Interview experiences: What to do and what not to do?

You get asked a simple linked lists question "How will you detect if elements in one linked list occur in another linked list?". You write a quadratic time working code in C-programming language in about 10 minutes. The program works well and covers most of the corner cases. You optimize the quadratic time algorithm to linear time algorithm using hash table on interviewer's request to optimize the time complexity. You explain why the hash based algorithm maybe sensitive to the hash function used by the hash table. You still get rejected after this phone screen. You wonder why you got rejected despite doing well in the technical part of the interview. And you scratch your head a little more since there were only technical questions on coding and data structures and you had answered them well.

You interview a candidate for a software engineer position in your company. The candidate has good knowledge about computer science, possesses good software system building skills, does well in code review questions and absolutely nails the coding question given to him. He has a good resume and exhibits excellent communication skills. But the candidate thinks that the technology that you work on is obsolete and he wants to explore something else. Well you think "why did I cater for a face-t-face interview request of this candidate at 8:30 am in the morning when he does not even give a shit about the work which I am doing?". You sadly have to reject a good candidate because the candidate does not even know what he wants to pursue in his professional life.

Job interviews remain the most intriguing and mystifying activity for both the interviewer and interviewee. One would think that the interviewee is under more pressure than the interviewers, which is true to some extent as the interviewee is looking to make a change in his professional career and has more to lose in the interview activity than the interviewers. But interviewers are also under pressure to make sure that they are able to correctly access the skill levels and personality of the candidate whom they have brought on-site for the interview process. Nevertheless, landing one's dream job is not only dependent on one's skill level for the job but also on the perception of one's personality to the interviewing team. I interviewed very aggressively in the beginning of this year and I am interviewing candidates almost every week for my group since past two months. Experiencing the interview process from both sides, from interviewee side and interviewer side, has been a very enlightening experience. When you are an interviewee, you sometime have little idea as to how and why certain decisions are made in the recruitment process. Once you graduate to being the interviewer yourself, you get enlightenment on some of the more important details of recruiting job candidates. I am documenting the leanings that I have earned from being an interviewee first and then as interviewer.

Being an interviewee could be an unnerving experience, especially when you are right out of college or if you are desperately looking for a job change in your professional career. Following are some important things to be mindful of as you go about your interview process:-

1. Know your thing.

It is absolutely critical that you know your technical skills inside out. There is simply no way around the technical part of the interview process if you are interviewing for a software engineer positions. More so now that companies have hackathons and online time bound exams on portals like hackerank.com and hackerearth.com. There is simply no excuse for not knowing how to solve complex problems on topological sort of graphs to simple problems on bit manipulation on integers and characters. Practice and revise even if you have to pick up Galvin to brush-up or relearn your operating systems fundamentals no matter if you are an experienced candidate or a candidate who is straight out of college.

2. Be polite to your interviewer and respect him/her

Interviewing should be considered as a business activity. You have a need to approach another company to grow professionally in your career. At no point in time should you display an attitude which betrays disdain. You burn your own fingers by not showing enough respect to interviewer's questions even if the questions are elementary and are no match for your skill level. If you are guilty of such behavior, you tend to lose your bargaining power with the hiring manager.

3. Know what you need from the job position.

Do not interview for fun or practice. You may not accept the offer with the company that you are interviewing with but do not show the interviewers that you think that they are doing some unimportant or uninteresting work. You may not get called for further round of interviews if the interviewers sense that you are simply wasting their time.

4. Answer to the point

It is advisable to answer what the interviewer had asked for. For instance, if the interviewer asks about the time complexity of dictionary data structure in python, you should not answer giving references to C++ vectors. You lose interviewer's interest and attention by answering un-clearly. You should simply pass if you do not know an answer. This buys you time so that the interviewer can ask something else which you may know.

5. Exhibit receptiveness while interacting with the interviewers

Being unnerved and tense in an interview is normal. Interviewing is your best chance to gauge where your skills stand in the job market and more importantly an opportunity to know yourself a little bit more. So you should show interest and be receptive to what the interviewers are talking about. Ask clarifications and questions whenever you need help. Interviewers typically like candidates you think loudly enough so that the interviewers can hear them.

6. Show that you have good social skills and soft skills

Hiring managers typically are not so concerned about the technical skills but they are more worried about selecting a candidate who may not gel within their team. A technically outstanding candidate with low team spirit will rank lower than a candidate who is just above average technically but a better team player. So do not show yourself as aloof and abnormal during the interviews. Showing aloofness and wearing a facade over your usual self gives a strong red signal to the hiring manager and lowers your chances of getting selected.

7. Never lie on your skills in your resume

Mentioning of a skill which you have not worked on or which you have just browsed through on internet on your resume is a strict "no-no".  Interviewers gets a very negative impression about you if they ask you a simple enough question on a skill and you come out way short answering their question. More so, if you are an experienced worker and you lie about a skill on your resume, then for sure the feedback will e very negative. For new graduates, the feedback may not be as negative as in case of experienced professionals but still you should not be lying anything about yourself.

As for the interviewers, the list of things to keep in mind is not as long but fairly important:-

1. Respect the candidate and give him/her fair chance

An interview candidate has taken time-off from his daily work to come to your office premises to speak with you. Moreover, the candidate will potentially fill the position in your company if he adequately meets the job requirements. So give the candidate a fair chance. Sending an itinerary of four interviews and asking the candidate to leave after two rounds of interview, if he is does not have the necessary skills for the job position, is strictly unprofessional. The interview candidate is like your customer and he needs to be treated well. The candidate after the interview will carry your and your company's reputation outside. If you do not leave a good impression on candidate's mind while interviewing him because of unprofessional behavior, chances are you will miss out on other good candidates who will not appear for interviews due to bad reputation of your company.

2. Take last 5-7 minutes from the interview time for candidate's question

Use the last 5-7 minutes of the interview to answer candidate's questions regarding your company and job as such. This informal discussion also gives adequate insight into the mindset of the candidate if he/she is serious about the position or if the candidate will be a good fit in the team as large.

3. Be well prepared for the interview

As an interviewer you have the upper hand than the interviewee. You are the driver of the interview as you determine what to ask the candidate and how much to grill the candidate on his skills. So be well prepared with the set of questions you wish to ask the candidate. You should thoroughly examine the candidate's resume and get sufficient background on his skills and experience. If the interviewer is not well prepared for the interview the candidate is likely to loose interest and you maybe in danger of losing a good candidate.

4. Send the interview feedback for the candidate at the earliest
As an interviewer you should understand that the candidate may have hard time constraints in terms of making a change in their careers. The interview candidates wait frustratingly every day for interview feedback so that they could make progress with other potential offers or work diligently towards other scheduled interviews. Moreover, delaying sending the feedback to the recruiter may lead to the loss of good candidates to other hiring competitors. Also, keeping the feedback for a candidate in mind and not writing it down also does not help either you or the candidate as you are likely to forget certain good or bad points of the interview itself. Hence a timely feedback email to the hiring manager or the recruiter helps evade the aforementioned problems. 

There is no set blueprint to make interviewing activity a comfortable and happy experience for both the interviewee and he interviewer. However, doing the correct thing while keeping in mind the respect and interests of the parties involved is the key in making the interview experience fruitful for either of the interviewee and the interviewer.