How to pass a first-round interview

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-pass-any-first-round-interview

by jger15 • 3 years ago

195 215 3 years ago

parpfish3• 3 years ago

In my experience, the first round interview is fizzbuzz because it can be graded objectively. The questions the author brings up like “Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a colleague” are saved for a later round

bradlys5• 3 years ago

First “round” interviews are so often done by recruiters that it’s basically a joke to pass them. I always call them screeners and “are you a serial killer” calls. Unless you say something that goes against the typical grain of what these calls should have (e.g. speaking poorly about a company, saying you were fired, clear anti-social behavior even if minor, you have niche demands that no one will fill, etc…) then you’ll pass them easily.

The first call is always about seeing if you even know that there’s a good amount of acting going on from both sides. You play your part and you’ll get to the technical interviews. People have a lower threshold for acting as you progress in the interviews and you can say more things that clearly aren’t good to say. (I.e. anything that demonstrates you don’t tolerate bullshit)

No one is complaining about this round of interviewing because it’s not a real issue or obstacle for anyone.

EForEndeavour• 3 years ago

This reminds me: what's the interview approach when someone was fired from their previous job? Just lie because disclosing that information will very likely disqualify you?

blakblakarak2• 3 years ago

I’ve been fired from a job - it’s glaring obvious from my CV - I’m just honest, tell then how I learnt from my error and how I believe it makes me a better dev having reeeealy messed up that one time. If a company doesn’t want to hire me after for that reason it’s not a company I’d want to work for anyway.

vba6164• 3 years ago

Don't lie. Don't act/feel guilty. Embrace (in your head, in preparation) the reasons you had to leave as though they were your own. Only talk about the aspects of leaving your job that you have in common with a voluntary resignation on your own initiative.

If you were hiring someone, think about what you would want, and what you want to know. Anything negative in someone's past, you do not really care about it, you just care they are past it and it won't have negative future consequences.

Avoiding the negative aspects of your past is not a matter of deception, but of proving that you are emotionally ready to move on.

On a written job application, which in my experience comes at the end after they think they want you, be honest, but read it like a lawyer and make sure you don't disclose anything that you don't have to.

bradlys5• 3 years ago

Yep. Lie. It’s what I do every time.

I’ve continued to get new jobs and ones that were better than previous.

nicoburns• 3 years ago

That was my experience every other time I've applied to a job in the last 10 years, but not during my recent job search. I got a number of rejections from 5 minute first round interviews for no obvious reason. Whereas once I got to a "proper" interview it was plain sailing. I think companies are getting a lot more applications than they were and are having to put a stronger filter in the first rounds than was the previous norm.

swader999• 3 years ago

We had reception (basically someone random) do the first phone screen interviews at my last company.

lisasays5• 3 years ago

So if, heaven forbid, someone ever does get fired - which of the two remaining options do you propose is best: (1) commit suicide, or (2) lie in response to the "have you ever been fired" question?

Since answering honestly is aparently a deal-breaker in your book.

bradlys5• 3 years ago

Yeah, lie. No shit. You think companies aren’t lying?

Lying is part of the theater that is our current employer-employee relationship. Everyone knows this

vba6164• 3 years ago

I made a comment here on what I think is the right approach:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36588394

arandr0x2• 3 years ago

There are also "legitimate" reasons to fail first round interviews, such as the recruiter picking your resume for a role that you are not actually qualified for (which the hiring manager notices after the interview), your salary expectations being too high for that specific company size/geography/role (usually a communications mismatch where they advertise a more senior role than they actually have), or it coming out that you are not legally allowed to work for them (they cannot sponsor visas; they don't hire in your country; they require citizenship; etc).

All these cases are technically the company's fault, not the candidate's, but they do often come out right after the screening call.

oneayy4• 3 years ago

what is a terrible talent market? is it when major corporations reach all time high profits while laying off most of their employees?

hedora7• 3 years ago

It's that, plus the candidates flip them the bird, and go to smaller companies.

Most of the places that just laid off are also mandating work from office, and are having a very hard time with attrition and hiring.

This is a perfect time to go to a company without those problems, since they'll be hiring much better than average these days, and, with any luck, their major corporation competitors are going to see their roadmaps implode.

brookst• 3 years ago

Article suggests more research and prep for a 30 minute first round than I’ve ever done for a half-day loop. Good lord. If you have to work that hard to seem like a good candidate, the real job is going to be a nightmare.

temp12192021• 3 years ago

More than I spent studying in college.

Interviewing has gotten out of hand...

HPsquared• 3 years ago

The entirety of the years spent studying in college is within the "interview prep" budget for most people. It's all interview prep. Really your whole CV content is interview prep.

Aachen• 3 years ago

I don't know what a half day loop is, but a few hours preparing for interviews doesn't seem weird to me. Do you have more than 1-3 serious interviews anytime you want to switch jobs?

For me, the problem is that 95% doesn't reply to their application form or email box, so that's where I'd optimise for time spent.

Sometimes I get recruiter calls and interviews stemming from that I'd not classify as serious, like I might do 20-30 minutes beforehand to figure out what this company does and whether/how it fits into my life, but if I'm not actually looking then I'm not going to spend hours preparing my presentation. Seems to still work to get an offer, though; they seem biased towards those they initiated contact with

trympet• 3 years ago

The half-day loop is probably referring to FAANG-style interviews where you have an initial screener (30 mins) and 4-5 subsequent interviews (around 30 mins each).

angarg122• 3 years ago

Formulate high-signal questions (to get interviewers thinking). Interviews are often won or lost by the questions you ask the interviewer at the end. Half of the battle is preparing well and showing up to answer the interviewer’s questions; the other half is asking them questions that get them thinking (and make you stand out).

I've performed hundreds of FAANG interviews, and I categorize this firmly in the "interview astrology" side. In my company we don't use questions asked by the candidate to determine the outcome (at least not for software engineers), and often we don't even record them. It sounds good to "impress your interviewer with your questions" but we are mindful about biases that might favour some candidates e.g. those with particularly good storytelling skills.

My advice would be to not overthink it. Just ask the questions that are genuinely important to you, and don't try to focus on impressing your interviewer.

Arch-TK4• 3 years ago

It's weird that you dont judge potential hires on the quality of their questions, the most important parts of most creative jobs are being able to ask the right questions.

mynameisvlad5• 3 years ago

The questions a candidate asks during that part of the interview have almost no overlap to the questions they would ask as part of a real job.

And no, not really. My job is to assess their technical skills, not how well they ask me about my work life balance while in a relatively high stress environment.

leetcrew• 3 years ago

the quality of questions is important during the technical segment, almost as much as getting the correct (or at least reasonable) answer/solution. charging into a solution without picking up on the ambiguities is one of the classic ways a leetcode legend fails a technical interview.

after all that, I feel the candidate deserves at least 5-10 minutes at the end to ask their own honest questions without having to worry about what they're signaling.

jghn7• 3 years ago

When I'm asking an interviewer questions, I'm trying to get a read on what it's like to work there. Are there any red flags that'd turn me off? Is this a place I'll enjoy working? Do my potential coworkers seem like decent people? Does the work/life balance match what I want to see?

When I'm actually working at a place, I don't need to ask those questions. I already know the answer.

yodsanklai3• 3 years ago

One issue with that is it's very subjective. One interviewer will be impressed by a question, and another will not.

sigstoat• 3 years ago

do you ask all of your interviewers the same set of questions to ensure they’re all suitably impressed by you?

if not how do you decide to allocate them?

mynameisvlad5• 3 years ago

This. I might call out a particularly good question in the debrief but only as an aside.

I don’t think I ever made a decision where the questions factored in at all; most of the time there’s more than enough material in the actual interview to cover a decision being made.

Zach_the_Lizard• 3 years ago

I think the questions that matter are clarifying questions in e.g. architecture rounds.

E.g. design a document storage system

Asking about requirements can help provide evidence you're aware of tradeoffs, various concepts, etc. and separate yourself from other candidates. Not surface level "what QPS do we need to support?" type questions, but beyond that.

Otherwise, yes, I agree, questions are not recorded and don't matter (unless there's a serious red flag like someone asking if they can avoid working with $GROUP_THEY_DONT_LIKE which raises HR type concerns)

whafro• 3 years ago

On the other hand, at small companies, this can be a big deal. FAANG companies pretty much know how interested you are in working there, based on the fact that you’re the type of person who thinks they want to work at a FAANG company. And since the scope of these companies is so large, there are all sorts of ways to fit your interests into work at such a company over the mid-to-long-term.

But early-stage companies are looking for folks who have an interest and understanding in the task at hand. For many hiring managers at these companies, expertise – or at least interest – in the problem space is noteworthy. On the hard-skill side, it can suggest that you may be able to help see around corners with your product team, identifying and solving issues during planning or on the fly. On the soft-skill side, it can suggest that you’re bringing positive energy and motivation to the still-nascent team.

In the end, it’s still a matter of knowing your audience and reading the room. It may be a waste of time in some places, and may be the difference-maker in others.

lmeyerov11• 3 years ago

Yep.

Folks at 200+ and especially FAANG companies are mostly interchangeable. The interviewer is mostly derisking chance of a dud and comparing a 86%er vs 87%er. A few exceptions like at the rarer million dollar comp level. For everyone else, especially non-insiders... Cookie cutter comparisons it is, and whatever edge.

Startups are very much making a more existential bet. For our openings, I'm equally looking for ownership, interest in our customers/mission/long-term, and other bits that have little to with a whiteboard. On a HN Hiring thread from yesterday, you'd be surprised how many emails I got that were 'here is my stale CV from 5-10 years ago' and little about why they're excited to do hard things with us. Likewise, if someone is on a second round with us and hasn't bothered to use our free tier, that also tells us a lot about their (dis)interest in doing for what is, for everyone else on our team, career-defining creations.

yodsanklai3• 3 years ago

Exactly, same thing in my company, at least for technical interviews. I always tell interviewees that questions are off the record, and if they don't have any questions, it's totally fine.

aidenn0• 3 years ago

OTOH, I have known interviewers that would not pass an interviewee that asked no questions. Wasn't first-round interviews though.

jghn7• 3 years ago

The only universal truth when it comes to interviews is that there are no universal truths.

As an interviewee there is nothing you can do that will universally be read as a positive across all interviewers. There are so many contradictory rules among interviewers that you might as well not bother gaming the system and do what you want to do. Let the chips fall as they may.

As an interviewer, no filter you put in place will give you a perfect read on what it's intended to test. For instance I know I have my quirks in terms of things that'll turn me off of a candidate based on resume alone. But I also recognize that many candidates are coached to do it this way in the first place. So I need to be conscious of this and try to not interpret these things as "shitty candidate"

noirbot8• 3 years ago

I do think I'd mark it against someone if I reserved 10-15 minutes at the end of an interview and they didn't have anything at all they wanted to know about the job or the company. I'm not expecting them to have a laundry list, but still. Or if you're not going to ask something, then have something to say at least. I'd rather you just go "No questions, since I assume this job pays me in money I can use to buy things?".

Getting a new job is a big deal - either you're about to quit somewhere and presumably you're looking because you care about finding a new employer that's better on some axis than your current job, or you're out of work and desperate to take anything, which is fine as well, but if you don't want to just admit that, you should probably have some idea of what to say otherwise.

jghn7• 3 years ago

As an interviewer, the only signal I ever take away from interviewee questions is if they manage to come across like a complete asshole. And this isn't common because most people aren't complete assholes, and those who are usually have displayed their colors earlier on in the interview.

As an interviewee, I refuse to put any effort into gaming the system and hoping to come across as a better candidate. I treat these sessions as me interviewing them. And yes, this means that a lot of times my questions will come across as banal. But you can get some decent signal on red flags by asking several potential peers to describe their day, challenges that they're facing, and that sort of thing.

foobarian• 3 years ago

On few occasions the questions interviewees asked at the end did help me form a better picture of them as candidates; example, someone asked what Java version we run predominantly and, and this is the important bit, didn't balk when the answer was some ancient LTS version but instead a nervous laugh of commiseration followed by war story time. This told me a lot both about the candidate's maturity and experience.

pandaman5• 3 years ago

As an interviewee, I refuse to put any effort into gaming the system and hoping to come across as a better candidate.

This is something missing from all the "interview coaching" advise and very few people seem to understand.

Suppose there is an actual technique that allows you to get a job you otherwise would not get. Say, hypothetically, you used it to become an astronaut. Do you think you perform well as an astronaut even though the selection process would have culled you? I'd imagine you get kicked out anyways so all you gained is a line in a resume. The same advise also insists that having a whole bunch of 0.5-1 year "gigs" in your work history is normal, but is it really? Do people really believe hiring managers don't see the pattern? Does anyone really think that people go: "Oh, we should hire this person, he worked in all of FAANG, one year in each, must be very good!"?

kmoser• 3 years ago

As an interviewee, I refuse to put any effort into gaming the system and hoping to come across as a better candidate.

That reminds me of this part of the article: "You can use mirroring in your interview process. How? Use their language when describing your experiences."

I consider mirroring to be a form of gaming the system, or at least something that can backfire. Having heard many interviewees parrot back terminology they didn't really understand, I'm sensitive to when somebody is trying to dazzle me with BS. I'd much rather hear an interviewee use much simpler, even non-technical verbiage, when describing things than try to use the words they think I want to hear.

samstave• 3 years ago

I have failed several interviews by knowing too much about the employer, or in cases, even the interviewer --- where I felt I didnt have any pertinent questions to ask at the end of the interview...

If I already know the answer I have to consciously remember to still ask questions at the end....

No worse interview feeling of suddenly thinking of all the questions you _should_ have asked after youve left the meeting...

a_e_k• 3 years ago

In the past, I've dealt with that by saying something like "I would ask you X, but I saw from [place] that the answer is Y. Can you confirm that this is correct / confirm that this still true / tell me more?"

I put my cards on the table to show that I've done my homework and establish what I know already, then elicit more information. If there's nothing more to be said, then fine, but at least an interviewer who cares what I ask will know what I'm curious about even if I already happen to have an answer. And if I'm wrong, then it gives them an opportunity to correct the record. Or it gives them an opening to provide additional nuance.

KnobbleMcKnees• 3 years ago

My advice would be to not overthink it. Just ask the questions that are genuinely important to you, and don't try to focus on impressing your interviewer.

I agree with this, except in one sense that I think lends to the point of the blog post.

The questions you ask can drive perception of how you might act as an employee. On more than one occasion I have asked a question about X at an interview and then had a subsequent conversation with a recruiter where they ask "is [something related to X] a concern for you?"

I've not ever had one discontinue me due to it but it shows what's coming up in conversation at the interview debriefs.

belter• 3 years ago

Out of those hundreds of interviews, can you discern some clear patterns, that are common to all candidates that impress positively?

edelans• 3 years ago

hundreds of FAANG interviews

hundreds??

So that's at least 200. Assuming you interview for the 5 FAANG in parallel, and you have, let's say 5 rounds per application (and you do reach the 5th). You would have done the whole process 8 times. Assuming they let you apply only once per year, that means you have interviewed at the very least every year for the last 8y. okay.

Centigonal• 3 years ago

I assume they mean as the interviewer

angarg122• 3 years ago

517 interviews as an interviewer.

pclmulqdq2• 3 years ago

Google is the only place I have worked where we didn't judge peoples' follow-up questions. I'm not sure FAANG is representative in that respect.

idopmstuff• 3 years ago

Counterpoint: I've performed hundreds of interviews at early-stage startups, and this is spot-on, fantastic advice. If you can ask questions about things that I have spent time thinking about, that's a really good sign to me that you were able to look at the company from the outside and apply your knowledge to understand what's important. If you can ask questions about things I haven't been thinking about but that subsequently get me thinking, even better.

Questions really distinguish you from other candidates more than answers because the fact that they're unprompted means they tell me more about where you focus your attention than do the answers to my questions.

My advice would be to not overthink it. Just ask the questions that are genuinely important to you, and don't try to focus on impressing your interviewer.

With all of that said, I still 100% agree with this. The ideal result is that you ask me questions about things that are important to you and that I find those questions compelling - then we've probably got a good match.

But do make sure you have some thoughtful, researched questions. Those are always better than "what's the best thing about working here?" regardless of topic.

Mizoguchi• 3 years ago

If you don't pass the screening interview is due to a few issues.

1) You are applying to a role you don't meet the minimum requirements for.

2) Didn't take the time to research about the company, salary and benefits, the product/service and the team you'll be working with.

3) Unrealistic expectations about compensation and benefits, which you should have researched above.

The rest is just having a casual conversation with another human being, so if you have communication skills that's another issue you need to resolve.

Arch-TK4• 3 years ago

How do you research the salary if all the company says is "competitive salary". In the part of the UK I live in this seems to mean anything from £45k to £150k for roles of similar seniority.

Really if there's a mismatch in salary expectations then it's not that you failed, it's that the company failed to effectively communicate this information and wasted your time on an introductory call.

parpfish3• 3 years ago

Re 2: one of my peeves in job listings is when the job description will specify the name of the team using internal labels/codenames that means nothing outside the company.

Bad: “this is a developer for the lookinglass team”

Good: “this is a developer for the team that builds monitoring tool”

jghn7• 3 years ago

Yes, this.

A lot of people don't even realize they're doing this. In particular, people who have spent a significant portion of their career in one company (junior devs, long timers). They're used to thinking of these terms as everyday knowledge.

jackblemming• 3 years ago

The fact that we have long articles like this on how to game interviews and then interviewers become keen and it becomes a stupid meta back and forth game of cat and mouse. Meanwhile us normal non-career ladder psychopaths want to talk and be treated like regular people.

Every time I’ve been asked about a conflict I’ve had and how I resolved it, I die a little bit inside.

neilv2• 3 years ago

What's important is that you die a little bit inside in STAR format.

FabHK4• 3 years ago

- So, once I interviewed with a company and was asked about a conflict at work.

- The task at hand was to recall (or, for that matter, invent) a situation involving a conflict at work, and convince the interviewer that I handled it with aplomb.

- And so, I proceeded to recalling a situation involving a conflict, explained the Situation to the interviewer in detail, outlined the Tasks I was responsible for, conveyed the Actions I took, and related the Result of my actions.

- Result: I died a little bit inside, but the interviewer was very impressed and offered me a job on the spot.

rkachowski• 3 years ago

what's the real expectation for these conflict questions? is it to show that you've encountered it before? that you can manage it? that you're a reasonable person when faced with interpersonal difficulties? that sometimes hard choices have to be made wrt bad actors? that you are some kind of golden Spongebob/Candide that has never experienced being ground up in the gears of office politics?

I never know which way these are meant to go

minitoar2• 3 years ago

It depends on the role. IMO the bar is pretty low for many engineering roles. Determining “that you're a reasonable person when faced with interpersonal difficulties” is usually good enough.

kj4211cash• 3 years ago

is it just me or is the entire Amazon interview panel like this? "leadership principles." makes my skin crawl.

Scubabear682• 3 years ago

I like the writing on this article a lot more than I thought I would, some of the advice is sound - but the big caveat is most of this has nothing to do with a first round interview. What the author describes here are pieces that will come up in a typical interview process somewhere, but probably not a first round.

First round to me is typically a “bozo filter” - screen out individuals who are clearly unqualified or who are an obvious bad fit.

Any decent dev should get past round 1 without significant prep.

FabHK4• 3 years ago

I think some companies send junior techies to do first round filtering (with easy coding questions), while others keep the HR folks busy doing first round filtering (with, well, behavioural etc. questions as outlined in the article).

teucris4• 3 years ago

The article calls this out, stating that they define the first round interview as the one after a phone screen/video screen.

Scubabear682• 3 years ago

So it is like two screens before the “real” interview? Weird. Sounds like a very lengthy process!

1letterunixname• 3 years ago

Uh, no. The answer is to:

- Have marketable skills and experience

- Market and communicate these effectively

- Take many interviews because too many are arbitrary and some are terrible places you don't want to work

- Aim to be fit, in good health and spirits, and presentable

- Be honest

In general, everything works out because the synchronicity of individuals and organizations is a self-selecting phenomenon.

mynameisvlad5• 3 years ago

Aim to be fit, in good health

Unless you’re interviewing to be a personal trainer, this doesn’t really have any relevancy.

Like yes, be presentable, don’t be a slob. But you don’t have to be “fit” or “in good health” to land a job.

ok1234563• 3 years ago

Physical fitness is a reflection of your discipline and a signal that you think clearly.

gherkinnn• 3 years ago

I think you underestimate how much looks affect your success.

And being fit (not to be confused with a hulking mountain of muscle) and in good health is a large part of looks.

lopkeny12ko• 3 years ago

A massive wall of text and just one paragraph that says "oh by the way there will be a coding assessment in the interview, you need to prepare for that as well, good luck." No further details.

Totally useless guide.

H8crilA• 3 years ago

I think the assumption is that everyone understands that part if it applies to their role, i.e. to the engineer role.

hedora7• 3 years ago

The article claims that most first round interviews are behavioral questions / culture fit.

That doesn't match any interview processes I've been involved with. If you are running an interview process for ICs (which this article clearly targets), you should put the highest signal questions first.

That usually means a somewhat easy coding question. If people fail that, then you can immediately eliminate them from the pipeline. If they fail a hard coding question, you usually need more signal, which means more wasted time.

If your culture fit / behavioral question is good at weeding out candidates, then there's probably something seriously wrong with your hiring practices. Sociology studies show that those questions are more correlated to drinking the same brand of alcohol or playing the same sports than they are to job performance.

Other studies show that diversity significantly increases team performance, so filtering people on whether you'd like to hang out with them during the weekend is fraught with technical peril.

jahewson2• 3 years ago

Other studies show that diversity significantly increases team performance

Ah yes, “studies”, no doubt by “experts”. Think about how ridiculous this claim is in the context of a software engineering team. What mechanism is supposed to be at work?

(With one exception - gender differences, that’s perfectly plausible).

abenga• 3 years ago

I would not care to work for a team where members flippantly disregard exclusion of significant subsections of the population from their ranks, for whatever excuse they design to choose. Either way. There are competent people of all colours, creeds, and classes, and if your company is not able to get any, there's something wrong with you.

FabHK4• 3 years ago

you should put the highest signal questions first. That usually means a somewhat easy coding question.

While I agree with you, what do you make of the claim in the article (that I've seen elsewhere) that behavioural questions are x% more predictive of job performance than technical questions?

grogenaut3• 3 years ago

Depends on the job and the question.

I had a candidate that didn't believe they were allowed to make decisions, just carry out edicts of "the leaders" even if terrible idea. They didn't believe they should ask questions to clarify or help structure the request. This person has worked at a higherarchial bank then a rule by fiat game studio.

There's no way I could have used this person at our company. Didn't matter their tech chops. They would have been a disaster. In this case behavioral would have caught them.

Instead I asked a tech question which they failed hard and started blaming the recruiter on for not knowing this was a tech position. I tried pivoting to behavioral and it went downhill from there.

I had to try and save the interview by talking about games war stories for 45 minutes taking us over by 30 minutes. It was not great.

But if I had caught it with behavioral I would still had to ask the tech question for fairness. So I'm not sure what would have helped.

hedora7• 3 years ago

I worked in a team where the behavioral part of the interview was nearly impossible to fail. (Someone managed to, but that's a different story). Basically, they just needed to seem enthusiastic about the position, and not commit any HR-worthy offenses during the onsite interview.

However, we had a very high, quantified technical bar, and the recruiters were extremely good at selecting candidates that had demonstrated success elsewhere (top of class, winning coding competitions, managed teams, shipped stuff, worked with trusted engineers / researchers outside the company, etc, etc.)

The result was the strongest team I've ever worked with. We ended up having to let go about 1-3% of new hires, sometimes due to technical skills, sometimes due to lack of motivation / team fit.

More behavioral questions might have filtered out half of the people that didn't work out. However, we also ended up with some socially awkward, uber-nerd types with performance that was way above that of the stereotypical 10x engineer outliers. (They weren't awkward in a hostile work environment way -- those were not tolerated, and were usually filtered out via interviews! Instead it was more things like not being great at getting credit for their work, or at reading social cue's like "I'm busy", or "I have no idea what branch of discrete warp manifold <-> flux capacitor interconnection techniques you're talking about, but I see you're going to keep talking for 10 minutes")

So, if you're at a giant company with a low bar where organizational stuff matters more than technical contribution (like, say FAANG, where hiring targets are in the 1000-10,000's, not 10-100's), then behavioral questions make sense. (No offense to FAANG, but different stuff matters in larger companies.)

If you're at a smaller place where all-by-all communication still works, then I'd suggest keeping an extremely high technical bar, mostly ignoring the behavioral stuff, and then figuring out how to make sure you retain technologists that are not ladder climbers as the organization grows.

zulban• 3 years ago

I'm really interested to see what studies you're talking about specifically, but I didn't put much value in your comment without it.

I've had a ton of trouble finding good research on this.

Studies have shown.

speak_plainly3• 3 years ago

It's sad this is the reality of hiring now. It's byzantine and wasteful and I'm surprised that companies are willing to burn money this way. There are great candidates who may not perform well in an interview and there are a lot of serious clowns that can waltz through this process. The questions being asked are not likely going to yield useful information and the whole thing seems designed by pick-up artists to neg candidates into accepting bad offers. Why stop at 6 interviews?

m3affan• 3 years ago

But that's the reality. Doing good on an interview does not guarantee the ability to do the job

zizee• 3 years ago

What is a better alternative?

ClumsyPilot• 3 years ago

Certifications should mean something, not be a sales channel for AWS

speak_plainly3• 3 years ago

Reading and assessing resumes and having a single interview with HR and the hiring manager or a panel. And this process should fit within the larger operational framework and processes of a company.

hedora7• 3 years ago

I understand your sentiment, but, having been on the other side of the fence, there are a lot of people that apply for jobs they're completely unqualified for, and they end up being most of your candidate pool. (Come to think of it, this would make a decent whiteboard question about reservoir sampling without replacement...)

Another way to think about it is that these interview processes often have a ~ 1% acceptance rate, and the softball questions typically filter 80-90% of candidates.

So, yeah, it sucks for a qualified candidate if they fail half their interviews, but they'll end up getting a job somewhere. That's much better for them than working at a company where 99% of the engineers can't perform basic coding tasks or explain how products in their industry segment are designed.

sethammons• 3 years ago

this would make a decent whiteboard question about reservoir sampling without replacement

Ah, the secretary problem: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

gdsdfe4• 3 years ago

most of the first round I've done are just leet code ... also saying the market is terrible is an understatement, it's the worst I've seen in over a decade.

smnscu• 3 years ago

I concur with the other comments here that this is almost useless. It could be useful if you're interested in companies dumb enough to care about most of the stuff this article focuses on. I've conducted over 3,000 interviews, most of them via Karat (https://karat.com/), and I can say that, as a software engineer at least, you can safely ignore this kind of advice.

randcraw• 3 years ago

Yep. This describes only how to game the famously byzantine hiring process at FAANGs, a tiny highly abnormal subset of the tech workspace out there — only those companies that began as explosive startups who gained giant market share mostly due to great timing in catching the wave, not smart management practices.

raldi• 3 years ago

My eyes were rolling too much to finish this piece, but I’ll share a pair of tips:

In a technical interview, learn to recognize when the interviewer is trying to help you, and take notice immediately when they do. If they say, “Do you really need to use a float here?”, nine times out of ten what they really mean is, “Stop trying to use a float here.”

As an interviewer, it’s really unpleasant to be trying to throw a candidate a life preserver and have them keep shooing it away.

(Sometimes “Do you really need” questions are a trap and the interviewer is testing your confidence, but in those cases it’s usually said with a completely different tone.)

My other tip is for the squishy personality test interview: come into it smiling, and keep that up for no reason. The interviewer will usually start doing it too, and that leads their brain to think, “I’m smiling, so I must like this person.”

andrewingram7• 3 years ago

With algorithmic questions, the life preservers often throw me off more than they help. I had one which was actually wrong, i.e the path I was going down was correct _and_ simpler. More commonly though, if I'm struggling, I'm normally juggling too many things in my head, and them adding another thing to think about makes me drop all the balls.

I still value them in principle, but it seems to be a skill that many interviewers haven't developed to the point where they're a net positive.

timy2shoes• 3 years ago

It can also be the case where the interviewer doesn’t really understand the question and are going from prompts. So when you try to get further understanding of their hint from them, they just repeat the hint. I think this reflects poorly on the company culture, that they’re throwing interviewers out there who aren’t ready.

ThalesX• 3 years ago

I've had an experience where the interviewer tried to stop me from doing a DFS on a graph. Then they tried to tell me that's not how DFS is done. I am a pretty chill and curious guy, so I turned this into a discussion. At the end, I go like 'so my initial approach was correct', he goes like 'yeah, I guess it was' then I never heard from them again. I still think about that interview from time to time.

mvdtnz2• 3 years ago

My top interview tip, and it's painful that I have to say this but so, so many candidates get it wrong, is "answer the actual question".

It is so frustrating when I word a question very specifically and the candidate doesn't answer it. Most commonly it's a question like "tell me about a time when you encountered a bug in production, how you discovered it and the steps to resolve it". And instead of answering the question, they tell me about what they _would_ do, if they _had_ found a bug. Or worse, they step me through some process that their company uses. I'm looking for personal experience, not what you read on a blog post once.

I also am mindful at the start of all of my interviews to tell the candidate I am not trying to trick them, I'm just trying to learn where they're at. So if I ask you for an experience you haven't had, that's totally fine - no one has done everything, we're just looking for the boundaries.

slyall2• 3 years ago

The problem is that you misunderstand the question you are asking.

When you say "tell me about a time when" you are really saying "Tell me a prepared story about when".

In this case the person didn't have a prepared answer for that question so they went with a generic answer to show to you that they knew what they were doing.

They could have found & fixed hundreds of bugs in production over their career, but trying to recall an example that will make a good story during an interview is hard and risky.

The good news is they will prepare a story for the next interview at a different company.

BHSPitMonkey• 3 years ago

Or worse, they step me through some process that their company uses.

Ugh, I've had this so many times and it's the worst. Often those candidates will pull that move multiple times in the same interview, too. Sometimes this is also paired with a level of oversharing that makes me think "wow, I sure wouldn't want a member of _my_ team going off and blabbing this much about _our_ projects when they start looking for their next job".

Mawr3• 3 years ago

Most commonly it's a question like "tell me about a time when you encountered a bug in production, how you discovered it and the steps to resolve it". And instead of answering the question, they tell me about what they _would_ do, if they _had_ found a bug.

Of course they do, it's only natural and smart. They hear your standard formulaic behavioral question and cut to the chase instead of being sheep.

If you want real answers, hold real, natural conversations. Don't read items off a checklist.

andrewingram7• 3 years ago

I just want to figure out how to come up with a good answer for "Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a colleague." (used as an example in the post, but not in any detail). It seems to be the question that anecdotally is the biggest reason I'm not getting offers right now, so I'd welcome pointers.

Where I'm at:

* I don't really know what other people mean by "conflict", so I probably go for examples that are more charged than is necessary.

* When I hear "conflict", my head goes towards relationships with people who were widely problematic within the business (i.e I wasn't the only one who had difficulty with them), and more often than not, they eventually got fired or manage out -- so the conflict often resolved itself based on external factors.

* Minor disagreements, ie differing opinions on how to approach a problem, aren't conflicts in my mind. Because they had no long-term emotional impact on me, I don't tend to remember these well enough to spin a story or discuss particular conflict-navigation techniques or outcomes.

* I have one example where a CEO got an employee to do something unethical (and possibly illegal, not sure), and I challenged them on it. But this was kind of a no-win situation for me, I said my piece, he heard me, the particular instance was stopped, but I'm told he's still doing similar things today (I'm no longer at the company).

jghn7• 3 years ago

Assuming they're not just reading it from a checklist & tuning out when you start talking - they're looking for a story where you had a problematic relationship with a coworker or coworkers, but managed to make it work. Ideally over a longer period of time, and not "Bob stole my lunch out of the fridge one day". For reasons similar to what you said I've found a lot of people don't have very good stories along these lines, and because of that this question is less useful than people like to think. And on top of that, most candidates are terrified of saying anything that makes them look like the ahole in those situations. So if their answer sounds pretty milquetoast who is to say if they're being careful or just don't have good stories.

I have a story I use now. It involved a coworker with whom I had an oil vs water relationship for a couple of years. In retrospect I could have gone about it all a lot better than I did in the moment, although that was true for both of us. I don't have the perfect "And then I solved everything" punchline to my story, they were eventually let go. But, my journey during it all was critical to my own development. And that started me down a leadership path, changing the course of my career. So I talk about my lessons learned, things I wish I'd have done differently in retrospect, etc. I'm not painting a perfect picture of myself, but I do display introspection, personal development, willingness to take different approaches to resolve an issue, etc.

andrewingram7• 3 years ago

The oil vs water thing resonates. Given that tenures are relatively short these days (1-2 years), it's pretty easy to just wait it out -- especially if the other person has issues with other people too.

I do feel like too many of my examples (for this whole class of questions) are times I could've handled better (though I didn't handle them catastrophically by any means), that ultimately shaped how I think about such things going forwards (after a fair amount of introspection)). But I often seem to lack the examples of a subsequent situation where I put that into practice (pandemic meant I basically took a holding-pattern role for a couple of years).

One would think that introspection, recognition of ones own mistakes and being receptive to feedback would be a massive pro; but lately that hasn't been my experience when interviewing.

teucris4• 3 years ago

If the question feels unclear to you, that’s an excellent opportunity to ask clarifying questions, e.g. “Sure, but what do you mean by ‘conflict’? Do you mean a disagreement on how to solve a problem, or an interpersonal conflict?”

When I ask a question like this I mean a disagreement, and I’d imagine that’s what most interviewers mean too. So I recommend you continue to search for a situation you can recall in detail.

If the answer is that they’re looking for interpersonal conflict, you should use a situation where you took effort to work past it with the person for the good of the mission/company. Your last story could work if framed that way but it lacks a moment where you found a way to move forward with this person.

kaimac• 3 years ago

So I recommend you continue to search for a situation you can recall in detail.

Or just make one up. Ask silly questions, get silly answers.

20after42• 3 years ago

I'm with you on this.

I've even been told that my lack of a good answer to this question was the only negative mark on one of the interviews for a job that I eventually was hired for.

My honest answer is that I don't generally have conflicts at work. I get along with people and generally handle disagreements easily. I haven't worked in an environment that was rife with conflicts, maybe I'm just lucky or maybe my definition of conflict is different than others.

blindriver3• 3 years ago

"I'm really good at predicting potential areas of conflict with my coworkers so I make sure to address them head-on before they turn into something much bigger. This is why I've managed to avoid any major sources of conflict so far (knock on wood). An example of this was..."

blindriver3• 3 years ago

Conflict means disagreement. They want to be able to see that you can disagree with someone or handle conflict with someone but not make it personal and move on professionally.

So you disagreed over something technical, like architecture. You show they you can handle conflict by not taking it personally, but involving other people on the team, and regardless of whether or not the outcome is in your favor, you thrash it out once and then stick to it.

arandr0x2• 3 years ago

I'm a manager whose definition of conflict mostly matches yours, so here's how I handle it (as an interviewee) and how to translate the "default behavioral interview question" to something you can answer:

- the scope of the question is usually "how do you reconcile your worldview, desires, and best interest with someone else's". When answering, I tend to first clarify to the interview that "conflict" is a word that has intense connotations for me, and then ask "Are you asking about a time I had to negotiate with a person that was coming from a different point of view or background, or about how I handled an emotionally charged situation?" (As a manager, it is more common that I do get asked about emotionally charged situations, which also take skills to defuse, just different ones.)

- At least for me, I often think of non-emotionally-charged disagreements as negotiations; there are absolutely negotiation skills to be used to resolve disagreements efficiently and effectively, and if you can't think of any, it may be something for you to practice. Do you often get what you want? When you do, is it mutually beneficial? How does that course of action happen?

- Sometimes you can sidestep the question and showcase better conflict resolution skills by thinking of a time you arbitraged a conflict between two other parties. Describe how you dealt with each party. Did you feel you were unbiased? If you were initially more on the side of one party, how did you set that aside to listen to the other person?

- Don't mention abuses of power (by you or the other party) in a conflict resolution question. Also don't mention conflicts that are primarily personal - the origin of the disagreement should be about work, not tone, physical threats, intimate history, etc.

- If you do have a story about building a working relationship with a known problematic person, so that your work with that person yielded good results and you didn't fall into the trap of a bad personal relationship with them, you can mention what you did to get there. E.g. "X was widely known for his temper and would often yell during code reviews. Although this caused problems with all his teams, and he doesn't work there anymore today, I always got civil, useful code reviews from X by sending him my points in writing in advance, and expressing that I valued his feedback which was why I wanted a trace of it."

why-el• 3 years ago

I've been asked this numerous times, and similar questions. Most of these questions boil down to "are you, the interviewee we are about to give a job to, a crazy person". Most likely you are not, so find some plausible scenarios, like a missed deadline, scope creep, or any of the normal shit that happens to us, humanize the other in the story, state the resolution (or what you changed in process), the end.

srhtftw• 3 years ago

If someone asks me this I tell them about the time when I was working late and another engineer who happened to work a few desks away from mine broke our unit tests and tried to pressure me into committing a quick patch to fix them without testing it first so they wouldn't be late to a movie.

I explained I was new to the group, had no special understanding of the code they changed or the tests that failed and wasn't about to deviate from SDLC principles when there wasn't a compelling need. In my view committing an untested change was what caused the trouble in the first place and I had no confidence that the fix they wanted me to commit would make things better. I suggested that they simply revert their change and come back to it later when they had time.

This only made the other person more irritated. They raised their voice and continued to demand I do what they suggested and I continued to politely explain that while I was willing to help them work through the problem, review their code, examine the data or follow any appropriately documented procedure, I wasn't willing to violate proper engineering principles this way. Their shouting started attracting some unwanted attention and they decided to just pack up and leave. Later that evening another engineer reverted their change and everything was fine again.

My manager asked me how I felt about the incident the next day. I said that although their behavior was irritating, I didn't hold it against them. Even the best of people make mistakes when desperate or rushed. Their mind just wasn't in the right place at that time. They really just needed to get away for a bit. What matters is that we move on, try our best to treat each other with respect and remember that we're all part of the same team.

paulcole3• 3 years ago

Just make something up. Or take a real incident and change the details a bit.

Is it better to learn something from the conflict yourself or is it better to help someone else learn something? Come up with different versions and A/B test them to see what kind of reaction you get.

Isn’t this what everyone does in interviews? If not, why not? It’s a storytelling game to get a job offer, not a deposition. I interview a lot of people and hope they’re telling me stories that are partially untrue.

andrewingram7• 3 years ago

Unfortunately, I’m not good at making things up or embellishing the truth. I’m far more inclined to downplay something than exaggerate.

I’m literally someone who took an inch off my height on my dating app profiles because I have slightly bad posture and didn’t want to misrepresent myself.

karaterobot• 3 years ago

Here's a controversial opinion: one of the top tips to passing an interview is just to lie.

I don't mean lying about qualifications, or lying about jobs you've had in the past. But, I feel no compunction about answering a question like "tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a colleague" by making up a scenario that could plausibly have happened and hypothesizing about what you might do in it. The reality is that no two such scenarios are ever exactly the same, so a real anecdote would not be helpful, even if you happen to have a good one in mind (which I never do). Next time, the people involved (including you) are going to be different, with different personalities, a different set of problems and pressures and constraints . Forget it, there's very low predictive power in a question like that, even if the interviewer were qualified to analyze you. So, just tell them what they want to hear, and prove you speak the dumb language of corporate interviews.

Is this unethical? Maybe, but only to the extent that such questions are meaningful filters (which I believe they aren't). And it is surely no more unethical than answering a question like "why do you want to work for Company X?" by saying "I am inspired by the mission and the fascinating problems you're solving" rather than "the salary is higher than my current job, and I think it will make a good stepping stone to an even bigger salary at another company in a few years", which is what we would say if genuine honesty were what that particular discourse was trying to get at.

sctb• 3 years ago

I think it's possible to underestimate the extent to which people can perceive this type of dishonesty, because it may be in the form of an uneasy and largely unconscious experience that leads them to vaguely report "not a good fit".

blindriver3• 3 years ago

Yep. I am really good at coming up with stuff on the spot, so when I last interviewed, I straight up made up some stuff for my behavioral interviews.

I resorted to this because on my LinkedIn interview, the behavioral interviewer kept pressing me when I told him that the situation never came up (I can't remember exactly what it was, I think if I was ever asked to work on something that I disagreed with) and it dinged me on my evaluation. So from them on, I would make up white lies to satisfy my interviewers. I also make sure to note what I say on my interview notes so I keep my stories straight.

Interviews want a certain "type" of answer, so if you don't give it to them, more often than not they will ding you. The same goes for Leetcode questions, if you get the answer wrong, you will get passed over, but if you get the answer "too quick", then you will get passed over because you were "too prepared", so better to just pretend to struggle and come up with the answer.

mikebenfield4• 3 years ago

Yes, while I do not advocate lying, it seems clear to me that this is the effect of these types of interview questions: filtering for better BS artists. I am continually amazed that anyone thinks these questions are doing anything else.

And in particular a lot of people seem to think it's impossible to lie and not get caught out, which... all I can say to that is I don't see how anyone who has lived as a human among other humans could possibly think that.

eschneider2• 3 years ago

I would very much caution against doing that. I know when I'm doing interviews and get tasked to ask these sorts of questions, I usually ask follow up questions. I'm not trying to figure out if someone's just making things up, but once in a while, people draw a blank when you drill down on something and that just looks weird.

It's far better to just prepare an answer based on something that's actually happened to you, so if you have to explain further, there's something actually there.

dahart• 3 years ago

Seems risky and not worth it over a fluff question that is unlikely to factor into the decision to hire you or not. Lying is grounds for termination after getting the job if you’re caught. You might underestimate the ease of lying in an interview, if you aren’t prepared for followup questions or a conversation. Speaking personally, it does seem a lot more unethical than a rosy half-truth to me. I can be inspired by the mission and problems and also interested in the salary & resume filling aspects at the same time. Leaving some of them out is quite different from fabricating experiences. I somewhat doubt that lying will help you in the long term, giving a great answer for this conflict question won’t hide any technical gaps.

hdjjhhvvhga• 3 years ago

OK so I may be biased but please don't do this. After a couple of interviews everybody is tired. 1-2 short questions are perfectly fine, but some people treat it as "the floor is yours". You won't make a better impression by asking questions, but you can make it worse. For most people though, it doesn't matter at all. Use the time you had before, when being asked, to show your best side.

apricot• 3 years ago

I verified that no employee would have a compensation regression

What's wrong with "I made sure nobody got a pay cut"?

How to pass a first-round interview

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