[klenwell]

On this point, there was some good practical advice in this HN comment that I've adopted and applied successfully:

What I did is I prepared 10 different stories about my career experience and then tagged them with a bunch of prompts. For example I have a story about one project that had dual PMs that experienced a lot of scope creep and eventually fizzled on release. I can now use that story to answer a broad range of questions from failure to various project management approaches. Overall I now have prepared stories to answer probably 50-75 different questions immediately.

Another benefit is that I have also told these stories multiple times in interviews now and I get better telling them each time. Even if the answer isn't 100% relevant, I feel more confident and likely come off better launching immediately into a detailed story about my experience rather than trying to awkwardly come up with an answer on the fly. It is also easy to drop irrelevant parts or expand on specific details when the basic framework of the story is already something that feels natural.

I will even have the document with all the prompts and story bullet points open whenever I am doing phone or remote interviews.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25519718

I also keep a document where I'll record new or challenging questions after I do an interview and outline a response so I'm better prepared next time.

[jvanderbot]

One step further: Choose characteristics about yourself that you want to emphasize. Perhaps you want to be know as dilligent and detail oriented, or a fast mover, or a creative person. Then craft many stories about those points and have them in reserve. Chances are someone will ask a question that lets you bring up those qualities.

[muzani]

I try to mention that I started by making games as a kid. That seems to resonate with a large number of interviewers. Then we can talk about something fun like Monte Carlo effect for calculating which part of a grid has civilization, or procedural story generation.

[MrWiffles]

One thing I’m having trouble with is anticipating the questions themselves. Not the technology specific ones, but also the generic stuff and the things that are still generic (tell me about yourself) but also more relevant to our industry and software eng roles. Any resources you could suggest that have worked well for you or anyone you know?

[muzani]

If you interview often enough, you'll see a similar pattern. Here's my list:

"What's your product development attitude?"

"How did you know about this position?"

"How did you learn about Technology X?"

"Tell me about your latest role"

"Why are you switching jobs?"

"What would you change at current role?"

"Tell me about another project, it can be a side project."

"What do you plan on being in 5 years?"

"Why aren't you at senior/manager level yet?"

"I see you did tech X here, and then Y. Why the career shift?"

"What excites you?" (This is a surprisingly common question that throws me off. The first one I got it, I answered "productivity". Which was true, but it sounded like a bullshit answer and lost me that interview. I've learned to talk about AI or cooking or exponential growth and relate that to incremental games. This question is often a bullshit detector)

"What advice would you have for younger you?"

"What is something you've had trouble with recently?"

"How would you change that?"

"What's the worst mistake you've ever made?"

"Why haven't you joined FAANG?"

"Tell me how did you handle disagreements at work"

"What's your growth plan? What do you want?"

"What's your favourite design pattern?"

"How do you manage tech debt?"

[klenwell]

It's the "What's your greatest weakness?" type of questions that always throw me. Some variations include:

- What's something your not good at?

- What's the biggest mistake you've ever made on the job?

- Describe a time you disagreed with a colleague. How did you resolve it?

- Tell us about a time you received some negative feedback from a manager and how you handled it.

For these types of questions, it has definitely helped me to have rehearsed a little ahead of time.

[Aeolun]

> - Describe a time you disagreed with a colleague. How did you resolve it? - Tell us about a time you received some negative feedback from a manager and how you handled it.

These questions are incredibly annoying when asked.

For one thing I’ve literally never received negative feedback from my manager, but nobody believes that when you tell them, so you have to come up with something absolutely trivial, and somehow blow that up into ‘negative feedback’, then think of a way you dealt with it other than ‘I didn’t do it again’, because that isn’t what they want to hear.

The times I disagree with a colleague are not situations we ‘resolve’, it’s something my manager ultimately decides. I don’t know what kind of answer they’re fishing for here. At least ‘we talk about it, and then either not disagree anymore, or escalate it’ does not seem to make anyone happy.

[jacobr1]

There are tons of blogs out there with example interview questions. If you review a few dozen, you start to pick up some commonalities.

Another approach that has worked for in the past is a mock interview. Ask a fried or college to interview you and give some feedback.

Look at job descriptions for role you are interested in. For each bullet point, you should able able to speak to why you are qualified, probably via an anecdote of a prior experience.

[0xFACEFEED]

Freestyle rappers basically do the same thing! It's very impressive when you see it done in person; very good strategy.

[klenwell]

Just like Homer, haha. I guess when you think about it, it's all just another form of the prehistoric craft of oral poetry or storytelling.

[0xFACEFEED]

A pessimist might say that this only demonstrates how tech interviews reward the better performance art.

:P

:|

:(

[GordonS]

This is gold, I'm definitely banking this idea. 10 suddenly feels like a lot of stories to come up with though :)