Tips and Advice vs Giving Away the Farm: My $0.02

Posted May 15 2009 9:16 AM by Kenji Yamaguchi

Kenji

Now that you’ve seen where I’m coming from in terms of tips and advice, I feel it’s time to introduce my top six pieces of Kenji® branded recruiter advice. Handle with care!

1. Your interview is a two-way street: You should want to know as much about the team, product and position you’re interviewing for as the team wants to know about you. If not, time to take a step back and question why you’re interviewing in the first place. Sorry, I know the economy is horrible, but just wanting a job is not a good enough reason.

2. Be prepared: Do your research. Though job descriptions (in my opinion) are usually a poor representation of any job, it’s a good idea to read the job description before interviewing and understand the basics for the team and position you’re interviewing for. Know up front if you’re interviewing for a SDE, SDET or PM position, and try to do a search on the team name to learn more about what they do. Better yet – if the team is product focused, see if you can find it and download it/try it out. I could go on and on about this one topic alone (and just might – hint, hint).

3. Your interview is a conversation: Make sure you understand the question that’s being asked before answering, and create a dialog. Don’t be afraid to ask questions to clarify, state assumptions or restate the problem. (This applies to problem solving, coding, testing, even HR questions.)

4. Your interview should mimic real life: Okay, so I get that you probably aren’t going to get many of the coding or problem solving questions again in your day-to-day job. But the focus here is on the interaction itself. Stepping through a coding question on a white board should emulate how you might collaborate and problem solve on the job. How do you explain your thoughts? Why did you choose path A instead of path B? Do you jump at the answer or step through and arrive there logically? This is kind of an extension on bullet three.

5. Don’t try to impress the interviewer – just be yourself: This kind of goes back to what I was saying about integrity in my previous post. But there’s also a more technical point to this. As I said, we want you to be your very best, but it’s not an uncommon mistake that a candidate gets so caught up in trying to impress the interviewer that they go on a time consuming tangent or try to give an overly complex response to a simple answer. A better strategy is to give a concise, to-the-point answer and then offer up detail or optimizations. (Again, this applies to either HR or coding questions.)

6. Don’t give up unless you mean it (or are told to): Be complete in your responses. Not to confuse with my last point, but understand the difference between a concise answer and an incomplete one. For some topics (like listing ideas or test cases) don’t stop until you’re out of examples or the interviewer tells you to.  

There you have it. For what it’s worth, this is the advice I feel every candidate should know going into the interview. So, tell me: Did I help you be a better ambassador or did I give away the farm?

-Kenji

Work at Microsoft!

8 Comments

  • Richard M. Nixon said:

    I think you summed things up nicely, well-done Master Kenji. All your blogs are belonging us.

    The only thing I'd add would be this: Devs and Testers, especially testers: When you're out there looking at the product your potential/future teammates have developed, put some thought into how you would TEST IT - it's a pretty good chance the team is going to ask, and here's your chance to show how you would have smashed their code like kindling.

    RMN

  • Rithik said:

    Hi Kenji,

    Nice tips for the job hunters and people like me who dream to get into MS one day!

    Cheers.

  • Abir M. said:

    Hello, this article caught my interest and I would like to comment on some of the tips mentioend, having been an HR generalist for some time now.

    Well, what I can say about tip 1; The interviewee is highly recommended to go and search all available databases about the company he/she will be working with potentially. It is useful to look at the philosophy behind the company (you could relate that to yourself if you are asked the typical question why would we hire you) and moreover, having a detailed image about the visions and strategies of the company could also help you and give you a plus; you can emphasize that your goals are in alignment with the company's.

    Concerning tip 3, a lot of people getting interviewed get so caught up with answering that they even forget what they were aswering in the first place and end up beating around the bush. Asking for a clarification is a plus to you, but you need to ask for it in a way that doesn't show that you in a "what are they even talking about" state.

    Furthergoing, about tip 5, HR recuiters know what you have on your CV, thus as you said, going off topic or bragging too much is not really for your side in some cases. What HR recruiters would like to know is just more about the titles you have on your CV and how apply them in reality. Be to the point, concise, and illustrate the most outstanding point in you immediately. If there are details that you can simply walk over, do it!

    Finally, I would like to say that this is an informative article and you touched upon many useful points that individuals simply forget!

  • Professional Resume said:

    Great post thanks. some very useful (but often overlooked advice). I will be forwarding clients who ask for interviewing tips to your blog. Many thanks, Fleur

  • BoShop Lædersofa said:

    Thanks for the post - #5 is the best, i have when i interview people and they try to be super natural, as an interviewer i can see when its fake.

  • jibonosky said:

    Thanks so much for such a detailed analysis. I hope it gets a lot of attention, especially after all the media hype over this.


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