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I got a job interview! Any tips?? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by Witch@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org

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Hi yall after being on disability income for years and job searching for months I finally got to step two of the job search process: a job interview.

I am wondering if anyone had any tips for the job interview process? I am very nervous.

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[–] chibi-totoro@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I agree with your premise and approach to personalization, 100%...... but not those exact questions.

I run a lot of software engineering teams and I interview people every week. I get those three exact questions from almost every single candidate. Frankly, those questions do not show any particular interest in your company - they are generic questions and kind of have a negative framing to them. The company culture one is especially annoying for a lot of reasons. If company culture is important to you, there are much better ways to tease it out from the interviewer.

Try to actually show real interest in the job, try some of these ideas:

Ask questions about the responsibilities of the role, and tell them you love doing whatever they are.
Ask about the kinds of projects you'll get to work on. Relate them to any experience you have, if you're lucky enough.
Ask about the latest press releases you've seen for the company.
Ask about the tools/software/training that is required or available for the role.
Ask about how much autonomy you'll have in bringing new ideas in for improving things (I love this one, it shows they might be a self-starter and have curiosity and agency).
Ask about what kind of fun things the workers do together. Do you have a memes channel in your slack? Do you ever go for team lunches? Do they bring their dogs to the office?
Ask about the roadmap for the department where the potential role is. What's the vision?

All of these kinds of questions actually show genuine interest in getting involved. Remember that a company is just a bunch of people working together. I will take an engaged, friendly, curious and smart candidate with barely any experience over a distant, disengaged, looking-for-the-least-bad-option AAA software dev any day of the week.

Hope that helps!

[–] demvoter@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ask about how much autonomy you'll have in bringing new ideas in for improving things

That is a fantastic question.

[–] TheCalzoneMan@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Agreed that they're relatively boring questions, but anything deeper is going to be industry-specific. For example, asking what projects you'll be working on is not particularly helpful for someone who is going into secretarial work. Since OP has never done an interview before, it's mostly important to start them thinking about how they will engage the hiring manager, since it shows at least some interest beyond just having a job. I think it's especially important to figure out where the hiring manager is positioned relative to the job they're hiring for. Are they your boss, or are they hiring for the company? That will give a better idea on if they can answer direct questions about the position or department.

Again, questions are going to be determined by the type of work, the position, the position of the person doing the interview, etc. Without more info, it's hard to tailor questions to the specific. And, quite frankly, it's a good skill to pick up. Learning how to engage your coworkers/managers/vendors/etc. is part of workplace etiquette, imo.