2021, the season of placements finally came in my college. I applied to many companies, cleared the aptitude rounds and got some interviews scheduled. Everyone gets scared of the interview whether they will do it or not, they will clear it or not. For me personally, I looked forward to my interviews, because it is one of the most thrilling experiences in life that you must have. That's my perspective on interviews, but not everyone can share this same enthusiasm on interviews. So whenever any of my friends or my juniors had got their interviews scheduled I would tell them some best-practices so that they may ace their interviews, which I will share now in this blog.
Let's beginWhen giving any interview, understand the purpose of the interview. Is this a HR interview or a technical interview? If it is a technical interview then its purpose is to determine whether you have the skills and knowledge to take up the role or not. So when giving answers to the questions, use technical words, tell about your achievements relevant to your role. Please understand that the interviewer has taken dozens of interviews, he takes these interviews because he needs a candidate to share some of the workload of the team and complete the project. For this, he will assess whether the candidate will be able to perform all the duties and be able to support the team, the company or not incase he decides to hire you. You got 2nd place in your state level badminton tournament, that's great! But in the technical interview you must say about the number of hackathons you had participated in. The aim here is to win the confidence of the interviewer that you will be able to carry out your role, we have to make his life easy by clearly communicating whether you possess all the required skills for the role. Your interviewer is a stranger, he does not know you, he does not know your level of knowledge, showcase it by filtering your statements and choose relevant things to say. Remember, we need to communicate articulately our skills to fulfill the purpose of the interview.
QuestionsI'll cover the basic questions which is asked in majority interviews. We will identify the purpose of these questions and how to prepare for them
You need to give a brief 1 min explanation about yourself to the interviewer. Honestly, your beloved interviewer is going to judge you for the entire interview based on this 1 min. The statement "First impression is the last impression" might have been said by a guy who learnt his lesson by not preparing for this question. I notice that majority of my friends start their 20 seconds by telling their school's name, father's name, mother's name, dog's name. Again, please understand the purpose of this question is not to know about your family background(unless its a interview for marriage), please talk about the tech stack you know, the projects you have worked on, any awards you may have won(in the technical field, not the 1st place you won for spoon race in your 4th standard), your qualities and your hobbies. Based on the information you provide, the interviewer will ask you follow up questions: Details about the projects, some questions on tech stack, how did you win the award etc. If your hobby is interesting or interviewer has the same hobby as you then it creates a likeability factor in you. Do note that whatever you say, you must back it up. Prepare well for follow up questions: (In my 2 interviews, I had said one of my quality as "I can make anyone laugh" and at end of interview, I was challenged to make them laugh. Which I did ^_^ )
The purpose of this question is to understand whether you know your own strengths & weaknesses or not. If your strengths matches the search criteria of interviewer then that's even better, you have again made him believe you are the ideal candidate he's looking for. Please keep this short and sweet, don't make up your strengths, each of us are unique individuals and we have our own talents, we play to our talents. A bonus tip is that try to communicate how your strength can be relevant to your role. E.g if my strength is "communication skills", sure its overall a very useful skill, but this strength has more value in a sales role than in a coding role. About your weaknesses, if you say that you don't have any weaknesses, then you have the weakness of arrogance. We are not perfect, we are not angels, we each have our own faults. Tell them your weakness and tell how are you working upon it. Please don't be too open minded about your weaknesses, if you say your weakness is you break things when you are angry then you are giving really bad impression about yourself. Think and prepare for this question.
This question has many purposes: Are you a person who plans his life? If your plan is to do higher studies or join a startup means you will not be staying for a long time in the company and hence interviewer will think twice before investing his training resources onto you. Please prepare well for this question. My request is to please have a plan in your life regardless of interviews. If you create a plan-> you will have a direction-> you will be committed towards executing your plan-> you will not be lost in life.
This is a question where you cannot afford to say No (Sorry Amithabh Bachchan). I asked one of my mentor-cum-friend about this question, he told me that if you say no to this question means you don't have any interest in him nor the job. He even said that he immediately rejects the candidate after hearing the no (bro doesn't handle rejection well I guess). You can ask about the role or the company. I usually ask my feedback as it helps clear my post-interview anxiety. Please ask only sensible questions, don't ask about your salary, don't ask about your interviewer's salary and definitely don't ask them out on a date.........not yet :)
You need to prepare for an interview. Have your answers to all the questions, think about the possible followup questions and prepare for them. Do your homework on the company, a quick google search. Practice on your communication skills, am not asking you to be able to speak like Poo from Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gum, you should be able to clearly speak what you know and the answer that you had prepared confidently, not like your viva answers. You will get nervous, no one can garuntee zero nervousness, but when you prepare the questions beforehand, you will reduce the nervousness. Have a water bottle nearby and keep yourself hydrated. The more interviews you do you will get better in understanding the purpose, the pattern and gain more confidence. This entire blog was just my own personal take on interviews, I hope this will help you out in some way ^_^.