| A couple recommendations for you: Interviewing is a skill like any other, and it's worth practicing. I know it's not great to have to "play the game", but it'll help you greatly in your career. I recommend two things - programming contests (TopCoder, HackerRank, etc.), and practicing with friends - get a whiteboard and get your friends to interview you. Repetition is key. Think of good answers to higher level questions. For example, "why do you want this job?". Reflect on common patterns in your interviews. If you sit down and think about it, do you know why you aren't passing? Are you unable to solve some problems? Are you going slowly on the interview problems? Do people have trouble understanding you? Do you get in arguments? Do you struggle with the management sort of questions - i.e. "talk about a time that you had a disagreement with someone on your team"? One good signal is to think of how many hints do interviewers typically give you? If it's one or two, that's typical, but when you find yourself getting 5+, it's usually a sign that you're doing poorly. Some common problems that I've seen from candidates. - Can't solve problems. Especially when people run in some direction without asking clarifying questions. - Really messy code. Interview code isn't going to be great, but I've seen some really messy code. - Slow movement. Sometimes I'll have a 3 part question, and candidates will spend the whole time solving the first part, often needing many hints. - Lack of opinion. I've seen a lot of candidates that try to be agreeable, but just end up having no opinions. "What frameworks would you consider for monitoring?" "Oh, whatever is best. Monitoring is really important." This is really important for senior candidates. - Lack of answers for the high level questions (again more toward senior candidates).
Q: "Talk about a time that you've had a disagreement with someone on your team?"
A: "Oh, I haven't really."
Q: "Ok, how about a time that you made a technical decision that you ended up regretting."
A: "I can't think of anything, we've made good choices."
Q: "What about a time that you've disagreed with a decision from senior management?"
A: "Got nothing."
Q: "What kind of software do you like working on?"
A: "Oh, anything really." |