Interview tips (prologue)

First of a 3 part series

Communication Styles

Last night I was in an online chat about communication styles and a young lady (I say this rather glibly because I was twice the age of the youngest person there) was moaning about people miss-understanding her. I struggle to read the room well, and I suspect it causes a lot of my interview impressions to be bad. I just have to accept that people who do not know me will probably not get, how dedicated and full of energy I truly am, from the job interview setting. 

Mistakes

I recently made 3 mistakes in a job interview which gave the impression that I'm someone who takes short cuts or is lazy, which jars with anyone who knows me. But that was the feedback, sent over, so I wanted to somehow call them back and explain the error, but. I had perhaps given that impression at least in 3 different instances, one of which I was tricked into. You can kick yourself, but it's their loss. I do kick myself though anyway. I still recall my first interview screw-up. It was admittedly my first ever interview, probably 30 years ago now. But a big thing I failed on was the practicality that the job was about 15 miles away and I had no car of my own. (This was Africa where busses do not really exist.) I did in fact have use of a car, but it was not my own, and yes I could easily afford to buy a car, but that had not occurred to me. They wanted someone who could work extra time on occasion, it was an IT job after all, so they asked, "do you have a car?" I said no, stupidly, but I was being honest.

Wins

Have answers for their possible questions and prepare well, this will boost your level of calm. Being nervous is not an interview excuse at all. Aside from predicting some of the questions you might get, the winner interviews were all ones where I stuck to my technical knowledge and did not try drift into being "mister nice". My first win was a referral, which I got almost entirely on the basis of being a friend with someone while on a full time training course. They offered to pay for my plane-ticket if I was successful. I met 2 directors and briefly the CEO too. I was sat in a room with a computer, internet and an IDE, and had to solve a linked-list problem from scratch in C/C++. The job would involve me porting Pascal and "C" code to C++, and I somehow did impress. That afternoon I flew home with a large manila envelope. My dad still gave me a bollocking for not signing and accepting the job offer right there on the spot. Ha ha! I packed my life into a station wagon a month later and drove from Cape Town to Johannesburg, and stayed there for 14 years. I only left to relocate once more, to the UK this time. 

Be prepared for the coding interview segment, most of all. I always freeze up when coding. Even though I am pretty ace at coding, my flaw is not reading the question properly. Something one rarely encounters in real life where the question is often really obvious. I panicked, until I read the question a second time and realized, the solution was far simpler than the one I had in mind. I did an online code test recently, for the same company that I had ducked out of their process on a few years ago, because I just feared the coding test. Pathetic. This time, I gritted my teeth and aced it. I believe the word for it is imposter syndrome.

You can often, only get a job, if you had one in the past, that proves you have the skills already. Employers don't want unskilled people. But they cannot spot people who learn quickly anyway in an interview, so my CV and covering letter writing skills have probably played a bigger part than they did in the past too. I used to majorly suck at writing, even though I write documentation copiously at work. Yes, my writing was, until 3 years ago, unreadable. But that's another story for later, for now I practice a lot.

3 Motives

My usual motive for applying for a job, is because the company does something which I think is useful or cool, not because I want the money. I recall getting a long-service award once, it was a sweet amount of money, in cash. I did not even open it to look, I handed it to my wife. She had a spa experience and full hairdo off of it with change. The money pays a mortgage, but money does not motivate me at all on a Monday morning at 8am. I once, took a job for the good money and ended up hating it overall for other reasons in the end.

My youngest son finishes a CS degree this summer, and as he starts hunting for work soon, I have had to quell his fears about not getting a job. I probably need to learn what it is he is looking for in a job now as well. Notwithstanding his lack of job experience, but these days it's harder than ever to even enter the market. So aside from my own job-hunt some of this post, is me formulating how to give my son some pointers.

I know nobody reads these articles, but I've never written on my blog about my early interview experiences, and this place feels more relevant than my blog does. It's also writing practice.