| The best interview experiences I ever had have come down to three related (but different) categories: 1) we've already heard good things about you - are you sure you want to work here doing this? 2) [politely (and correctly)] arguing against the tech interviewer's wrong answer, and being congratulated/thanked by the interviewer who made the error (when he figures out I was correct) 3) answering what the interviewer intended to be a tech question with a business answer (temporarily (or permanently) flummoxing the interviewer) 4) everything was great ... but something about either personality or another candidate made someone else win-out for the role Did I get the job every time? No. Does that make the interview process that fell into one of these three categories bad? Again, no. I had the first situation happen 4 times - about 18, 11, 7, and 3 years ago - asked the hiring manager if they were going to do a tech screen/interview, and he told me, "no <Name> works here, and told me you know more about X than they do" or "<Person> told me you're smart and capable - you want to start Monday?". I had the second one happen (the first time) 15 years ago over a mildly-esoteric (but simultaneously vital) aspect of C function argument parsing. It was a polite exchange, but I stood my ground on my answer, contradicting the guy who asked the question. I got the job offer, and the day I started, he came up and said, "I read the C spec. You were right. Thanks." I had the third happen a couple times, but most memorably about 7 years ago (and didn't get the job, btw) interviewing with Amazon. The interviewer was completely nonplussed I didn't answer his "clever" tech question in a tech manner. However, limiting the range of acceptable answers to "tech" meant they were nerfing their list of possible hires dramatically And I've had the last happen many times - at Red Hat, Fog Creek, Zenoss, Rackspace, Puppet Labs, and others. All you can realistically hope to do when interviewing is to do your best - but the decision to make an offer (or not) ultimately comes down to the potential employer. Three of those specifically-named companies paid for my travel to come to interview (an immediate plus, ftr). The interviews at all went absolutely as well as I could have done. But it was not in the cards to play out that I work for any of them. |