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Interview advice that got me offers

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Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#151

Post by caffeine »

jawns wrote: post #143
caffeine wrote: post #142

I think the most valuable thing to know about interviewing is: go in to interviews already holding a job offer. So to be clear I'm saying: interview at companies you don't like until you get an offer. THEN rush the recruiters at companies you do like to get you scheduled quickly, because you are holding an offer and they don't want to miss out. This lights recruiters and hiring managers on fire. It makes sure you hav…

> This lights recruiters and hiring managers on fire. Not always. Sometimes it has a repulsive effect. Like trying to score a first date when you're already flaunting the fact that you're engaged to someone else.

I don't know much about dating. My advice is about interviewing. I think it's completely different.

Also your analogy is wrong - you are suggesting to go interview after you accept an offer, which I agree is off-putting.

I am suggesting to go interview after you receive an offer but before you accept it.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#152

Post by decafninja »

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.

Although this is welcome to hear, it's not something a candidate can count on reliably nor something they can really control. After all, a candidate can come off as likeable to one interviewer and unlikeable to another.

Versus just being able ace through leetcode problems - that's a more objective criteria a candidate has more control over.

Personal anecdote. I interviewed at a FAANG, got rejected. They actually offered feedback, and one of the key reasons I apparently got rejected was that "I asked too many (clarifying) questions" about the leetcode problem.

Fast forward a year, I retry. I take the above feedback to heart, and refrain from asking too many questions. I get rejected again, and given feedback. One of the reasons given? "I asked too few questions".

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#153

Post by xondono »

valarauko wrote: post #135
saagarjha wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

To play Devil's Advocate, and I ask as someone not in the industry (I'm in academia) - is the difference between expectations really that large? I would imagine (perhaps unreasonably) that a relatively seasoned person on the job market would have a reasonable understanding of their market value within a few percentage points - so the recruiter might be willing to pay up to $105/hour, while you low balled it at $100/h…

You’d be surprised.

Specially in small/medium companies, a lot of the times businesses don’t know what they are looking for.

I know of a place that was looking for a “hardware engineer with 10y experience”. The average salary for this kind of job posting is not that high, they offered way more, but that’s because the actual position was “we’re looking for someone to become COO, and we need him to understand hardware development because the rest of the team doesn’t”.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#154

Post by decafninja »

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.

I would say it doesn't apply to most medium sized or larger tech companies, or even most medium sized or larger non-tech companies that have formalized leetcode-based hiring practices.

You can come off as the most awesome person to work with, but they'll typically reject you if you can't solve the leetcode problems to whatever minimum standard they're expecting.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#155

Post by xondono »

saagarjha wrote: post #66
d4mi3n wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That’s why you never say “you are looking for $100/hour”, you say “I’m making $100/hour but conditions here are nice”.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#156

Post by celim307 »

caffeine wrote: post #142

I think the most valuable thing to know about interviewing is: go in to interviews already holding a job offer. So to be clear I'm saying: interview at companies you don't like until you get an offer. THEN rush the recruiters at companies you do like to get you scheduled quickly, because you are holding an offer and they don't want to miss out. This lights recruiters and hiring managers on fire. It makes sure you hav…

Adding to this, schedule your interviews from least desired role to most desired. You will get a ton of practice interviewing and white boarding, and have offers in hand before you interview at your goal role. This is doubly true if your goal role ends up having an exploding offer.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#157

Post by throwaway201103 »

mgh2 wrote: post #69
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.

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

This is like a website that says "contact us" under the Pricing menu.

Do your homework. These days it's not that hard to determine what a competitive rate for a job is. Then ask for the top end of that, or even a bit more. It shows that you know what you are getting into, what you are worth, and quickly surfaces that there's been a misunderstanding about the job, if there has been one.

Sure maybe push back a little to see if they'll throw out the first number. But don't dance around it too much. Have your number in mind.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#158

Post by 908B64B197 »

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #146
908B64B197 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just a short thing you and the candidate can attack together in a couple hours Unless your hiring pipeline is absolutely perfect (you pretty much get great candidates all the time and almost no bad ones) this doesn't scale at all.

Could you explain why it scales worse than current typical interview sessions?

Couple of hours vs 30-40 minutes.

I prefer to have multiple short interviews with different engineers rather than a single multi-hour long one with only one engineer. You get better feedback and it helps against bias.

Not only that but a "toy JS app" implies the candidate knows JS at all. If it's college recruiting, you are better sticking with algorithms since you know that they know it.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#159

Post by dcolkitt »

MattGaiser wrote: post #28

> Keeping those skills sharp even when you’re not job hunting. Can I just add "Leetcoder" as a part time job on my resume? It is amusing how in this industry, your ability to interview will not at all be improved by spending time doing your job unless it is algo heavy. It is a separate job entirely.

The reality is that industrial psychology has consistently found that fluid intelligence is the best predictor of job performance. Even more so than experience.[0]

Whiteboard interviews are used, not because they have a lot of relevance to the job, but because they're a hard-to-fake indicator of high intelligence. Somebody who shows a lot of mental fluidity with complex data structures, almost assuredly can quickly master any specific tech stack. Even more so than a less intelligent person with years of experience in that specific tech stack.

It's the same reason that the military selects infantrymen based on word synonyms and fast mental arithmetic. What does that have to do with loading a rifle or marching in formation? Not a whole lot specifically, but whenever they've lower the intelligence standards, the results have been disastrous.[1]

There are other important qualities for certain. Honesty, resilience, hard work, enthusiasm, being a team player, reliability, etc. But almost all of those qualities are easy to fake and hard to assess in a 30 minute conversation. People who are hired on these qualities, are usually tapped from a pre-existing network, not selected from the recruiter funnel. If you've only got a half hour to choose a candidate, then pretty much your only reliable option is test their intelligence.

[0] https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.8...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#160

Post by sieabahlpark »

chrisabrams wrote: post #150
jawns wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This lights recruiters and hiring managers on fire. Not always. Sometimes it has a repulsive effect. Like trying to score a first date when you're already flaunting the fact that you're engaged to someone else.

> Not always. Sometimes it has a repulsive effect. Like trying to score a first date when you're already flaunting the fact that you're engaged to someone else. In what universe is this an acceptable analogy for anything? Edit: Make sure to include the quote.

If you (a low quality candidate) run into a FANG company with a job offer from a no-name company _just_ to create pressure it's no different than the analogy.

FANG doesn't want you before and they don't want you now, and they're also repulsed about the way you tried to get them to budge.

Recruiters and hiring managers are people too and the secret in the industry is most people are not qualified for the work being hired. Hiring incurs risk and the interview is risk mitigation. So if some low end candidate comes in trying to light a fire under themselves they will burn twice as bright but dismissed in a quarter of time.

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