Lies my recruiter told me: really, actually lies

Long ago I wrote that it was best not to indicate one had a long term career goal during an interview, because employers don't want to be your stepping stone. This is bullshit. Or rather, it may be true that they don't want to be a stepping stone, but they really don't want to hire an idiot with no ability to plan for their own future. I have heard this from multiple people with hiring influence at multiple companies. My new advice is as follows:

1. Indicate that you have a plan, if not a goal. It's okay if that plan is "learn more about industry X and discipline Y and reevaluate in 3 years."
2. Your plan should not be set in stone.
   
3. Goals are okay too, with the same caveat that they should not be set in stone.
4. The plan you give should have a space for the job you're applying for.
   

Miscellaneous inteview tip: keep your right hand free

Always hold things in your left hand, especially as people are leaving or entering the room. You will have to shake hands and it does create awkward moments when you have to juggle your coat, notebook, pen, can of soda, and paper copy of your resume in order to do so. And if you're me, you'll drop something.

Game over. I win again

One in-person interview, one phone interview, and three e-mails:

• one specific job from a company I already had a relationship with
• one from a different person within that same company, telling me my rates are too high (more on that later)
• one reply to a previous mail. He had invited me to apply for an SDE position, I explained I was looking for SDET. He wrote back with the promise of many SDET positions, and as proof attached descriptions of five SDE positions he had open.

In addition, I got two excuses to bring back the "choosing a job" tag. More on that later.

I don't see why people are so worried about the economy.

Only one fresh contact, this time for a permanent position. I don't think they're used to being told you're only looking for contracts. (or "contracts", as she referred to them). Two invites to interview, one of which I've taken and another (from the same guy, same company, different teams) I might follow up with during vacation.

One phone interview, set up by my current agency before I posted my resume on dice. It went okay but not great- they wanted academic knowledge, and I had 0 time to prep since I'm in wrap-up mode at my current job. But they seemed to accept that explanation, and I had some very classic know-what-you-mean-but-not-the-vocabulary-word moments that backed it up. This particular job has a bitch of a commute, so unless they raise the offer another 10% (after raising it 10% just to get me to interview), it's a practice interview anyway.

How to set up a phone interview

Recruiter or company: we would like to set up a phone interview. Please send us times.
You: I can do X,Y,Z. (Try to get a variety of days and times).
Company: Okay, we'll do Y. Please confirm.
You: Confirmed.

You do not have an interview until you say confirmed.
These steps will probably take over e-mail, but if time is a factor they may call you.

It's like advice, but easier

This advice was originally devised for a friend who's spent the last year and a half doing theoretical computer science work, but has been tempted into interviewing for an applied position by the prospect of hellish hours and something free food. He's got about a week to prepare, and is willing to put serious time into it. This is about half guesswork, since my own position was similar but not identical: I wanted jobs that (while still testing) had a significantly larger coding component than my last job. Not only have some technical skills atrophied, but he's never done a job interview before and doesn't know what to expect. What I said:

1. The most common interview pattern is: 1-2 phone interviews, then one half or full day in person circuit. If it's full day, you're probably going to have very long breaks.
   
1. The phone interviews last anywhere from 15-45 minutes. If there's two, the first is probably with HR. After a bit more time in the working world, I look forward to telling any HR screener that I'll only talk to the hiring manager.
   
2. The in-person circuit will have around four 45 minute - 1 hour interviews, with a different person each time. You will almost certainly get more than one question is that time. Adjust your level of detail accordingly.
   
2. If an interview takes substantially less time than you were told, you failed. This includes both a single interview running short or being sent home before the time you were told has elapsed. The only exception to this is if the interviewer actually says "wow, you answered those questions so fast, I have nothing left to fill the time with. All the other interviewees took much longer." At that point, worry about the quality of the company.
3. conversely, running over is a good sign. Getting more interviews then you were told you'd have is a very good sign.
   
4. You will be asked if you have any questions. The answer should be yes, and your questions should be insightful.

In addition, here are some general tips for prepping for an interview you're intellectually capable of completing, but have some brain fuzziness on:

1. Find or create a project that uses the skills you will be tested on. I actually started working for a friend's company, at wages that wouldn't have been worth it even if they didn't cut into my unemployment check. But it was fun, kept me sharp, and made it a little easier to transition back to the working world.* When you run into things you've forgotten the background of, look them up. Hyperspecific example: if it's an unspecified dev or test position, work on strings, lists, and trees.
2. Work around what you're not sure of. Hyperspecific example: if you don't remember the intricacies of ints, use bignums.
3. Testers only: develop a schema of ways to test real objects (I've been asked to test toasters, vending machines, and escalators). For breakage testing, I like to use Faith's five kinds of torture: sharp, blunt, hot, cold, loud. Interpreted creatively, these will take you far.

* It does weird ass things to my resume though. I either have a two month gap or list a two month job that doesn't mesh well with the jobs before or after it. My current solution is to mark is as short-term/part-time, and note that the owner was a personal friend when I list him as a reference.

It's not you, it's me

Back when I was doing the job circuit, I had an interview I thought went really well. Really, really well. But I didn't get the job. I was surprised, but put it down to the fact that the HR rep who found me so impressive had evidently been fired.

Last week I met a friend of friend who worked for that company. Apparently there have been a number of potential hires that the engineering team wanted but were shot down the CTO, who's an idiot and has really antagonized the engineers by doing so.

This isn't the only job that rejected me six months ago and is still unfilled- and the jobs weren't fresh postings when I looked at them. Even the start-up with 0 testers still hasn't hired one. I can't help but think that maybe I wasn't the one with the problem. From now on, I resolve to blame every failed interview on a bad CTO or companies that expect to hire awesome developers who are also testing demons for the same rate they pay the click monkeys. 'Cause there's no way I was at fault. Not at all.

Happy espioging

Business week has a video podcast up about how to conduct an interview. Go and learn

Think Like Syrup

Ask The Headhunter has some advice I do agree with: how to make yourself stand out in a job interview. He compares it to sticky websites, which I think is a bit odd, but it works.

Lies my Reruiter told me: Dress well

I don't think anyone should have to be told this, but I benefited from some rather obvious advice, so let's be safe and cover it. Wear nice clothes to an interview. Even if you know for a fact that everyone at your prospective employers wears swim trunks and torn corporate freebie t-shirts, dress nicely. Unless you absolutely know how your interviewers will be dressed that day, Wear a suit. Even hypercasual startups with DDR rooms won't criticize you for it, and you never know when you'll accidentally interview for IBM.

If you can't afford a real suit, go to a thrift store. In fact, do that anyway, suits are expensive. If you really can't afford it, there are charities specifically set up to loan clothes to you for interviews and your first week (at which point you can go to thrift store and buy your own).

Advice aimed directly at my brother.

Don't schedule an interview on a Friday or over a holiday. Getting between an interviewer and his weekend is slightly less stupid than getting between a mother bear and her cub.

Lies my Recruiter told me: stay plannless.

This one was actually really useful, assuming the recruiters that told it to me were correct (100% of recruiters who gave me advice agreed on this, but it's a small n). I never knew how to answer the question "where do you want to be in five years." If I had a plan, it was "enjoy the fact that people like you are willing to pay me ridiculous amounts of money for something I find easy. Keep doing what you tell me until the level gets less ludicrous, at which point I'll find someone less well balanced with more money , and do what they tell me to." This seemed like a bad thing to say out loud. I assumed that this question was an oblique test of my ambition and assessment of my own capabilities.

Turns out, nope. They're asking about your plan to find out if "do good work for company X" is in it. I think the original advice I got took this too far: any manager who thinks "My only ambition is to do really well at this job you haven't even offered me." is a good answer is probably not going to support any goals you have or develop. But don't make the job on the table sound like a stepping stone. What worked really well for me was to say "I'm still gathering information on this. I know that what I want right now is to do a job remarkably like the one you're offering me, learn from it, and use that information to evaluate my next step. Possibilities include X and Y, but I want to stay flexible." Thus far I've avoided having X=starting my own company, because if I don't believe myself when I say it, they won't.

Advantages of this approach include: you're showing you really want this particular job, you're not going to run off three months from now, you're not wandering aimlessly hoping someone hires you, and you're adabtable.

The right answer probably varies on the type of position you're looking at. No small software company expects lifetime loyalty. If they limited themselves to people willing to work on one project (or related set of projects) for 20 years their pool would shrink to chlorine and dead mosquitoes. You can emphasize your desire to work with whatever their special technology is. Large companies (Microsoft, IBM, Google) have enough different kinds of work to fulfill some people's need for novelty, so play down any job hopping ambitions you might have (especially since one of those is tired of people using it as a resume booster to get a job at another). I wouldn't get overly specific what type of thing you want to work on, since you'll be expected to change every couple of years (graphics is probably broad enough that you can sell yourself as a guru. Security and perf are fine. Halo 4 Grenade Launcher renderer is not.). Emphasize growth within the organization.

For temp positions, it seems acceptable to me to admit using it as a stepping stone. How much loyalty do they want when their internal rules probably bar them from hiring you for over six months? Just make it clear that you won't leave before the six months if up. If you have a plausible reason why you prefer contracting to perm, you can slip it in here. "Full time position" is a bad answer unless it's temp-to-perm, because they'll wonder what's wrong with you that you can't find one.

I'm still at the stage where growth is the only acceptable plan: at the very least I can dream of being an SDET II. Eventually you hit a point where coasting is acceptable (not everyone gets to be an architect), but I'd be wary of admitting that. My best guess is to act excited about the inevitable treading you'll have to do as new technology arises ("I can't wait to work on the floobertygibbit"). If you're a crusty UNIX guru who hasn't done anything new in 10 years...I dunno, save money while that's still a viable option?

Anyone with better advice, feel free to chip in.

ETA: This advice is wrong. See here for an update.

Not the Worst Problem to Have

Eventually I'll stop stealing topics from Ask The Headhunter, but until then... what do you do when you have an offer at one company, but are midway through the application process at others?

You can avoid this problem entirely by scheduling your interviews in order of preference, but that's not always possible, especially if you're unemployed or your current job situation is untenable.

Headhunter thinks that it's perfectly ethical to accept the offer, but continue interviewing, and either rescind your acceptance or quit early in the job, and that this is fact the best option. I categorically disagree. First, it is unethical. If you give your word, you should follow through. Period. Second, it will eventually bite you in the ass. Even if you didn't want that particular right now, you may wish to work for that company, or that person, or that person's friend, somewhere down the line, and you don't want to burn that bridge. Most companies won't take offense if you turn them down for a better offer, especially if you phrase it correctly, but they're not going to take you back after you've cheated them.

Then there are the consequences to other people. Once you accept the job, the company will tell their other applicants the bad news. Best case scenario their second choice is still available, but you've cost them several weeks. Or the person has accepted another job. Either they follow your lead and the chain continues, or they do the ethical thing and stick with their second choice job, in which case you have demonstrably worsened their life.

Headhunter says "In reality, there's little difference between quitting on day one or after several years" but that just isn't true. Turnover is inevitable and accepted. Jerking them around is not, for the reasons I've listed above.

So what should you do? First, evaluate the offer on its own merits. Is it acceptable? Is it worth negotiating? If you'd rather stay unemployed (a decision that rests in part on your estimation of your future prospects), turn them down outright. If they're good but not great, talk to your other potential employers and let them know what's going on. In the software industry, most companies can move very fast in situations like these. In fact, most of them ask if you're currently weighing other offers, and have a system set up to fast track you if you are.

Full disclosure: I've only faced this problem once, and most of the offers were from different units within the same company

But who will bell the cat?

Ask The Headhunter's has a series on his $30,000 strategy. If I may summarize: quality, not quantity. Don't send your resume out to 400 companies and hope you get a hit. Instead, spend that time finding the one job you are perfect for, make yourself more perfect, and spend the interview demonstrating your perfection. It sounds like a great strategy, if you happen to have enough information to know exactly what they want, the skills that match up to that want, a lack of competition in that area, and the power to make them interview you the way you want. If you lack any of those...good luck.

So 99% of the population, even in high demand fields, will have to aim a bit lower. I'd love to skip the stage where HR asks me whether I'm good with people, but I'm not the one with the power in this situation. And not everyone has the contacts to get good intelligence on several companies, or even one company. I didn't have two personal-contact-based job to rub together, and he wants me to find their five year business plan and how I can shorten it to four years?

I think do think that the mindset he recommends is a good one: you are not trying to get them to give you a job, you are demonstrating your ability to the job. This starts with the resume and cover letter: personalize (corporatize?) them for the job you're applying to. Brush up on the relevant skills if possible. Go in ready to demonstrate your ability to do it. But have an answer prepared when they ask you what your biggest weakness is too.

Rare moments of competance

I get such a noisy signal as to whether a given technique or answer went over well (Okay, I didn't get that job. Which of the 400 answers I gave was wrong?) that I'm hesitant to give broad spectrum advice. You can get a lot better answers elsewhere (see sidebar for examples). But all the good, tested advice comes from HR people, and there are some things they just don't get. So here are answers to questions from technical interviewers

The Question: I bought a car from some guy. He's given me two days to return it. I give it to you to test. What do you do to make sure I don't get ripped off?

The Answer: This obviously a multi part answer. But the bit that set me apart (and I know this because he specifically told me) was that one of the steps I listed was to look for documentation on-line. Previously I'd worried that saying that made me look lazy, but apparently it looks efficient, which is just like lazy except employers like it a lot more.


The Question: can you develop GUIs?

The Answer: Yes, but they will be ugly.

Obviously, that doesn't apply if you're being hired as a graphic designer. But if you're a tester or dev, and you know they're specifically asking whether you can design interfaces for in-house tools, this is the only answer that will get you respect.


And now, a technique that I've gotten less feedback on but really seems like it ought to work:

When you're listing test cases, list the circumstances under which they would and would not be valuable. For example, in the car case above, I mentioned that because I was testing a single car for personal use, I would not test to destruction, but if I was the QA Engineer at Ford, I would select some number of cars to push to the absolute limit. This helps you two ways. One, it shows you think about the problem and the best way to approach it, and don't use a one size fits all attack. Two, it fills up time while you think of more appropriate test cases. If the choice is between dead silence while you think (and if you're like me, the harder you think the more bored you look) and an inappropriate test case, labeled as such, go with inappropriate.*

*Note to the socially challenged: this does not generalize. Silence is almost always better than inappropriateness.

Lies my recruiter Told Me Part 1, True Lies

Part 1 in the ongoing series "Lies my recruiter told me"

"This will be a fairly techy interview, so brush up on your technical skills"

I knew that I interviewed better in college than I did two years ago, and I knew that at least part of it was because I had lost a lot of the academic knowledge. I even did toy programming projects to keep my skills up. But actually studying programming concepts specifically for an interview would have been cheating. It wasn't until it was specifically pointed out that this was a good idea that I realized that maybe interviewers would prefer me to look up polymorphism rather than guess during the interview (I got it on the second try). In general, I won't look up stuff for first-line phone interviews or snort HR screenings, but it's worthwhile if you know specific things will come up in an in-person.

"At the start of the interview, ask what they want, and tailor your answers to that." You can see why I thought this one was cheating, but it makes sense. As a bonus, it shows that you're really interested in the position. And if you do in the first stage of a circuit, you can look up stuff for the second stage.

I think that about sums it up for good advice. Even then, it was only useful because I was an idiot. We'll get to the funny stuff tomorrow.

Job interview questions

That is, what should you ask them. Secrets of the Job Hunt list some really good ones here.
Highlights:

1) Why is this position available right now?

6) How much freedom do I have in the decision making process?

My personal favorites are: "what surprised you most about working here?" or "what do you wish you'd known when you were in my position?"

Second Verse, Same as the First

I had the in-person to follow up to yesterday's phone interview, and I can see why that guy was chosen to handle first contact. My interviews were divided evenly between people who didn't know what questions to ask (and said so, repeatedly) and people who didn't speak English.

Now, the non-funny details:

My first interviewer was had clearly never read my resume before, and quite possibly had never read any resume before. He didn't have a lot of questions, and what he did have I answered quickly. There were a lot of silences. He did not ask me to code anything.

The next interviewer spoke English even worse than the previous one. I didn't know you could pronounce "manager" to sound exactly like "major", but she did. I figure she asked the most informative questions of the lot of them (from the companies standpoint), but if "define the difference between black box and white box testing" is in the upper half of questions, I have to assume the screening process just isn't that rigorous. She did not ask me to code anything.

The next interviewers was a tester/test planner, but not an engineer, and may have had an inferiority complex about it. He repeatedly said "I can't ask you any engineering questions." When I answered his questions, I emphasized the planning and resource allocation portions of the answer, and avoided rattling off lines of code, robot-like, to impress him with my l33t neural-coding skills. Although if I could actually hack people with my voice, that would be pretty awesome, and I think I'd deserve the job. But I'd aim for a better one. Perhaps one that had employees under 30. Anyways, I think this guy asked pretty good questions, but only covered very select areas, so were I HR, and I wouldn't let him have the final vote. He, of course, did not ask me to code anything.

My last interviewer was a dev, who assured me he had no experience with testing. Finally, some coding questions, one might think quietly to oneself, and then later say outloud when asked if one had any questions. But one would be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Many of the questions he did ask were test planning related ("most of what you do is corner cases, right?"), which frustrates me because he admitted he didn't know a good answer from a bad one. The only thing he could evaluate me on was the face validity of the answer and on my confidence and body language. Which, it turns out, you can fake.

So the interview was totally softball, which means I either hit it out of the park or failed before I even got to stage 2, and they were stringing me along for most of it. I'm going to be miffed if I don't get an offer, because I don't feel I was pushed hard enough. Has anyone found ways to turn easy interviews to your advantage? When it's clear they're not asking a lot of questions I try to expand my answers, but that only goes so far.

Always hire a professional

I just got off the phone from another interview, which was exciting because he clearly had less experience interviewing than I did. Maybe I could use this to my advantage if I was savvier, but for me it's like being held up by a 14 year old who stole his father's gun: he has something to prove, and while he doesn't quite know what it is, he will cut you down if you impugn his ability to do so. You want a nice, professional mugger in these kinds of situations, one who gives clear instructions, takes as much money as he can get in the 60 seconds he given, and is long gone by the time the cops arrive. This interview was the equivalent of being asked "so, how much money do you think I should steal?"

That said, I'm being brought in for an in person interview, so maybe he's adjusted for his inability to ask useful questions