Will Soper A simple blog for my notes

Getting an interview, and interviewing well

I know lots of people are unexpectedly being forced to look for new roles due to COVID-19. I can’t offer anyone a job right now, but I might be able to help you do better in your search, especially if you work in technology.

I’ve interviewed hundreds of developers over the years, and have been successful myself interviewing for roles as a Developer, Architect, CTO and everything inbetween (and quite a lot more besides).

This article is about all the parts of the process that I think are most often overlooked which you can learn and practice. To clarify with an example; I don’t talk about coding interviews here, but that’s because most people think about them already. I do talk about interview preparation at length because whilst people know about this, they seem not to do anything about it, and I have practical advice that would help.

Fair warning - this is a long article! I considered splitting it in to multiple smaller ones, but there’s a kind of circular dependency between your research for an interview and the actual process of getting an interview. You may find your research on a company can improve your CV before applying, but if you get to interview you’ll probably want to do even more.

There are three sections; how to get an interview, how to research and prepare, and how to interview. The final section is the shortest because, like most things in life, good preparation will make the actual process much, much easier.

The most common theme I’ve seen is that people are often surprisingly unprepared for an interview (perhaps because they’re not sure what things they can do to prepare, which is how I’m hoping to help) so there’s a lot of detail in that section, but let’s start a few steps before even that. Your very first touchpoint with a business can strongly stack the odds for or against you, long before you’ve even been offered an interview.

1: How to get an interview, and improve your chances while you do.

The best jobs are not (yet) advertised.

If you’re good at what you do, companies that are growing will do everything they can to open a role for you even if they’re not actively recruiting. If they open a role with you in mind, you don’t have to be a mathematician to work out that you probably have better odds of getting that role!

Make sure you contact former colleagues and people you know to see if they know of any positions open. If they’re about to start hiring, you might be able to skip the queue and apply before they’ve even opened the role.

This is still (perhaps especially) relevant during COVID-19. Lots of companies have paused hiring during this period because of the uncertainty, but when they restart, you want to be front of mind for hiring managers. If you’re immediately available, you’re at an advantage here.

For roles that are being advertised already, the people you know can also be helpful in getting you to the front of the queue - it’s much less risky as an employer to hire someone you know, or someone who your team will vouch for.

If you’re just starting out in your career then this might be more tricky, but do check whether you know anyone that could help before skipping this one… did you go to college/university with anyone who could help?

Even if you didn’t know them very well, just some level of familiarity will really help. Big brands spend millions every year on advertising campaigns, and some are purely to bring a sense of familiarity so that you feel more drawn when you next see their logo. Even if you’ve never tried their product, you are more likely to buy one that you have heard of, over one that you haven’t. Even if you hate that it works (which I do) this does work, and this same effect can be used in your favour when looking for a new role.

Don’t overthink this. Your message can be as short as:

“Hi Jenny! How are things with you? I wondered whether they’re looking for any [Developers] over there at [Acme Corp] at the minute, or whether you think they might be any time soon? I’m still enjoying life at [Rival Corp] but am starting to think it might be time for my next move soon!”

Keep your CV interesting, and short.

Writing long things is easy, writing short things is hard. That’s why you’re going to stand out if you do this well (and why this article is so long {cough} ).

Always remember: if you don’t do the editing, then your reader will. They’ll get bored and skip things, and you can guarantee they’ll skip the good bits!

Keep your CV interesting by talking about things that directly relate to the job you’re applying for. This is easier than it sounds, and you shouldn’t try to overcomplicate things; use the job description and make sure that you show them that you can meet as many of the requirements they ask for as possible. Do that by telling them specifically that you can, or ideally already have, done things that they need.

If you’re ready to get fancy with this, then come back to your CV after you’ve read the section on research further on. You might find some extra tools or techniques that this company uses - adding a couple of things that they didn’t even ask for (but they do need) which you have experience in would be a big bonus.

A sidenote on meeting all of the requirements.

A lot of people don’t want to apply for a job if they don’t meet all of the requirements. Unpublished, but often cited, internal HP research and a further related study of this effect (partial paywall) indicates that this effect is more pronounced in women.

It is, without doubt, the job of employers to ensure that their job descriptions accurately reflect their real requirements to encourage more women to apply. Gender bias is real, and is still a problem in our industry. I can’t fix the job descriptions of other businesses today though, so here is my advice:

If in doubt APPLY. If you get through to any stage of interview, and even if they reject you later, view this as valuable interview practice - a way of gaining experience - rather than a rejection. It’s not a waste of your time to practice interviewing.

I have never thought badly of a candidate who applied for a role that they weren’t qualified for, even when I have removed everything but the absolutely necessary requirements from the job description.

It’s more impressive if you can relate your achievements in previous roles to real customer or business outcomes. Instead of “Built and maintained websites with .NET” you could say “Built Acme Corp’s first website to allow customers to order widgets online, in only N weeks, using .NET.” This is longer, clearly, but I’d hire someone with two examples like this ahead of someone with a list of ten technologies that they’ve used without context. Use the space wisely.

Speaking of length, whilst the length of your CV is very important, don’t use the layout or font size in order to achieve this goal. Focus on the content. I’ve read CVs that are only 3 pages long but which feel like they’re about 5 because of the way headings and sections have been compressed together in a tiny font with no line spacings.

You’re aiming for 2 or 3 pages so that the hiring manager will read everything you have and then want to find out more. That’s your whole goal.

As you gain more experience it’s a good idea to keep a separate “everything version” of your CV for yourself that just grows and grows forever. You can pick and choose which bits are relevant when tailoring a CV for a role you’re applying for - and even if the old bits don’t make it in to your submitted CV ever, it’s helpful to have them around to remind yourself of your achievements before an interview.

Finally, once you think you’re done, check your CV at least three times for spelling and grammatical errors. Use any tools available to you to help (like Grammarly, or even just Word) and then ask a few friends or colleagues to proof read it as well.

Send a covering letter.

Lots of other candidates won’t do this. That’s exactly why you should.

This is your chance to explain why you’re interested in the role and to provide a softer intro in a less formal format than your CV. I think you can be more personal here.

Some hiring managers won’t want a covering letter and will ignore it, so don’t put anything critical in here but, send one anyway. For those that read it they’ll really value it, and it’s your chance to explain why you’re interesting or different.

If you’re really struggling, use the section below on research, and see if you can apply some of that knowledge to explain why you’re interested in the role.

2: How to research and prepare. Your interview will succeed or fail here.

Do your research, but not like you’ve done before.

Skimming the website of the company you’re talking to is expected - and in the same way nobody ever said “WOW! That candidate turned up on time, they must be badass at travelling!” it is unlikely they will be impressed that you skilfully found their customer facing website using your internet skills.

First, make sure you learn about what this business actually does. If it’s a “business to business” product in an industry you don’t know then this might be tricky to start with, but start by researching any terms on their website which you don’t understand, and you’ll get there. Write down the bits you get stuck on - we’ll come back to those.

If they have a consumer facing product you can sign up for then make sure you use it before you go any further!

Next, try to figure out how their products are built. Some of it will be listed in the job description, but you never know what else you might find; try using a site like builtwith and see what kinds of tools you uncover on their public website and DNS entries; you’ll normally at least be able to figure out where it’s hosted and the primary technologies used to build the site. This is harder for larger companies because normally the answer is that they use pretty much everything, but give it a go.

See if you can find any previous job openings that they’ve posted for other roles - you might find more about the makeup of the team, and how they work, from these.

Previous job openings are normally relatively easy to find. Pick a sentence from the job description that you already have - a sentence which looks like it might get reused for other roles (eg “Acme Corp is changing the world by intelligently solving the lack of widgets available online”), and do a Google search for that exact sentence (by wrapping it all in quotes). More often than not, you’ll find some other jobs they’ve posted in the past which featured that sentence.

Research all of their social media channels, look for news articles about them, try to work out how they are funded, find out who is on their board of directors (and their individual histories) - go deep. Who are their competitors? What kind of marketing channels do they use (you can use a site like similarweb to see where they’re getting traffic from)?

You’ll find lots of tedious dead-ends in this process, but it’s a little bit like panning for gold - except you just need to mash your fingers on the keyboard and read for a bit rather than breaking your back with a pickaxe or whatever. And also you’ll turn up useless trivia that might get you a new job rather than rare metals. And you might not know in advance which ones are useful. I’m not great at analogies, it turns out.

For everything you can understand, write it down in notes that make sense to you - review this several times before your interview. Lots of this won’t be useful until you start your job, but those one or two snippets of information you do use are worth all the effort of all the rest that you don’t; just like panning for gold (I will make this analogy fit, watch me).

This is all about improving your chances - and if you get the chance to use some of this deep knowledge, you’re really going to stand out.

An example: during an interview I asked a candidate if they had any questions. They asked how it was, when I was hiring primarily for .NET developers and hadn’t at any point mentioned PHP, that our public facing website built with PHP? They asked it in a genuinely curious tone, and clarified that they were trying to work out whether they would need to work with PHP in this role.

My answer was tedious (and predictable - we used an agency for the site and rarely, if ever, touched it ourselves) but this question still sticks out in my memory and is exactly how to use your research to ask great questions. I knew they had done their research, I knew they were thinking about the skills that they would need to bring to the role, and I knew they had read and understood the job description.

Recall and prepare your own experiences, instead of answers to questions.

I’m going to suggest that you flip your interview preparation upside down.

You know that you’re going to get asked questions about your experiences, but there’s just no way to know which questions. Focus on your experiences rather than their questions when preparing and you’ll be much better prepared. Most situations that you’ve encountered will probably fit multiple questions that an interviewer might ask if you think carefully about them.

Most people try to do this on the spot when asked, and will inevitably remember all their best examples ten minutes after leaving the interview. Here’s a useful technique to avoid that.

Start a mind map with “experience” in the middle, then go out from there with each of the jobs or situations where you’ve gotten any kind experience. Side projects or volunteering, everything counts.

Once you’ve done that, go outward from each of those listing:

  • Things that you’re proud of, you achieved, or helped deliver
  • Any commercial or business impact of the things you worked on
  • Things that you found hard, or learned from
  • Times when you had conflict or disagreements with people, or otherwise had difficult conversations
  • Times when you had to teach or help other people
  • New techniques or technologies you learned
  • Training you completed, awards you won, any other accolades
  • Specific technologies that you used in each role, even if only a little
  • Times when you had to plan, had to change your plan, or had to stick to one

Nothing is too small, just keep it flowing as much as you can, and having multiple examples for everything is the goal. Use your “everything version” of your CV to make sure you don’t miss any. Don’t be afraid to make a mess, and add more experiences as you think of them too.

Notice that you’re not trying to come up with actual answers to every question you can imagine, it’s hard to predict the exact questions you’ll get, instead you’re making sure you’ve got all the raw materials easily available to you to confidently answer any of these experience based questions.

Once you’ve made a huge mess on a page, start to circle the examples that you think are best for each of the types of experience you might get asked about (the bulleted list above, and any others you can think of).

Keep this mind map, review it immediately before your interview to make sure it’s fresh in your mind. When the interviewer says “Can you think of a time when…” now you definitely can.

Think of questions to ask

Find questions that you are really interested in hearing the answer to, and especially ones that might spark a conversation. Don’t forget that you can start with the list of things you couldn’t answer when doing your research about the company.

Here are some ideas of types of questions you might ask, in case you’re stuck:

  • The company more generally
  • The industry this company is in
  • This role within the company
  • Projects you might work on
  • Logistical/practical questions about facilities
  • Processes they use
  • Your line manager, their experience and their goals

Again, write these down so that you can review them, and take them with you so that you can look at them immediately before the interview. Don’t put your faith in your memory because, in the stress of an interview, these will all vanish.

Maybe you already realise this, but many people seem not to; you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you, and you need to make your own decision as to whether this role is right for you.

Once you get to interview, if you ask a question that’s anything more than just a general conversation starter, write down the answer! If nothing else it shows you’re interested, but also it’s really hard to recall everything that was said after an interview. If you go through to another stage then all of these answers can be joined together with your research to build your knowledge of the company and the position you’re applying for.

Practice

If you want to practice getting nervous, try having two cups of coffee on an empty stomach and waiting half an hour. You’ll get a dry mouth, a strange feeling in your stomach, and an elevated heart rate. It’s not the same, but it’s as close as I can get you. Watch what your body and mind do, see if you can find ways to work with them in this state.

Ask friends or family to interview you. Let them pick questions at random from the internet! It really doesn’t matter the type of questions that they ask, just getting in the habit of recalling all of your examples and putting them in to a coherent answer is all that you need to practice.

Apply for roles that you’re not sure you even want.

Never waste people’s time by applying for a role that you definitely wouldn’t take, but if there’s one that’s borderline give it a go! If you get to interview stage, then you’re getting free interview experience, and that will help. You can take the pressure off yourself by remembering that you haven’t decided whether to take the role yet.

This might not be immediately possible if you’re already searching for a new role, but if you ever get the chance, get involved with interviewing other people. You’ll start to understand the process much, much more. Just ask your line manager whether it’d be okay for you to be involved as part of your personal development - they can say no if they like, but you should definitely ask.

Physically prepare yourself

Make sure you leave the house with all your clothes on. I find this is a great way to avoid living out your worst nightmares. Here are a few other tips to avoid being dramatically under prepared.

If you’re going to have a telephone interview first (which you very often will), make sure you can find a quiet corner which has mobile phone reception! You’d be surprised how often people start a telephone interview and then realise they don’t have good signal in their chosen spot.

Whatever the interview type, make sure you have these:

  • The mind map of your personal experience you drew up earlier, to review on your own before you go in
  • Your list of questions for the interviewer
  • A pen and paper or notebook (for notes - especially responses to your questions)
  • Appropriate clothing; if in doubt, dress smarter (and check you have all of it)

Check the arrangements

Really check them. Check them all three times.

If you’re calling them, make sure you know the phone number, and make sure it has all the digits (count them) a long time before you need to call. Make sure you know the time, and don’t have any time zone mishaps.

The section below might be less relevant during COVID-19, but I’ll leave it in because it’ll be useful one day soon.

If you’re going for an in person interview, make sure the postcode or directions you’ve been given are right. Don’t just type the name of the company in to Google Maps and go wherever it sends you.

I’ve hired people after they went to the wrong location; they got the job because they’re great at what they do, but I can guarantee they spent the entire interview feeling like they’d blown their chance by going to the wrong place - nobody feels good under pressure like that.

If it’s possible for you, make the journey to your interview location a few days in advance, and if possible at roughly the same time you’ll be going there to see what you find. This gives you a better idea about how much time you should allow for getting to your interview, and it also will show you what your new commute might look like!

Try to find somewhere nearby where you can sit quietly out of the way to review your interview prep - perhaps a nearby coffee shop or, if you’re driving, a car park that’s within a few minutes drive. On the actual day allow yourself an extra half an hour or so to sit in your nearby spot before the interview so that you can really get prepared. I like to do this very nearby so that I can be confident nothing can delay me - and this extra time for preparing acts as my contingency in case of some kind of travel disaster!

Now you’re nearby and early, make sure you arrive no more than 10 minutes early. Please don’t be any earlier, it’s horrible for the interviewer and awkward for you too, especially if you forgot all your clothes.

3: How to interview. The easy (but stressful) bit.

Try your best to make it feel like a regular conversation

If you’ve never interviewed another person before - believe me when I tell you that the first time you do, you’ll likely feel a sense of terror that will make applying for a new role seem like a walk in the park.

The person on the other side of your interview is human just like you, and it’s your job to make this easy for them. Do your best to respond in a natural, conversational style as often as you can - even if the interviewer has a script which they are clinging to.

To judge whether your answers are long or short, you can imagine you’re talking to a new friend about your career. If you talk for 10 minutes or more without letting your friend ask any questions, or make any comment, your friend is going to get bored. Equally, if your friend asked you “hey, have you ever used SQL?” your answer should probably consist of more than one word. If you’re not sure, use a stopwatch when you’re practicing. A minute or maybe two is more than enough for most questions as a rough guide.

Make sure you listen carefully.

If you get asked a particularly complicated question, consider writing it down before you answer. This will give you a little time in which to start thinking about your response, and also gives you something to check back on if you feel like you’re not really answering the question. It’s very common for people to give a really interesting anecdote in response to a question and then forget why - and they always look uncomfortable when they have to ask “sorry, what was the question?”

Remember that you can pause to think! Don’t be afraid to say “let me have a think about that for a second…” before giving your answer if it helps you. If you’re trying to work out which of your examples is the best one to give - it’s okay to say that, too: “I’ve had a couple of times where that’s happened, I’m just trying to work out which is the most relevant here….” is totally fine, and buys you some time if you’re nervous.

Finally, but possibly most importantly, don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know”. If you don’t know the answer to a question then don’t attempt to bluff your way out of it. A career in technology is really a career in learning; you should remember that you won’t learn things from other people if you pretend that you already know. This advice goes for all times, not just interviews, but it’s especially important in interviews because it’s so very obvious in this setting when people try to bluff.

A good response if you’re not certain but you think you know is to say exactly that! “If I were in a real life situation I would check this because I’m not certain, but this is my best guess….”

Ask for feedback

If you’re ready for it; this one’s entirely optional and won’t always be successful. Don’t ask for feedback because you think it’s a clever thing to do, and definitely don’t ask “So, when do I start?!” even though it’s a joke. It’s incredibly awkward to know how to respond to a joke like this.

If you’re going to ask for feedback, try to ask a very specific question. Rather than a very general “could you give me any feedback?” ask something like this: “if there were one area of my experience that you would improve to make me more ready for this role, what would it be?”

By framing the question in this way, you remove their awkwardness about highlighting something that you could improve (which could be considered a negative). Instead, they can answer the question but comfort themselves with words like “but really, I’m nit-picking… and you did fine on that…” and now they feel okay about giving feedback, and you’ll know where you should focus some of your attention next time.

Thanks for reading

I hope you’re successful in your search, and I’d love to hear about it if you found that any of this helped!

As a helping hand for readers who have got this far, during the COVID-19 lockdown I’d like to help some of you more directly with this. For up to 10 of you who contact me on LinkedIn (feel free to send me a message rather than a comment) I’d love to review your CV, give you a mock telephone interview, or generally chat about the process - whatever you think would be most useful in your situation.

To clarify my intentions; I’m not recruiting right now, so please don’t contact me with the expectation of a role, and I’m doing this in my own time - whatever advice and support I give does not reflect that of my employer! My goal is to help just a few of those many folks that are out of work right now - my hope is that you’ll pay it forward one day.

Good luck!