The best part of getting a job is not having to answer to weird phone numbers anymore.
amen. i’m so tired of playing the “employer, solicitor, or a scammer” game that i’m afraid to look for a better job :<
Getting 20 interviews is an accomplishment.
I have a 100% sucess record on getting the job offer once I get an interview l, but getting the interview is the hard part for me.
The thing is, I’m also terrible at coaching others for interviews because I don’t know exactly what I’m doing right or wrong since I effectively have no negative feedback.
At this point I think it’s mostly my confidence that carries me because I basically assume I’m getting the offer. I ask a bunch of questions about the company, working environment, etc and essentially make them pitch the job to me instead of me pitching myself as an employee. I’m also generally comfortable enough due to my past success to mostly be myself, and I think any time you can make the interviewer laugh it’s a good sign.
I ask a bunch of questions about the company, working environment, etc and essentially make them pitch the job to me instead of me pitching myself as an employee.
This is a pretty big deal. It’s a sign you are taking it seriously and intend to stay longer than a year when you find out x thing isn’t what you wanted, because you never bothered to ask.
There is also a social side of this, the other participant feels better about you the more they talk. That isn’t an interview-specific thing, simply a ‘how humans work’ thing. But it’s quite pronounced in interviews because very often the interviewer is doing very little talking.
I have also had good experience asking the interviewer at the very end what I could have done better. I don’t think they get asked that question often as they are normally taken aback a bit, and tend to give very solid feedback, which is critical to improving.
One change I made: I put a skill on my resume I’m only somewhat knowledgeable in, a skill that was only tangential to the job. However, the interviewer happened to be knowledgeable on that and naturally focused on it. When it quickly became obvious I wasn’t terribly knowledgeable on that side thing, it resulted in that lack of knowledge being generalized to everything else. I took that side skill off my resume, and only mention it in passing during the interview to make it more clear that everything on the resume is something I’m solid on, but also I have some side skills which are helpful.
Ok, breaking this into a separate post:
Have a friend who does hiring for his team. He told me a story of an interview for an entry level IT position. Obviously the interviewee is not expected to have strong skills for the job, it being entry-level. However, the interviewee had worked as an assistant studying wildlife issues, so my friend asked him various things about that. Unfortunately, the interviewee was unable to share what he did there in any real detail, as if he didn’t fully grasp it himself. That lost him the job, because it was clear he wasn’t able to pick up and retain information.
