Preparing For Interviews

A lot of people have come to me over the years to prepare for interviews. Having been on both sides of the table, I have a strong perspective on how one should prepare and present themselves. 

Do Your Research

Congrats on being selected for an interview! This means that your profile was interesting enough for the hiring manager to have a conversation with you. At this point, you’ll need to do a lot of in-depth research. I’ve broken your research down into the following components. 

The Interviewer / Team

Interviews are very similar to sales meetings. You have to know who you’re dealing with and what they’re looking for. While you may be interviewing with 1-2 people, you should understand what it takes to get the attention of the entire team. Here are the steps I follow when I do research on the team that I’m looking to join: 

Google Search: I normally start by doing a simple search on the individual - this should help you identify what’s available (in terms of social media profiles and other content). 

LinkedIn: I go through the roles that the person has done in the past and try to understand the type of skills that the person may have developed over time. After, I go through their LinkedIn activity to see the type of content they have been consuming. I find a lot of interesting tidbits about the company and team by doing this. 

Twitter: I scroll through tweets, likes and articles shared to get a sense of the type of ideas that the person is thinking through and how their thinking has evolved over time. The more you can relate yourself to them, the better your interview will be. 

Other: I also look for any podcasts, blogs, videos and other pieces of content that the individual may have. I've found some success by doing a YouTube search of people who are more experienced (and are more likely to have had the opportunity to speak at conferences/podcasts). 

Now, I would repeat this process for the entire team you'd be working with. By doing this several times across the team, you'll quickly get a sense of the team’s strengths and gaps and how you might be able to fit in. 

The Company

The next area that you’ll need to do research on is the company itself. I take a fairly rigorous process to assess the health of the company, its roadmap and historical evolution. 

Company Website: There are a few sections that I always check to see the health of the company. 

  • Press Releases: This gives you a sense of what has been publicly announced. A lot of these press releases not only provide context on recent changes but also give an outlook into the next 3-6 months. 
  • People and Culture: This is usually good to review in the early parts of the interview process. I normally ask a few questions to see whether the company truly sticks to its values by checking whether the team actually participates in the events mentioned on their website. 
  • Job Postings: I read through a lot of the company's job postings to get a sense of the company's actual priorities (why else would they be hiring?). It also gives a lot of insight into the company's technology stack, operational processes and key challenges. 

Google Search: This helps me figure out what’s publicly available on the company. This could range from opinion pieces from newspapers to blog posts on Medium. 

  • Google News: A lot of opinion articles from reputable outlets get captured here and can be sorted by date. If there aren't a lot of articles available, I then do the same process under a regular Google search. It may take a couple of pages before you start seeing opinion articles. 

Competition: The best way to get ideas is to steal them from your competition. A lot of the ideas/recommendations I give during an interview come from what the competition is doing (assuming it makes sense). A good way to identify competitors is by looking at the SEO ads when you search for the company you're interviewing with. I also look into any industry blogs or rankings that may have relevant information as well. 

The Product or Service: An activity that I do as I prepare for interviews is a breakdown of the product/service that I'd be working on. For two hours, I act as though I am already an employee and take detailed notes and screenshots of the entire customer experience. This helps me understand the early wins that I'd be able to achieve once I join the company and fuels a number of ideas/questions to ask to the team. An example of a great product breakdown is Hiten Shah's analysis of Coda.

By now, you may have realized that there is a lot of work involved when preparing for an interview. During a 30 or 60 min call, it’ll be impossible to show the interviewer that you’ve done all this preparation. A quick hack around this is simply having a list of questions that are based on your research. By asking highly specific questions, you’ll be able to show the type of research you’ve done without explicitly stating it. 

Tell Me About Yourself

Assuming you've done research on the company, product/service and team, the next piece is to make sure you present yourself well. This starts and ends with the question: "Tell me about yourself." 

When I'm answering this question, I try to look at it from the perspective of the hiring manager. They normally have seen 100+ resumes, talked to 10 other people and aren't really interested in a long unwieldy dialogue about your life. When you're looking to answer questions, it is your job to make it easier for the hiring manager to say yes. Every answer you give - no matter how irrelevant it may seem - should be a reason to hire you. With that in mind, I've stuck to the following structure for myself (and people I've helped out): 

  • What's your goal? This doesn't have to be the goal that you stick with for the rest of your life. However, it should help connect the dots when it comes to the decisions you've made so far and the potential choice to join the company you're interviewing at. If this feels too difficult, I'd start with something that just motivates you (e.g. I'm a goal-oriented person who likes to exceed my own expectations). 
  • Start with a personal memory (one that might relate to your passion project or even your childhood). This usually throws the interviewer off guard and gets them to pay attention. The more personal and vulnerable you get, the easier it'll be to get the interviewer's attention. 
  • Go through your resume in a structured manner. There are two main parts that you should cover during your interview. The first part is summarizing your top 1-2 accomplishments from the perspective of your hiring manager (not you). The second part is explaining why you chose to leave that job for your next role. Transitions are an overlooked area by candidates but is often the biggest gap that the hiring manager is looking to understand during the interview. 
  • Conclude your interview with why the role you're interviewing for is the perfect opportunity for you. A lot of times, candidates finish their answer by saying something along the lines of "so yea...that's basically everything about me." This is a terrible way to end the most important question you'll get during an interview. I always use this opportunity to tie everything together and pitch why I should be apart of the team. 

I'm fully aware that most hiring managers will interrupt you at some point during the 'tell me about yourself' question. If you un-bundle the structure above, you'll notice that you've answered questions relating to individual experiences, why you'd be a great fit for the role/company and ideally included personal tidbits about yourself that aren't apparent in your resume. 

Conclusion 

A lot of people I know have missed out on opportunities simply because they took the interview for granted and didn’t present themselves properly. A full-time job is a significant time commitment. If you come across a job that you really like, you should absolutely over-prepare and make sure that the odds are in your favour. 


By

Suthen Siva

November 9, 2019