Most of What You Know About Interviews is Wrong | Hacker News Reader

Most of What You Know About Interviews is Wrong

blog.geekli.st

20 pointswebjoe13 comments

Your current salary has nothing to do with how much you want to make in your next job. If you know the market conditions, and you have marketable and transferrable skills, then you are free to name your price.

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When your current salary is asked, say it freely. The salary question is just yet another question.

Wrong. It anchors the negotiation. If you are happy with your current salary, then by all means do so. But if you were underpaid, responding with "I'm looking for X" is a fairer answer to that question that is almost always acceptable. If, after this question, they insist on knowing your current salary--well, it was probably not meant to be.

Agreed. I want to work somewhere where I can trust my employer to be fair with me - I don't want to have to keep negotiating everything with them after I'm employed. My advice is to do your homework and know your real market value and then force them to say a number first. If they're not offering to pay you close to your real worth, that really is a sign you probably wouldn't be happy there.

"Believe it or not, the interviewer cannot care less about your extensive knowledge about the company. She simply does not give a damn about it."

As someone who has interviewed many people, I strongly disagree. I've interviewed people who admitted (somewhat tactfully) that they didn't really know what the company was or what we did. It demonstrates either that they don't know how to do the most basic research, or that they really don't care. Either way, not a good sign.

He even seems to admit this later on, but in other contexts: "So be an adult, and show your interest", and: "The interviewer will appreciate the time and effort you’ve taken, because by conveying a well-prepared answer you’re also showing respect to the interviewer’s time."

Bingo!

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone, because I know of cases where we had a recruiter/HR select an otherwise unremarkable resume from the pile for us, when it had a cover letter that mentioned our office in-jokes (which were on our company blog). That shows that you care, and that is perhaps the single most important attribute I'm looking for in a candidate.

This article is barely readable.

The block quotes throughout don't make sense. They are extremely confusing. Further, not only does the article NOT describe strategies contrary to those "wandering on the internet," it trots out trite platitudes as though they're new and interesting. Bits like "So be an adult, and show your interest." aren't merely juvenile and shallow, they're also obvious and unhelpful.

How did this make it to the front page?

I didn't find this especially interesting. Of course, for every interview I have ever gotten, I have been offered the job. I don't have any secrets to offer. I just go for a chat. In fact, from my point of view, the interview is more about learning whether I want the job than worrying about trying to convince them to hire me. If they don't like who I am, then I probably don't want to work for them, either.

My trouble is that I find it extremely hard to get the interviews in the first place (which makes the advice of going to a lot of interviews for practice somewhat laughable to me). I suppose this implies that I am not good at resume and cover letter writing or that I don't network properly. I haven't found any advice on the subject lately that was of much use.

I interview a fair amount of people (3-5 a week), and most of this is solid advice. However, I'm not sure I agree with the section Getting Prepared for the Questions will Make you Sound “Rehearsed”: Wrong!

I generally know when an answer is canned or the question anticipated (I'd estimate I catch it most of the time, but how would I know?), and I quickly switch gears to somehow take the question to the next level or introduce variables that can't have been anticipated by the candidate. In fact, that is a large part about what behavioral interviewing is, it is about digging down to ask follow-ups and determine what a candidate's real contribution to past projects really was. Rehearsing answers to a questions about what the coolest feature of Rails is won't help you, because I am then going to ask you about a time you specifically used it, why it made a difference in your past project to do it and not choose some other solution, what other ways there might be to do it if that feature didn't exist and if your coworkers agreed with the decision, etc. In short, I am going to ask you a lot of follow up questions to determine your actual contribution to something, and if I sense each response was canned I will keep drilling deeper until I find you actually thinking about your answer on the spot.

Would like to recognize Volkan here for volunteering to write this great blog post for us at geekli.st - The time and thought put into it goes beyond what we could have asked for and has stirred great dialogue. From all the Geeklist family, thank you Volkan! - Reuben

One of the ill advises wandering on the Internet is that you should do whatever it takes to learn about the company’s culture. This is also wrong, and it’s merely a waste of time.

Severely disagree -- I think having an understanding of the company culture is vitally important.

Being a good personality fit is a major component of being the right person for the job, and demonstrating not only your understanding of their current culture, but also how you would be a great fit for that culture will go far in showing why you're the best candidate for a position.

I don't think company culture is as important as knowing their business.

Patio11 talks extensively about this, if you're looking to be an engineer for sure find out about the culture, if you're looking to get paid, figure out their business.

I've done many tech interviews and people have been far more impressed by the dollars the software generated, than the language I wrote it in.

I can't help but think there is a better way to format this article.....

This article seems to be being slated. I must admit, i've read a lot of guides and tips for unsuccessful interviews, as well as doing the mandatory preparation and study. This article seems to be saying things that i suspected were true, but was never in a position to confirm. I really like it.

But anyway, if this isn't up to everyone's standards, can people recommend other guides, tips, books etc etc. If it helps, i'd be looking for junior dev jobs.

You are expected to do certain things: One of them is thank your interviewer with a letter or an email at least;

Really? This is the first time I hear anything like that. I can not imagine that an interviewer would want to get a mail or letter (who still uses these?) from every single interviewed person with basically no information in it. Am I wrong about this?

The bold text looks blurry, very confusing.

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