Let’s Talk Interviews
Getting that call from that recruiter, “we want to set up an interview” fills you with that feeling of excitement at the prospect of a new opportunity and at the same time you get a mini heart attack thinking about the multiple rounds of technical and behavioral interviews. To successfully navigate through an interview process you have to effectively juggle quite a few challenges:
Letting the interviewers know that your technical acumen lines up with their expectations
Demonstrating the relevance of your prior experience to the position you are interviewing for
Creating a rapport with the interviewer(s) and effectively highlight your ability to fit successfully in the organization’s culture
The objective of CareerKale is to provide job seekers all over the world access to the collective experiences a lot of professionals had when they went through the grind. Now, why do I have the gall to talk about all this. That is because, besides being the editor of CareerKale I am a professional who has been through quite a few interviews with a fairly decent (pardon the somewhat tacky self promotion) success rate. I have had the fortune of interviewing with a somewhat diverse set of organizations - particularly in regards to size. From a startup to a few midsize organizations to a Fortune 500, I have danced with them all. Over the course of these experiences I have created somewhat of a framework for successfully navigating through interviews. Let me run you through some of these points:
Research and formulate a strategy- This is actually one of my favorite parts. Good research helps you formulate a strong game plan before actually going in. First carefully go through the job description. I know you’ve already read it when you applied. Do it again nonetheless and very carefully. Read through everything in the details of the job description. Go through every job responsibility and required skill. Now you have armed yourself with knowledge but what about the strategy part. This one is more fun. Question yourself. Take into account all that you have learned about the job and ask yourself how are you a potentially competitive candidate. I call this part “self interviewing”. Formulate questions based off the job profile and quiz yourself. For example, a particular position requires that the candidate have a strong background in Javascript. Your next step should be to ask yourself “How do I demonstrate my expertise with Javascript”. Now you formulate the answer and work out the kinks until you are satisfied with what you have. Do this for every part of the job description. By the end you will have formulated a set of answers that address a lot of the aspects of the job description. It is very likely the interviewers will ask you some of these questions (or some variants of those questions) because they literally in the job description. By doing this another very important thing you will answer is “Why did you apply for this position?”
Another aspect of the research phase involves learning more about the organization itself. You want to present yourself as someone who is familiar with the organization, its mission and display at least a basic understanding of what it does. This is very important because someone with a good understanding of the organization come across as a serious candidate. Having a decent understanding of the products / services the organization offers also gives better context to the job profile. You can research an organization using their website. You should be able to learn a lot about their history, products and services, revenues (if public) and global footprint. Other useful resources include Wikipedia, Dun and Bradstreet (www.dnb.com), Bloomberg Business etc.
The next phase is to research your interview panel. This is fairly important for the technical rounds. Most panels will have at least one or two people who are very directly involved with the area you are being interviewed for. These people will be your future managers or senior colleagues. So obviously their technical questions will be the most on point with the scope of the position and possibly the hardest as well. Having some knowledge of the academic and professional experience of your interviewers is a great way to figure out what kind of questions you may get during the interview. Let’s say you have applied for a chemical process engineering role. There are two areas of where a process engineer excels. One is of course the chemical engineering part and the other part is statistics. / analytics. Now one of the interviewers say is an expert in process analytics. You can expect a lot of questions on stats from that interviewer. Now if you have already researched your interviewers you would know one of the panel members is a analytics nerd. So you brush up on Statistics 101 before going in and nail the interview. LinkedIn is a great resource for researching your interviewers. You can look through their professional experience, academic qualifications, skills etc. You can also google them. Maybe they have research publications or patents that tell you a little bit more about their technical expertise. Maybe they have spoken at conferences or have memberships with certain organizations relevant to their area of expertise. You can possibly find these pieces of relevant information about your interview panel with a quick google search.
Last, but a very important part of your research is trying to find anecdotal information. This is one of the hardest parts of your research. Try to find people who have gone through a similar experience like you. Maybe people from your school or a previous job. This brings me to another piece of advice “always be networking”. Stay in connected with past colleagues, other alumni, people you meet in conferences preferably on LinkedIn. You never know you can get a great recommendation from them for a position you want or at the very least you can benefit from their experience. Glassdoor is also a good resource albeit not very extensive where people talk about interview experiences. CareerKale is trying very hard to bring you articles that offer real and usable insights from a diverse range people who have been in your shoes.
Be quantitative - This actually applies to your resume as well. Try to quantify your achievements and the impact your work has had. In my experience statements like “the process improvement strategy increased the production yield by 5% over a course of 6 months” delivers in the message more effectively compared to “through my efforts we were able to increase the process yield”, even though you are basically saying the same thing. When you quantify your achievements it becomes relatively easier for the interviewer to visualize your role and the positive impact you’ve had.
Examples, examples and examples - I cannot stress this one enough. You need to back everything up with relevant examples. Now, I understand that you cannot have an example ready for every statement you make during the interview. However, you have to make sure that you have a story accompanying every major highlight in your resume. Examples are particularly important when you are answering questions about your skills, problem solving abilities and your ability to fit within the culture of a specific organization. Whenever I have talked about a particular skill during an interview (say for instance design of experiments for an engineer), I have fairly often been asked if I can talk about one or two instances where I was able to utilize the skill to solve a problem. The interviewers will be especially interested in your example if that skill is something they are looking for as well. Being able to effectively demonstrate that you have real life experience with the skills you have mentioned on your resume gives the interviewer confidence that you are in fact a competitive candidate.
Tie job responsibilities to your previous experiences - This one may be a little close to my rant about examples, but important none the less. Making parallels between the responsibilities of the potential opportunity and your prior experiences can be very useful in driving home the point that you skill set and experience are fairly relevant for the role in question.
Ask questions - This is one of the most common pieces of advice offered to job seekers. Asking the right questions is really important. First, asking for clarifications when you are being interviewed helps you understand the questions better. That goes a long way in avoiding confusion. No interviewer will be offended or see you in a negative light if you do. Second asking smart and relevant questions about the organization, their operations and their culture helps you establish a strong rapport with the interviewers. It may not always feel like it but asking good questions demonstrates intelligence. This is something every employer looks for. Moreover, Asking questions makes the interview process more interactive and less monotonous. You goal should be to make it feel more like a conversation and less like an interview. In my opinion (as humble as it may be) good questions are in the light of “What aspect of product / service (whatever the flagship offering of the company may be) will I be working on?” or asking about any specific challenges / problems they are currently facing with the product (of course relevant to your vertical). A good back and forth always gets you those extra points with the interviewer.
At CareerKale we are working hard to get you the best resources, data and information to help you land the opportunity of your dreams. Please reach out to us and let us know what kind of opportunities you are looking for, the kind of industries you want to work in and the employers of your choice. We will work our hardest to bring you the best research and analysis to support your journery.
Happy job hunting!!