I recently went through a job change, and was interviewed for few IT positions. The companies were in different areas, but I noticed almost all followed similar interview formula and knowing that beforehand would have helped me early on. For example, they would ask me the same thing from my resume, and questions would slightly deviate when it came for the work specific to that company.
Anyway, here are 5 tips that I think would have made the whole process more efficient.
1. Know your resume
- be precise, and list your accomplishments with factual details (so you don't stumble upon scenarios presented by an interviewer)
- for your own reference, create your resume under STAR format
2. Know your interviewer
- ask the interview coordinator for person's profile in LinkedIn, or look them up in company website
- during interview try to learn about the interviewer, their daily work routine, their team
- have your questions prepared prior to interview
3. Know your tools
- for each tool that is listed in your resume, describe how it was used and helped you be productive.
- know the edge cases for each tool, this usually shows if you know it well enough
- write all that down and use it as a cheat sheet
- if time permits, ask the interviewer how they used such tools
4. If you are in IT, be ready for a code challenge
- know the basic/core data structures of your programming language
- unless you do it often, you may hit a mental block during interview, so practice often
- do not overthink the solution, and just iterate until you come to a good result
- start your coding session by writing acceptance tests - that way you can envision the answer all the time
5. Interview often
- while time consuming, doing interviews is free and helps you evaluate yourself
- you learn what others do (especially of you go further rounds)
- interviews help you understand your strenghts and weaknesses
- learn from un-answered questions, and get better everyday