your worth,

The concept of your "worth" as the salary that you can manage to negotiate is so stupidly backwards that I cannot express how much it makes me want to burn everything to the ground.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#89

Post by macintux »

borroka wrote: post #81
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.

Was it clear for the candidate what you were looking for, like "if it happens you don't know the answers or else, I'd like to know how you think about it"? Because that is what I do in the beginning of the interviews I lead, I dislike the approach "let's slap this guy and see if she calls her mother". It puts the interviewer on the throne and the candidate of their knees, it is an interview and not the "real" job, an…

I don’t go out of my way to encourage the behavior I’m hoping to see, but I do indicate that the question isn’t one I expect a complete answer for and that it’s more of a discussion than an interrogation.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#90

Post by totaldude87 »

mercutio2 wrote: post #77
totaldude87 wrote: post #67

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 interv…

If you're not up for four to eight hours of interviews (with a break or two, depending on how long the day is), asking the standard bank of questions, it doesn't sound like you're a good fit for a big tech company. But why did you bother applying? None of what you describe seems like it should have been a surprise.

my point was not about 4 hours, its more like , if i spend 4 hours for you, least you can do is to look interested and make me feel like they need me (just like i need them )
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