Maybe you’re just not that great at interviewing.
There. I said it. Sure, you can be sitting on a full stack of qualifications, but does that matter if you’re repeatedly not getting callbacks? Maybe you always leave feeling like you aced the technical, but then you get ghosted faster than that time you accidentally said “I love you” at the end of a first date… But anyway, interviewing is a skill. And it’s a skill that needs more work than you think. Who knows you better than you, right? Wrong. It’s not only about knowing yourself, your work history or your skills— it’s about knowing how you can market yourself as a solution. But we’ll get to that. And by we, I mean me and my friend, the bottomless pit of wisdom, knowledge and skill that is Anthony D. Mays.
This episode is fantastic, so I recommend watching all 34 minutes and 54 seconds:
Or I can break it down for you in a crudely constructed combination of letters and symbols:
First things first, go check out Anthony’s 3-hour course + tons of other great resources and benefits at masteringtechnicalinterviews.com. We all need help, a refresher, or an outside perspective. So go invest in yourself.
Alright so roll with me here, interviews are like a marathon. You don’t just wake up one day and say, “I’ve done that running thing before, how hard could it be,” bust open the front door and take off down the street. It takes training, right? But what should you be training for? All marathons have the same general setup (a starting line, finish line, other runners, that horrifying pile of thrown water cups). But each course you run is a little bit different.
Step one is knowing the unique course of this interview. Where is the starting line? Is there going to be a really difficult uphill part I should save energy for? Where is the finish line? You shouldn’t show up, start running and say, “Man, I hope someone tells me when this thing is over.” Ask what the company’s unique process is upfront so you can better tailor the presentation of yourself to the interview as a multi-part whole.
Step two, identify that this entire thing is not personal. You’re just another runner. You shouldn’t be going into a room and expecting an interviewer to instantly see your brilliance. The job of an interviewer is to find solutions to help their bottom line and save money as efficiently as possible. And for that, you have to morph into the Flex Tape guy presenting how they could slap you on their problems and you’re going to be the perfect solution. Start with being able to comfortably advocate for yourself on at least one of these topics:
- how I can make you money
- how I can save you money
- how I can save you time
- how I can drive efficiency
Okay, I’m tired of running. We’re going to talk resume real quick then wrap this up. So you’re out here shotgunning your resume to any job posting that has similar skills needed and not getting much return. So, the eternal question, should you be adjusting your resume for each posting? Sure, but make it easy on yourself. Just bullet point your applicable skills right there at the top in what would be the Summary or Objective section. That way you can save time by keeping the rest of your resume the same and all while your skills are easily accessible for hiring managers and recruiters. Want to make it extra easy? Toss this task to ChatGPT or another AI program. But don’t forget to say thank you, because, like, you never know.
Top comments (3)
Thanks so much @tdesseyn for this great explanation. Both the interviewer and interviewee have their parts to play and reading your blog made me realize there is always room for growth.
That's helpful and good but the real solution is to fix the hiring process from the company side.
It's like when you have a software product and the users use it wrong despite the right things being documented already.
If things stay like this, there is only two choices:
Same thing here.
Being a candidate is not a job.
It's super hard, sometimes it feels harder than the job itself.
But it's not the candidate's job, he is not paid to do that non-job and he did not receive training to do that non job.
The real solution is that the professionals, meaning the people driving recruitment from inside the company, change their hiring process to adapt to candidates as they exist in real life.
Because companies don't need good candidates, they need good developers.
You really said it there @jmfayard it sometimes feels like not getting a job is cuz you the interviewee did something wrong but also there is a reality that the company / interviewer has a huge role to play as well.
Thanks so much for this excerpt.