CSG's Top Five Interview Prep Tips

When getting yourself ready for an interview, whether it be a phone interview or an in-house interview, you need to make sure you are 100% prepared. Dot all the t's and cross all the i's. Er, wait, dot all the i's and cross all the t's. Anyway, preparation is key. You can't really be over prepared for an interview.

We have talked about interview preparation in previous blog posts so make sure you don't miss those, but anyway, here are Core Search Group's Top Five Interview tips. This information is directed at software engineers. However, it can be used by one and all:

1 - Be able to defend your resume like it is a Ph.D. thesis. Anything and everything on your resume is fair game. Many people crash and burn during the interview because they cant go into details about their projects. Make sure you can.

2 - Know how to say: "I don't know". You have to make some attempt at an answer. It is a number 1 pet peeve of hiring managers to hear a candidate say "I don't know" and be done with their answer. Make an assumption based on a similar tool you have used if they ask you about a tool you have never used. Then asked the interviewer if that was a safe assumption.

3 - This goes hand-in-hand with #2. Know how to get the interviewers help if necessary. Be able to ask the right return questions to get the interviewer to push you in the right direction. Part of the interview is knowing how to get help; collaborating with the interviewer to get to the right answer is key.

4 - Be able to start a dialogue with the interviewer. I have heard hiring managers say that they have a stock list of questions, but that if they ever get through that entire list, they know they don't want to hire that person. They want to be engaged and interested in conversation. They want to be taken out of the common question-answer, question-answer routine. That can be boring. Remember you are trying to make yourself come across as interesting to the person interviewing you. You are trying to make yourself standout from the pack. You have to make it so the interviewer leaves the interview setting remembering you more than other candidates.

5 - This goes hand-in-hand with #4. Have a list of solid questions to ask. If you are given the chance to ask questions and you don't, then you will sound disinterested. A great way to lose interest from the person interviewing you is to come across as disinterested in the position.

So next time you get that interview lined up. Get yourself PREPARED!!!

Look out for the next post about getting tons of interview advice online.

Peace out!

Gil

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How to run an efficient and effective interview process.

We have several world class clients in the software industry and have worked with several other world-class firms over the years. We have worked with companies that run a very efficient and effective interview process and some that lose out on a lot of good people because they do not. What are the reasons a company should strive to run an efficient and effective process?

There are many:

- First is the most obvious. It saves the company time and money.

- It optimizes the chances that candidates will spread positive feedback about your company and your openings, whether they get hired or not.

- If you are working efficiently in your interview process, your recruiters are much more likely to respond and do the same and hence bring you more great candidates.

- Efficiency in one activity breeds efficiency in other activities.


Let's take a look at how to get the most out of your interview process.

- 1st, it is VERY important to give timely feedback to your recruiters or to direct candidates. You as a hiring manager must assume that each and every candidate is working on at least 2 or 3 opportunities other than yours. This makes timely feedback imporant in keeping the interest level high in both your candidates and the recruiters that are working with you. If they have to wait too long for feedback or to hear about the next step in the process, they are more likely to lose interest and focus on other opportunities more than yours. So quickly give feedback from the previous step in the process and quickly move to the next step. Technical people are very sensitive to process. If your recruiting process is opaque, slow, and unfocused, they very quickly assume the rest of your company works the same way.

- 2nd, know the timeframe importance level for each candidate. You may find the need to speed things up with certain candidates if they are getting close to the offer stage with other companies. This is especially important if this is a "rock star" candidate.

- 3rd, Make efficient use of everyone's time. Double up on phone interviews. If you know you need 2 phone interviews before you can bring a candidate onsite get 2 software engineers on the phone with a candidate at a time. Kill two birds with one stone. This can not only save man hours and money, but it speeds up the entire process which, again, is very important for candidates that are getting close to receiving offers from other companies.

- 4th, If you are scheduling a candidate for an onsite interview and you are flying them several thousand miles to bring them in to your office, make sure you optimize the use or your company's time and money. Make sure you have the entire thing scheduled hour by hour. Don't have the candidate sitting around waiting a long time before meeting with the next person. By leaving them alone in a conference room they will lose interest, confidence and hence your process loses effectiveness. If they will need to do a second day of onsite interviews, try to have that scheduled into the candidate's travel arrangements and schedule if possible. If you have to bring them back for a 2nd round make sure you aren't going to lose their interest and candidacy in doing so.

- 5th, Have a pragmatic approach to your interview. Tech trivia has its place in the software engineering interview, but should not be the end-all be-all. Make sure you are drilling down core computer science fundementals. If there is a famous problem that the founding members of your company had to solve once upon a time, ask the candidates how they might approach the problem. Also, in writing software you try not to "reinvent the wheel." Use the same approach in interviewing. Get them to go through some of their projects step-by-step. Get them to talk about architecture, show you the design and maybe some code of some of the implementation. Keep them on their toes.

One last thing. By keeping your interview process efficient and effective you will help your retention rate. Many people dread conducting interviews. By keeping your interviewers on their toes you will keep them excited and interested in their own job. Everyone wins! The next time you are in a position of hiring keep in mind how it directly and indirectly effects the rest of your organization.

Why Twitter?

Gil says-

One of the outstanding developers I have worked with in the past few weeks asked me about the advantages or benefits of using Twitter. He asked me this in response to my invitation to follow me on Twitter. That wasn't the first time someone had asked me a similar question and it wasn't and won't be the last. Now I will have a place to refer those questions.

I have seen Twitter in the news (mostly CNN) since the Saffron Revolution in Burma in 2007. Since that event I have seen Rick Sanchez and others on CNN use Twitter and I never paid attention much to those bits because I didn't really understand the technology..... So I always wondered what it was really used for? What was the craze? What were people doing on Twitter. Why was the application itself so special? This was when we at CSG decided to check it out.  There are many good primers on how and why to use twitter.  We've found it to be very useful in recruiting.  

Dave says:

I'm highly skeptical whenever I see hordes of people moving in a given direction. I'm not one of the people riding the bandwagon.  I'm the wolf loping alongside the bandwagon waiting to see what cliff it is going to go over.  However we have found tweeting brings a ton of benefit.  

Interacting on twitter is like moving through the biggest bar in the world.  You'll need to wade through a lot of people that don't offer much value to your line of business.  It's a constant stream of conversation of which maybe 1% at any given time is applicable to your business.  But that 1% is VERY interesting.  You walk past the dude with the bone in his nose to talk to the cerebral looking guy in the corner who is a software thought leader.  Many people link to their blog, website, or resume which is where you decide if they are who you are looking for.  We use Tweetdeck to manage twitter.  I run search strings relevant to searches I am running.  For example I'm working a search for C# talent in NYC.  Any tweet that mentions idisposable comes to me.  Odds are very strong that this person is going to be a potential candidate for my search.  I get a quick surface view of a person which helps me decide if I want to learn more about them.  Many people offer a link to their blog or website which is usually more than enough information for me to make a decision-do I want to talk with this person?

Since the whole point of twitter is the conversation we're able to post searches we're working on for folks to look at with less of a resistance level than more traditional forms of sourcing.  If you're one of the most highly sophisticated software engineers on the planet you're a lot more likely to respond positively to real information than some cold call at your work phone. 

Core Search Group, over and out.