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Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

tanayagrawal.substack.com

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Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#111

Post by ram_rar »

This works well for a junior eng working in a big company where your absence may not be noticed that much. Once you get to senior/principle level working on critical projects (you'll know based on the refreshers/comp). It's really hard to pull these off.

The biggest issue is to maintain balance. Once I am checked out of the job, then moving on the new company is the only way out. So, one becomes a bit desperate especially if the management kinda knows that you're not giving your best anymore.

Holidays/Q4 is one of the best times to interview, since you get breathing space from your work and get more free time to schedule interviews right before holidays and then, post holidays you're ready to kick off your new job.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#112

Post by cgio »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #89
zebnyc wrote: post #19

I have a few as well: - You will face rejection (likely a lot). Don't take this personally and don't let it affect your confidence. - Unless you are an outstanding interviewee, this is like a skill/muscle which you need to develop and practice. Hence ensure that you don't schedule your "dream job/company" early in the process. Keep practicing. - Always have a beginner / practice mindset. Otherwise, you will accept th…

Some additional points since i'm currently interviewing a lot -Practice leetcode since it will make up 50-60% of the interview process -Study your resume inside and out, know the whys of what you did not just the whats -Don't talk too much, sometimes nervousness and anxiety can make itself with a candidate talking too much or too little, both are bad, be concise with your answers but don't ramble on, the more you ram…

“Don’t talk too much”, this so much. Address the question. If you have done that, talking more can only make it worse. If you want to take the discussion further, finish your answer and ask a question to signal that there is something more that might be of interest to the interviewer.

And, if you can do that where you are, put yourself forward to be interviewing. After about 20-30 interviews you’ll find a few nuanced insights, some of them specific to your area.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#113

Post by zerocount »

I think these are good points. Some of these really speak to the subjectivity of interviewing.

I'm currently interviewing for software development roles and it just seems like a lot of luck is involved, good or bad. Uber ghosted me a week ago after the recruiter missed our appointment. A few weeks before that, I completed a week long 'test project' and haven't heard back from them.

For such a technical field, there's too much bullshit involved in finding a job.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#114

Post by throwaway8329 »

db65edfc7996 wrote: post #78
hooloovoo_zoo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't take 1 too seriously anyway. There's some evidence for instance that judges are harsher before lunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_judge_effect .

This is considered dubious [0]. [0] https://nautil.us/blog/impossibly-hungry-judges

It's very unfortunate to see the parent has been down-voted for linking the Wikipedia page for an article which has over 1,000 citations - mind you citations are a key metric for the credibility of science, for good and for worse.

The science is not debunked by a blog post on nautil.us.

If the author is very sure of their argument then it would be of greater scientific merit for them to review the original data and other data, and report the fact of the data not matching what was reported in the original study, as well as proposing their own hypothesis for future work.

But the author's blog post claims an ad-absurdum proof, while ignoring that their proof doesn't extend to the difference in height between 21 year old males and females, despite that being cited as being an equivalent effect size. It's this kind of thing that means cited scientific work appears in the Wikipedia article, and Nautilus blog posts do not.

Edit: dis-disclosure I have nothing to do with the person who wrote the parent comment, just an observer

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#115

Post by kamaal »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #100
moneywoes wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any suggestions for practicing leetcode effectively?

deeply understanding 1 problem per day is better than reading the solutions of a dozen. Solving leetcode via induction could prove valuable, solve a simple case of n = 1, then try to solve n = 2 do you see a pattern? try to solve n = 3 etc... Don't assume anything, don't categorize problems before thinking of patterns, sometimes dp problems are simple greedy problems, don't go into problem solving with bias. Look to…

I hope some one wrote a book on developing this kind of technique.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#116

Post by DarylZero »

bigiain wrote: post #91
colmvp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that kind of odd? I've worked with software engineers who are good talkers but their code and problem solving skills leave something to be desired. Meanwhile, I've worked with guys who took a while to get comfortable with in terms of having conversations and yet they were some of the most productive members of the team both in code output and skill. Ultimately, most of the time I 'talk' with my team members, we…

You don't intentionally choose weak engineers, but a strong engineer working on the wrong thing because they can't communicate effectively is less useful than a slightly less strong engineer who's always doing the thing that's actually needed. This hold true as pretty much every level. A junior engineer who will never say "No, I don't understand, can you explain that to me again please?" and spends days/weeks writing…

Whether someone will ask for help at the appropriate time is really not shown by how good they are at talking in an interview.

Asking for help is more about humility and willingness to look dumb, than about being gregarious or chatty or socially open.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#117

Post by wppick »

handoflixue wrote: post #81
wppick wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've hired hundreds of people and this is just not true. A first impression matters a bit, sure - but it has hardly any effect on the decision. The thing about confirmation biases are that they are at the subconscious level and you likely wouldn't be able to detect them. It's possible that you have an impartial and immune to confirmation bias interview process, but it's also possible that you are indeed deciding (s…

> it's also possible that you are indeed deciding (skewing) most of your interviews in the first several seconds. Not the original commenter, but I've had interviews where I was feeling pretty negative about a candidate in the first 5-10 minutes, but ultimately recommended them (sometimes even quite enthusiastically). Given that empirical evidence to the contrary, it seems like a pretty incredible claim to insist tha…

Sure here is an article from a candidate screening startup, Plum: https://www.plum.io/blog/the-issue-with-the-interview-confir...

A confirmation bias is not a conclusion, it's a skewing/filtering of how you see something. Read the book "A Thousand Brains" by Jeff Hawkins. The way your brain works fundamentally is that it makes predictions and assumes that the prediction is what will happen (the book explains this better). That's why in my original comment I said " Of course with an amazing interview performance you can switch a predetermined no into a yes, and with a very poor interview you can turn a predetermined yes into a no."

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#118

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

BirdieNZ wrote: post #107
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a side-business providing mock tech interviews with unlimited time for feedback. Contact me if you are interested (including "why is this random guy on HN qualified to provide this kind of service")

How can I go about contacting you if I were interested in your service?

My email is in my profile now.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#119

Post by strikelaserclaw »

kamaal wrote: post #115
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

deeply understanding 1 problem per day is better than reading the solutions of a dozen. Solving leetcode via induction could prove valuable, solve a simple case of n = 1, then try to solve n = 2 do you see a pattern? try to solve n = 3 etc... Don't assume anything, don't categorize problems before thinking of patterns, sometimes dp problems are simple greedy problems, don't go into problem solving with bias. Look to…

I hope some one wrote a book on developing this kind of technique.

theres no book, and theres no easy way to get good at that stuff, just have to practice problems and learn about better ways of solving problems via new algorithms and data structures you did not know about.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#120

Post by mercutio2 »

DarylZero wrote: post #116
bigiain wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't intentionally choose weak engineers, but a strong engineer working on the wrong thing because they can't communicate effectively is less useful than a slightly less strong engineer who's always doing the thing that's actually needed. This hold true as pretty much every level. A junior engineer who will never say "No, I don't understand, can you explain that to me again please?" and spends days/weeks writing…

Whether someone will ask for help at the appropriate time is really not shown by how good they are at talking in an interview. Asking for help is more about humility and willingness to look dumb, than about being gregarious or chatty or socially open.

You can categorize "humility and willingness to possibly be perceived as dumb" as non-communication skills, but in my mind they are:

A) the most important indicators of likely success on the team B) very correlated with comfort in speaking

If I can't get you to talk at all when you're uncomfortable, you're unlikely to tell me you don't understand in the often uncomfortable iterating on a feature process.

It's possible to be gregarious AND be unable to ever admit that you lack critical information, which is why interviews, for me, are mostly about asking questions until we get to the point you don't know/don't understand, and see how you work with me from there on.

What a lot of people who get stressed about interviews don't realize, though, is that WHERE PRECISELY you reach your limits is unimportant. It's that you engage thoughtfully, without getting overly defensive, and don't bullshit. Not about whether you got the right answer at any given spot.

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