+1 for practice. Gone are the days when you could go into a tech interview and count on your skills and smarts carrying you to the finish line. They’re just too high pressure and picky nowadays, and you’re competing with too many good candidates. You need rote practice: mock interviews with good mock interviewers, and book study. I’d shoot for at least 10:1 prep:interview ratio, so for a 4 hour interview, prep at least 40 hours.
They’re just too high pressure and picky nowadays, and you’re competing with too many good candidates
Indeed. Many people (including myself) find it hard to reconcile our lived experiences with the hysterical claims in the press about a desperate skills shortage.
To the OP: if it helps, understand that these kinds of interviews and how you do on them are in no way reflective of your skills as an engineer or your worth as a human being. You’re just being hazed, by someone you probably wouldn’t want to work with anyway. Keep at it, and eventually you will get to speak to someone who is basically normal that you can have a real conversation with.