
What I learned from doing over 60 technical interviews in 30 days - bolajiayodeji
https://meekg33k.dev/what-i-learned-from-doing-60-technical-interviews-in-30-days-ckda9sn7s00iftss13b0wd0ky
======
BeetleB
I'm going to have to disagree with the cover letter advice.

I'm sure there are people out there who appreciate well written cover letters.
They are a tiny minority. How do I know this? Some years ago I started
applying and would always type up a custom cover letter whenever a position
allowed me to upload one.

Every time I got a call, I asked them if my cover letter played a role in
their choosing to call me. The response was always "Oh you wrote a cover
letter? Let me check it out."

Not one person had read it.

Not. One.

Those things take a while to write, and that time is better spent applying to
more jobs. I quickly stopped writing them. Sorry, but unless you are getting a
job via networking, it really is a numbers game.

If I were sending my resume to someone who I know is not a recruiter/HR, then
I do take the time to write one. Otherwise, I don't.

~~~
cm2012
My experience is that small to medium size companies, where the person
managing you is also screening resumes, pay much more attention to cover
letters. I've had my cover letters explicitly mentioned by these companies
when hiring. I've also hired based on cover letters at these companies.

Big companies don't look at all. HR or recruiter finds you by keyword OR you
get referred by a friend for the job. Then 5 people who don't care take 20
minutes of their day to interview you. There's no chance for the cover letter
to come up in this scenario. When I worked at BigCo I interviewed a decent
amount of people and HR never handed me a cover letter to look at.

~~~
rsj_hn
I think this is correct. Be mindful of how HR is likely to work at the place
that hires you.

Big Co: there is some HR screener looking for keywords who hands a stack of
resumes -- maybe a hundred -- to a hiring manager who has to quickly go
through them and pick maybe 5-10 who will get a screen. If the screen goes
well, it may go to a second screen or a full panel.

The thing to keep in mind is that interviewing bears substantial costs for the
firm. You are yanking 5-6 senior people out of usually an overloaded sprint to
spend an hour and then more time writing up a form, so basically 1 day of
work. But you may have 300 people applying. That means if everyone got a full
panel, it would take 1 year of labor to fill 1 position.

Obviously that's not possible, so the end result is going to be capricious for
the person going through the process -- there's no way around that, as you can
only have resources to do an indepth look at 5 out of those 300. So yes,
interviewing sucks and you will often get unfairly ruled out for stupid stuff.
We get it, but that's how it has to be and will continue to be as long as
applying for a job is costless and open to everyone who can upload a pdf. It's
just a bad equilibrium -- the more people apply per position, the more
arbitrary the process becomes, which encourages more people to apply to many
different positions to hedge their bets, which creates more resumes per
position, etc.

For _really_ famous firms like Microsoft or Google, they may get 1000-3000
applications per positions. Even if most of these applicants are unsuitable,
they still gum up the works and add more randomness to the process.

OTOH, if it's a smaller company you don't get so many applying and they can
afford to give a better look per resume, but then again it's going to depend
on the job market situation. Still your odds are better.

Strangely, it's rare for the candidate to actually think about what it's like
on the other side of this and take steps that make it easier to process their
resume.

Stuff like: keep it to a single page, read the requirements in the job posting
and include relevant experience/skills rather than a full dump of everything
you did, etc. And never, ever, lie about a skill or experience. Try to make
the resume easy to read for someone who has to read 100 of them per hour.

~~~
jon-wood
As someone on the other side of the table now I’m almost at the point where
I’ll bring anyone who provides a single page CV in for interview, just because
they’ve clearly put some thought into it. I’m so sick of trawling through five
page CVs which contain absolutely everything apart from a reason to hire you.

~~~
ghaff
Maybe there are some cases where a bibliography of publications or something
like that would push up the length but I think it's a pretty good rule of
thumb that two sides of a sheet of paper--which is still relevant given that
people print out resumes and make notes on them--is pretty much a hard upper
limit. I'd probably find one page a bit tight though if you have any amount of
work history.

~~~
rsj_hn
I'm fine with 2 pages on a sheet, and have never thrown out a resume because
of its length, but for long resumes I just skim. But I disagree that you need
2 pages.

Here is a perfectly fine resume that can be half a page for a lead role or
higher. Let's say this is a role for a webapp developer and the candidate has
10 years experience. With this resume, which is only half a page, you are
probably way ahead of the competition. This is all the info a hiring manager
needs.

    
    
       position
       Name/email address
       
       Languages: Java, Python, C++, JS
    
       Experience: 
       
       Foo Corp: 2017-2020. Lead Engineer to Principal Engineer. Web App developer for Foo Authentication System and other microservices. Used standard LAMP stack and then Spring Boot.
    
       Bar Corp: 2012-2016. Sr. Engineer to Lead Engineer. Worked on backend order fulfillment logic, developed new test infrastructure for WebApps, client side test harnesses, security test suites, and related work. 
    
       Baz Consulting: 2010-2012. Engineer. Worked as consultant for primarily B2B clients, primarily in Java. Delivered over 30 successful projects to spec.
    
       Bat Heavy Industries: 2007-2010. Associate Engineer to Engineer. Started as QA hire and migrated to development, responsible for metrics gathering app, qa infrastructure code, worked in python, java, and other languages.
    
       Education: B.S. Chemistry, Foo State University.

~~~
jlokier
I find it so interesting that you select for that, because that example tells
you virtually nothing about the person that isn't generically applicable to a
large number of candidates.

Especially those with 13 years experience. Delivering 30 projects is the only
item that stood out for me, but everyone with a few years can make that claim
depending on what they choose to call a project.

The number of languages listed is laughably small for a 13 year candidate, but
I guess they have picked out the ones they think you want to see.

From that resume, I cannot tell even one thing that the person is particularly
good at, or any qualities they could bring to the company that would set them
apart - other than their decision to write a short resume and avoid telling
you much about themselves.

~~~
rsj_hn
> I find it so interesting that you select for that, because that example
> tells you virtually nothing about the person that isn't generically
> applicable to a large number of candidates.

Correct, this is how all resumes work. Remember, nothing on the resume is
verifiable apart from the dates and companies the candidate worked for, unless
you do a phone screen or panel interview. So the resume selects the candidates
suitable for the skills based interview. I know some people think the
candidate needs to write "I am passionate about quality" or "I love collecting
butterflies and have all of Nabokov's first editions" but those are primarily
creative writing exercises that don't end up telling much that is reliable or
reproducible across candidates.

> The number of languages listed is laughably small for a 13 year candidate,
> but I guess they have picked out the ones they think you want to see.

Correct, and one would understand that for someone with 10 years of experience
it's not hard to pick up a new language, nor is language particularly
important in this role. Neither is framework.

> I cannot tell even one thing that the person is particularly good at

No, you can't tell that from a resume, but you can tell what a person worked
on (perhaps poorly). In this case, there is plenty of QA, webapp, and some
security experience. This gives you avenues to drill down during the in person
interview.

Remember, the only thing you know is true on a resume is the list of prior
work experiences. Then you look for a collection of claimed skills. So when
reviewing the resume you check whether the claimed skills match your needs and
then drill down to verify the claims during the in person interview. That's
pretty much all the info you can ever get.

~~~
badthingfactory
I wish everyone viewed the process like this. I was job hunting a few years
ago and increased my hits by roughly 50% by doing one thing: adding more color
to the stupid resume.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Like, physical RGB color? (As opposed to metaphorical "color" of fleshing out
your statements) That's... pretty funny, actually.

------
djcapelis
Hotter tip: toss the advice from people who interview a lot and aggressively
and seek advice from the people who wander into opportunities seemingly
without effort. Ask them how they approach their job search.

Most of this advice is bad or fixes problems that come from scattershooting an
interview process by bulk for nonsense you don’t even care about.

This blog post outlines the most miserable way to do a job search. And the way
to get rejected a lot.

~~~
fractionalhare
In my experience, it's not possible for (approximately) anyone to "wander into
opportunities seemingly without effort" at many of the companies I'd actually
work for. There are companies which can be well-aligned to your professional
interests, compensation requirements and growth expectations which are also
difficult for just about anyone to get a job at. Unfortunately, these tend to
be the companies I want to select for.

Note that I agree with not applying to jobs shotgun style - I'm just
nitpicking very specifically on the idea that you can generally find someone
who reliably walks onto the jobs they want. But maybe I've misunderstood you.

~~~
risyachka
I've seen many creative ways people used to get a job. Like with any problem
out there - there are lots of solutions. Just sending a resume is only one of
them, the most obvious.

~~~
sillysaurusx
Has sending in a resume ever worked for anyone ever? (I’m only slightly
exaggerating.)

All of my opportunities came from inside referrals. It’s hard to imagine
getting one any other way.

I mean yeah, a resume is involved — I fill one out — but it’s never been the
reason for the opportunity.

Ah, I have a suspicion there are two types of engineers: those with FAANG on
their resume, and those without. Perhaps that accounts for the disparity. :)

~~~
bradlys
I’ve never received an offer from applying through a referral. All my jobs
either came from using Hired or from blind resume submission. (3 of 5 we’re
resume submission, 2 were through hired)

And all these jobs were in the last 7 years.

Resume submission does work. It’s not fun or great but for those who don’t
have a great network, it is all you have.

~~~
djcapelis
> all these jobs were in the last 7 years.

Question here... I hope I’m not being a huge jerk here, but uh. Does this feel
like this strategy is working well for you?

Did you like any of these positions?

~~~
bradlys
It's the #1 way to pay progression, sadly. Job switching rapidly in your early
career is the only viable way to get pay raises - unfortunately. It's worked
out - in that sense. I'll be switching again here soon enough - but no more
startup shit. Big N or die trying. (Although I said that last time too - but
now at least I have options currently worth $180k+/yr that put me near Big N
in terms of pay... but only if they actually ever get turned into real $$$)

Honestly - I feel like I stick around at places too long. Get my first year
vest and then immediately bounce is what I want to do but I sometimes stay
longer because I'm terrible at interviewing. I'm nearing 2 years at my current
place and I'm dying to leave because they won't increase pay and keep putting
me under absolute horseshit of managers.

When you join startups - you can ask as many question as you like to find the
right place but in less than six months - the company, your manager, your
team, and what you work on can completely change for the worse. Even when I
was at a bigger company - that still happened. Half my team was laid off and
my manager was fired... both had no replacement.

I'd stay if I found a place I genuinely liked but even if I think I like it
when I join - it can drastically change within six months... And, sadly,
that's kinda been my experience at every place. Managers fired, sexual
harassment lawsuits against the CEO, employees laid off, CTOs fired, huge
pivots in what I work on, drastic product changes, etc. etc.

~~~
djcapelis
So... no?

> It's the #1 way to pay progression, sadly

This has not been my experience.

------
kuon
I have been a freelance coder for more than 20 years, I have worked on a lot
of different subjects, I wrote compilers, small embedded kernels, shipped
dozen of products, did thousands of OSS contributions…

But I would be terrified by one of those interview.

For example: How can you write a sort algorithm with 0 error in such a short
time, without reference? I would never be able to do that. I "know" how they
work, but with qsort() since C89 there is very little reason to write one,
except if you have special needs, and those special needs are "the problem"
not the sorting algorithm.

Or I would be unable to write the TCP handshake procedure on a piece of paper
with just a pen, even knowing I wrote a mini TCP stack a few years back for an
embedded chip.

I can think of a million technical questions for which I have no answer, how
do you cope with that in an interview (with the added pressure…)?

I am genuinely wondering if I am bad, or if it is those "coding challenge"
that are inappropriate.

~~~
risyachka
From what I have seen, those interviews show only how well you prepared for
the interview. And they are designed to check if you know basics for the
position needed. It really looks like most companies don't care what you know
or did - they are only interested if you are able to do the job they need.

------
speedgoose
This guy obviously loves interviews. I hate them. I am not going to practice
interviews with my friends and have a real interview once a month like he
advised.

Also, you can find jobs without these stupid coding challenges and time
consuming processes. I never worked in a company that asked me to write code
before being hired.

~~~
majikandy
I can’t say I never have taken a role with a stupid coding challenge (because
I have) but often you’ll go for 4 or 5 interviews maybe 4 having coding
challenges. At least one role will end up having 5 stages! At least one will
end up being just a 15-30 mins chat with no challenge, with either an instant
offer at the end or a phone call from the recruiter 20 mins after you leave
the interview.

Inevitably I end up taking the one that was just a short chat.

~~~
smnscu
Wow you just made me realise that most of my jobs are the same, I've passed
plenty of coding challenges with flying colours but almost always went for the
jobs where we just chatted and got along immediately.

~~~
wojciii
I had one whiteboard interview (which I blew) in the past. I decided not to do
whiteboard or challenges that take time unless I get paid. Most work I got was
because I could show previous experience which matches the job I was trying to
get.

------
hardwaregeek
I've been doing some mock interviews for friends and I've had a couple
realizations. Almost everybody gets nervous at interviews. I get nervous, you
get nervous, we all get nervous. However some are able to tamp down the
nervousness and not let it show. There's nothing wrong with being nervous, but
it is useful to project confidence. Stuff like smiling, speaking up, even
providing a light joke can help you seem more personable and get you ready to
perform.

When I have an interview, I tap into techniques that I used when I competed. I
used to do a very individual based sport. Tournaments would be stressful since
your performance solely depended on you. Therefore I learned a bunch of
techniques on how to keep your mental game going. Techniques such as listening
to music to hype you up, having certain ritual foods or drink, self talk,
meditating, etc. One accomplished athlete I knew talked about how he'd tell
himself that he'd put in the training to be the best. Therefore he knew that
he could do it.

It's a little weird viewing an interview as a competition but it's really
about getting through a stressful, high risk/reward situation with the right
mental game.

~~~
smnscu
I've conducted close to a thousand interviews as an Interview Engineer at
Karat (and hiring people before that). And yet, as a candidate I _always_ get
terrified during even mock interviews.

edit: plug time
[https://github.com/andreis/interview](https://github.com/andreis/interview)

------
cwhiz
What I’ve learned from giving and receiving technical challenges over the
years.

Don’t.

The only thing these challenges do is determine whether someone can do your
coding challenge. No indicator at all about their ability to actually solve
your business problems.

Instead, give the applicants an offline evaluation solving something within
your actual dev/testing environment. Pay them for their time. 2-4 hours.

The best interview process I ever had culminated in me logging in to a testing
system and working on what I believe was an actual problem at some point in
the companies history. The IDE and DB was there and ready to go with some docs
and a ReadME. They told me ahead of time what rate they would pay me and that
they would pay up to 4 hours. If I decided to spend more it was on me. And I
had 4 business days to do it.

~~~
mobjack
I feel too biased in judging candidates based on specific business tech
problems.

I have deep domain knowledge and context around the problem and am familiar
with our frameworks and design patterns.

Something that seems trivial to me might not be for another qualified
candidate.

General tech questions control for these variables more making it easier to
judge those with more diverse tech backgrounds.

------
sfpoet
"Like a skilled surfer, I wanted to learn to ride the high pressure waves that
came with interviews."

Yeah, bro, that's not surfing. Good surfers respect the big waves. No coder is
going to respect a bad interviewer. But I trudged on through the article and
ran into this gem:

"There will be times when you’re stuck. And this could be caused by a number
of reasons: you don’t have the requisite knowledge, incorrect assumptions,
missing details, and so on.

"I used to think that at such times I was being judged by how fast I could
come up with a solution. So I would be quiet, thinking, not communicating with
the interviewer, just thinking.

"And this is where a lot of us get it wrong. I get it, you need some alone
time to think. But sorry to burst your bubble, that alone time is not when
you’re being interviewed by a person.

"Yes, your interviewer wants to see that you can come up with a solution, but
one thing you must not forget is that they also want to see that you can
collaborate with other team-mates to come up with a solution. While companies
want rock-stars, they also want team-players.

"Since your interviewer is a friend, a buddy, a team member who’s on your side
and means well for you (Refer to 4), talk to them while you're figuring it
out."

Yeah, the interviewer is definitely your friend, and you have to work with
them as a team in the interview. This advice is gold. If you do not feel that
they are a friend, you can politely ask to end the interview for personal
reasons. No use interviewing further, for the same reason you can end a date
if you are no longer comfortable.

------
jldugger
>109+ applications later, I landed myself more than 60 interviews. These
comprised more than 60 introductory phone interviews, 50+ technical phone
screen interviews, 18 take-home coding projects, 11 coding challenges and 8
on-site interviews including 3 virtual ones.

Rearranging slightly, into filter pass rates:

    
    
      application: 55%  
      recruiter screens: 85%  
      technical phone screens: 72%  
      second tech screen: 21%  
      onsites: ?%
    

Obviously not every company follows the same process, but it seems like the
author found it hard to make it through tech screens into onsites. So I'm not
sure how much I'd weigh on their advice in that stage of the hiring process.
But maybe someone with better access to the data can do a more nuanced
analysis, like how often completing a code challenge led to advancing in the
hiring process; I found those to be quite easy on average, but surprised to
see how hard they were for the roles I was applying to -- it's not often an
SRE would be assigned a programming task involving clique analysis.

~~~
grumple
Well, your analysis is a miss here: many of those technical phone screens led
to take-homes, not on-sites. I’ve rarely heard of a company doing both a take
home project and technical on-site (I did this once; it sucked).

~~~
bradlys
Take home projects seem to only replace a phone screen as far as I can tell.
I’ve never seen a company in the Bay Area completely replace an on-site
interview with a take home.

------
DrBazza
What I learnt from dozens of C++ interviews over a few months in London, is
that interviewers are obsessed with the tiny, niche corners of C++ that
they're familiar with, and normal developers would consult the docs for, and
have zero interest in whether you can write clear and concise code that solves
a problem. When would I ever write my own std::enable_if.... on a whiteboard?

Years ago, C++ interviews used to be 'what's the difference between pointers
and references, stack and the heap', and a bit about v-tables and memory
management to prove you know something about C++.

Welcome to 2020, and language that needs to be quietly put out of its misery.

~~~
sgerenser
Is asking to implement your own enable_if (or equivalent) actually something
you got asked more than once? I feel like just asking to describe how/why you
use it would immediately screen out the bottom 75% of C++ developers.

------
mihaaly
What I learned from the fact of carrying out 60 interviews in 30 days is that
there are awful lot of organizations that are unable estimating technical
competence and have no clue how to do that but introducing time wasting
unreliable excuse activities masking gut feeling decisions. Those rushed but
still overly simplistic tests only measure how good someone is in those tests,
not how good someone will be in a position.

~~~
scient
So what do you propose as the solution then that works better? This kind of
complaining is neither useful, nor constructive.

~~~
mihaaly
It is a bit naive expecting reliable answer for such unspecific question for
that a broad spectrum situation. The topic here is to discuss the problem and
even that is too much for the limits of this medium to be complete and
reliable. What was your point with your useless and not constructive
complaining? : )

~~~
MauranKilom
Imagine your friend has to hire new people for his team. You just communicated
to him that he sucks at "estimating technical competence" with his "unreliable
excuse activities masking gut feeling decisions" and that his "overly
simplistic tests only measure how good someone is in those tests, not how good
someone will be in a position".

Of course, he would love to have a direct measure for how good someone will be
in a position. Who wouldn't? So he asks you "well what should I do then?".
What do you say?

To be clear, this is a hard problem. There are many dimensions for "how good
someone will be in a position", and the interview process is designed to
filter along as many of those as possible with reasonable effort.

Ultimately there's only one reliable way to find out if the candidate passes
all the thresholds in day-to-day work: Hire them. But you can't do that with
every candidate.

~~~
mihaaly
Being the process multi dimensional was my point exactly, thank you for
expressing that so explicitly!

But those pressured simplistic tests are not simply part of the whole picture
but an exclusion barrier to throw away candidates and easing the life of the
lazy recruiters!!

You must not be serious you do not see that!

My friends have broader perspective and make much more competent hiring
procedures than this schoolboy mentality of whiteboarding or asking 5
questions to throw away those work in real life not in artificial simplistic
tests!

Yes, it takes longer than the simplistic ones, because it is so multi
dimensional that any less would be an incompetent process for god's sake!!

Anyone insisting those simplistic ones as definitive barriers - not merely
part of a process - want to have excuse to get rid of the whole activity very
quickly, doing bang up job! Not really care about real competence but
superficial characteristics only that can be point at very quickly!

There are multitude of ways handling this matter much much better - too long
to elaborate here -, I met with several ones, failing or succeeding, heard
about the rest. All taking the effort that any reliable hiring effort
requires, unlike these very simplistic ones criticized here.

------
lapcatsoftware
I suspect that the main problem with hiring in our industry is that coders
have the unfortunate tendency to treat other coders as if they were code. We
treat job interviews like they're some kind of unit test. Add this assertion,
run this same unit test every time, reject the assertion failures.

Humans are not code. We don't behave algorithmically. It's well known that job
interviews are very poor predictors of performance. The best predictor of
performance is past performance. It's not a perfect predictor by any means,
but there are no perfect predictors. Hiring is a crapshoot. We need to get
over the conceit that we can hire without making mistakes. To err is human.

~~~
dleslie
This is why I gravitated to game development: most of your coworkers are
artists, and that greatly effects the workplace culture.

------
alexose
This is a great article, but it raises my heart rate to even read about
technical interviews.

~~~
BossingAround
> it raises my heart rate to even read about technical interviews.

Just a matter of doing more interviews and getting used to them. I got nervous
even when conducting my first interview as the person on the other side of the
table.

------
lmilcin
When I was younger and more stupid I was once asked to interview 20 people all
in a single day to select half a dozen initial developers for a startup. This
was my first task at a startup where I was supposedly to become CTO or
something like that. I did it but I also learned, as you can imagine, it is
pretty much stupid idea. This led me to resign from the position on the same
day because I decided founders were not reasonable about making business
(treating people as replaceable cogs).

~~~
PragmaticPulp
It’s amazing how many startup founders get caught up in the idea of looking
like they’re moving fast at the expense of everything else.

Doing a phone screen on 20 people in a day would be a stretch, let alone full
interviews. This sounds more like a hazing ritual than anything else.

Ironically, I know plenty of people who would have pseudo-succeeded at this
task by pretending to have interviewed the 20 candidates but instead just
hired their friends. These types of startups are magnets for people who can
put on a good show while doing everything in their power to enrich their own
careers.

There are too many good startups with genuine founders out there to waste your
time on these hustle-and-grind founders.

~~~
lmilcin
I would never be able to have interviews with them all in a single day (the
constraint was me and the two founders had to travel to another city to get
all interviews done in one day and I was asked if I can organize it). So what
I, in my naivety, did was to invite them all to single room for an exam-like
event and gave them programming tasks in Scratch, if I remember well.

Once we had results, we took 10 with best scores and had half an hour short
interview with each one, after which we debated and selected 6.

Yes. That did happen. I even felt quite proud that I was so efficient. I still
feel dirty. Have a laugh.

Only after I came back home I have realized what happened and that these
people are going to be backbone of the company for years to come. I have
realized the founders, coming from a larger company have absolutely no ability
to form a team. Because they have always been joining an existing team they
have always looked at the team as a collection of random people and decided
that it doesn't make much difference how the people are selected as long as
they have a team of people who can demonstrate they can program.

------
mesaframe
Advice number 6 is the most important one and I learned it the hard way. You
may be a genius but the interviewer won't know until you express yourself.
Don't sit idle thinking about stuff. At least talk what are you thinking.

~~~
mihaaly
I had a 2 hours technical interview with 5 people where I enthusiastically
expressed my thoughts about the role just to end up receiving a "does not fit
into the team" later. None of the other chatty interview bore fruit despite of
having a good atmosphere and constructive chat of likely minded persons that I
ended with good feelings. Likely a lot of other aspects weight much more.
Especially with sometimes socially awkward technical (geek) persons.

~~~
barrenko
I have a nasty feeling sometimes that being socially savy in a way is a red
flag flag for some coding jobs.

------
leeny
I was an engineer for years and then a recruiter before starting
interviewing.io.

After having hosted ~60K mock interviews, I agree with one of the big
takeaways here. Practice practice practice. It's not the same as working
problems on your own. But after 5 or so, many of our users reach an inflection
point.

As for cover letters and getting in the door in the first place, no one at
large companies reads them. However, best thing you can do is find an engineer
at that company and send them an earnest, short email about why you admire
their work and why you want to be a part of it. Don't talk to recruiting...
unless you fit a very narrow, specific mold, they're not incentivized to take
risks.

~~~
dencodev
If a mock interview averages 30 minutes from start to end, including the time
to get on the call and take notes and give feedback, that's 30,000 hours of
mock interviewing. Working 8 hours a day that's 3750 workdays, and with 261
working days a year that means you've done mock interviews _full time_ for
more than 14 years? Are the interviews super short? I feel like I'm missing
something here.

~~~
wy35
She's the founder of interviewing.io, which is a mock interviewing platform.
So I'm guessing her insight comes from looking at all the metrics (e.g. pass
rate, strengths/weaknesses of candidates) from the mock interviews hosted on
the platform.

That being said, I'm sure she has conducted her fair share of interviews.

------
hashhar
Really great to the point article without any fluff. Lots of actionable
insights.

The part about treating interviews as technical chats resonated the most with
me and has been my personal experience as well - both as an interviewer and
interviewee. If I'm going to hire you we are going to have such discussions
every other week so its important how good we can collaborate.

------
mathattack
109 applications to 60 interviews is a phenomenal hit rate.

I’m mixed on cover letters. I rarely read them, and a poorly written one can
do more harm than good. They can be used to explain why a non-obvious
candidate may be a good fit, but that’s usually better done via 3 bullet
points attached to a referral.

~~~
scarface74
Not really. I was just your average every day software as a service CRUD
developer from 2008-2018 living in a major metropolitan area on the east coast
- not NYC. Before that I had stayed at a job for a decade writing programs for
batch processing in C.

2012 - after the company I worked for went out a business, I landed a contract
to perm role in less than 2 weeks. The company was crappy and I just sent an
email and didn’t come back to work after lunch. I met a recruiter for lunch
that day. They submitted my resume to a company the same day. By that Friday I
had an offer - for what a company that had recently been acquired by a f10 non
software company.

2014 - emailed three recruiters.

Submitted my resume to 8 jobs.

Out of those 8, 7 phone screens,

2 - pay too low.

5 in person or scheduled for in person

1 - rejection

2 - offers

2 - cancelled in person.

I accepted an offer after four days looking.

2016

16 applications all through external recruiters.

6 - Hiring on hold/position filled

7 - phone screens/either interview in person or I cancelled the in person.

2 - offers.

This was again within three weeks.

2018 - two applications, 1 offer in two weeks.

2020 - I was passively looking after a Covid related paycut. A recruiter from
$BigTech emailed me about a remote position. The process from start to finish
took two months, 1 technical phone screen and a 5 interview loop. This was for
a cloud consulting position.

~~~
mathattack
Interesting. And congrats on the recent move. Cloud for $BigTech is a great
place now. One of the few inevitable growth spots in an awful broader market.

------
wendyshu
Re cover letter sales pitch: Of all types of diversity among engineering team
members, racial diversity is very uninteresting to me. And I cannot legally
let race influence my hiring anyway.

~~~
joegahona
If it's a toss-up between two candidates, and one is a 20-something white male
and the other is a 50-something black female, are you not permitted to hire
the black female for the reason that it will make your team more diverse?

------
ctw
I had the opposite experience a few years ago when applying for jobs for after
I graduated. I stopped trying to learn about each company and stopped writing
cover letters. Instead, I just wrote a 2 or 3 sentence, completely generic
blurb about myself, then sent it with my resume to as many companies as I
could find in the area I wanted and with the tech I wanted. Only when I heard
back did I actually look in to the companies.

I think a key takeaway is that less is more. People don’t have time to read
long cover letters and resumes. Keep it as short as possible but no shorter.
Cut out everything that’s not your best selling points.

------
aladine
Surely the effort you put into 60 technical interviews are great. But instead,
you should focus to 10 companies you would like to join, it may turn out
better as you could focus your energy and thinking for cover letter and
preparation.

~~~
ghaff
Maybe? Doing more interviews probably helps prepare you for interviews to a
certain degree. If he's shortchanging his interviews by doing so many of them
--e.g. by not researching the company--that's one thing. But, in general,
unless you're following a very targeted strategy, I'd probably err on the side
of applying to more companies rather than fewer. If he's just applying cold,
the process is sufficiently random that you're usually best off primarily
playing a numbers game.

------
jmchuster
Probably the safest way to practice is to do interviewing at your current
company. There's a lot of similar skills that you need to get good at to be
good at interviewing others, and if you work at a good company, they'll want
to train you and give you feedback on becoming good at interviewing others.
You'll also get a much stronger understanding of what interviewers look for,
how they evaluate, what a good interview looks like. So, once you're
interviewing for a job yourself, you'll know how to recreate that same
feeling.

------
not_a_moth
Worth having a multi month break at some point in your career where you spend
most your time practicing and taking technical interviews. It makes you a
better programmer and problem solver.

~~~
ipnon
There has to be something seriously wrong with the tech industry if engineers
are rewarded for spending more than 1/6 of the year learning a skill that is
generally regarded to be unrelated to actual job performance. It cannot be
completely bad in itself, but there must be some better way of organizing
engineering labor.

~~~
not_a_moth
Thought the same way until I spent 3 months on leetcode and absorbing
algorithm lectures. My programming skills and problem solving skills simply
got a lot better for the long term.

------
codingdave
> The interviewer isn’t there with you and so does not have the luxury of
> seeing other non-verbal cues like your hand gestures or nuances.

But they can still hear nuances in your voice, more than you might expect. Use
a headset, don't hold your phone, and stand up when you are on the call. The
movements you naturally make when not locked to a chair holding a phone
against your head will come across as better emphasis in your voice.

~~~
sfkdjf9j3j
I recently did a bunch of "virtual onsite" interviews, mostly over zoom. I
think the main frustration I experienced was the barely perceptible latency in
the video chat. It really bites when you start talking at the same time as the
interviewer and have to do the awkward, "oh sorry, no, go ahead", "I was just
going to say..." conversation-resetting sidebar.

I felt like video quality was good enough to see non-verbal cues, and I think
people subconsciously exaggerate those anyway when they're talking over a
lossy channel.

On the other hand, it was a lot more comfortable to be in my apartment than in
an unfamiliar office space.

------
ulisesrmzroche
I'm one of those people who apply like at two, three jobs and get offers from
all of them. The phone screen is the most important IMO, that and a good
recruiter.

People get all pissy about it and treat their recruiter poorly, which is
highly unprofessional.

The biggest problem right now from the hiring viewpoint is that there are a
lot of "senior engineers" with 2-3 years experience expecting a high salary,
when you can easily find good remote programmers working in other countries
who are not going to be asking that sort of money.

I think now that remote will become the rule, then it's an even bigger
disadvantage for those who are looking only to code and that's it. What I
think will happen more and more is that the only developer who will work
inside the company is the lead developer, and the rest of the team will be all
remote.

Soft skills are King.

Of course, you could go live abroad and work contracts. Not a bad life
honestly. I think about it a lot these days. For those junior devs and mid
level devs, highly recommend this, especially if your first language is
English.

------
_nalply
How should a deaf programmer conduct phone screens?

------
zoomablemind
> Arrive early on the day of your interview and smile a lot (it helps portray
> confidence, but more importantly helps you stay relaxed and be in control).

I almost liked the 'smiling' advice... But on the second thought, it's very
much personality specific. In my opinion, some people appear less convincing
when they smile a lot. Also, you need to realize that interview is a meeting
of strangers, so the other side is somewhat nervous too, thus allowing
yourself to be nervous is ok, no shame.

As always, the best advice is know yourself and be yourself. Managing a
pretense requires extra effort, better direct that energy towards the
challenges.

Interview requires some luck (there're always factors beyond your control). No
matter what the outcome, I'd consider it a success, if I managed to stay true
to self and learned something new about people on the other side...or myself.

Btw, 60 interviews in 30 days... Any offers extended/accepted?

------
BossingAround
> I stopped seeing these in-mails as noise in my inbox and started making the
> effort to reply to all recruiter in-mails, even for positions I was not
> interested in. By doing this, I succeeded in building a network of
> recruiters that have become a rich resource if I have to switch roles in the
> future.

Recruiters are not your friends who'll help you out in time of need. My
experience is that they don't even look at your profile unless you reply.

I'd wager a bet (and this is only my personal opinion) that if you lose your
job for whatever reason, this will be a red flag to most of such "network" and
when you need another job, they'll avoid you like the plague. An addendum to
this wager would be that if you get hired by some high-prestige company (think
Microsoft, Apple, Google, LinkedIn, ...), they'll swarm you trying to poach
you for whatever you have open (so exactly when you don't need them).

~~~
scarface74
Of course recruiters will help you in your time of need. If you need a job and
they have a client with a matching opening , they will submit your resume and
try their best to get you hired. That’s how they get paid.

------
tester756
>I'll add to the diversity on your team and _research_ has shown that
diversity often makes for better, more successful teams.

For me it's a red flag.

Not only I don't think this is good when SE advertise himself with something
like that, but also there are researches which show that diversity ain't that
great as people seems to make it off.

~~~
joegahona
> but also there are researches which show that diversity ain't that great as
> people seems to make it off.

Can you provide this research please?

~~~
tester756
[https://www.academia.edu/16634456/Unraveling_the_effects_of_...](https://www.academia.edu/16634456/Unraveling_the_effects_of_cultural_diversity_in_teams_A_meta-
analysis_of_research_on_multicultural_work_groups)

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.101...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1018.237&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

------
chiefalchemist
> "Know your unique competencies and experience and present them in a way that
> matches the company’s needs without sacrificing your personality.

It is also important to understand the peculiarity of the company you are
applying to and its specific needs. A startup or a smaller-sized company may
have different needs from a bigger company, thus requiring a different skill-
set."

This makes the case for targeted CV more than adding a cover letter to a one
size fits all CV.

Fwiw, my first page / section is titled: Executive Summary. It's more bulleted
but it could be sentences. The idea is to incorporate the concept of cover
letter without having to worry it would be ignored.

That said, I'm going to try a cover letter. It might be enough to standout
even if no one actually reads it.

------
wallflower
> 3 virtual "site visit" interviews - 0% pass

I wonder if this can be chalked up to lack of sufficient practice for the
virtual type of "site visit" interviews that lead to nerves, decrease in the
all important self-confidence. Or perhaps it has to do with the always
troubling you can't look at the people in the eye with a standard laptop
embedded-top-of-the-screen webcam because it looks like you are not looking at
them.

I would read another blog post from the OP just about their virtual "site
visit" interview experiences.

------
brailsafe
I found his bit about recruiter in-mails peculiar, but I suppose everyone's
mileage may vary. I almost never respond to in-mails, but I have these last
two weeks for some reason. I ask for more information before accepting a call,
sometimes they oblige, sometimes not. I haven't received a response though to
any polite inquires I've sent them.

------
iandanforth
One thing I didn't see in this post was whether or not the author was aiming
for a job or a roll at a specific company. While it makes total sense to get
as much experience as possible, I expected to read more about strategically
ordering the interviews such that you hit the ones you _want_ later in the
process.

------
meheleventyone
The sheer volume is amazing. I think I’ve had less than one tenth that number
of interviews in a fifteen year career!

~~~
derpistan
Those add up pretty fast if you're doing full on-site days. A couple of years
ago I interviewed for two FAANGs. Along with phone screens, on site, and a
couple of supplementary interviews, and then team selection interviews, it
easily got to 18 or so. And that was just two companies.

~~~
meheleventyone
I’ve only been put through the wringer like that once thankfully. I think I’m
also lucky to have mostly made moves based on recommendations so end up
dealing directly with specific teams at big companies.

------
johns35
It's pretty good written article, except that I feel a bit disappointed that
he had to write in the cover letter "plase hire me Im black".

It sounds very unprofessional, but I could be wrong and that's a normal thing
in the USA.

------
sydd
Another hint on timed coding challenges: most of them involve array or string
manipulation, you can do these much faster if you learn how to do them via
functional programming in your favourite language

------
unnouinceput
For all the advice and sheer number of interviews he did in those 30 days, he
never mentioned anywhere if he actually landed a job. Were those just for the
luls?

------
CraigJPerry
For phone calls or video chats make sure your audio is decent.

Consider using something like nvidia rtx voice or rnnoise vst plugin.

------
hlfy_hn
Job hunting advice and I know this will get downvoted.

When called for an interview, ask as a first question why they think you are a
good candidate for the job. It is clear by my resume and elaborated by my
cover letter, but you would be surprised how many people are thrown off guard
by this. Why? They got your resume from HR and never bothered to look at it.
This saves time. For you and for the company.

------
sfpoet
Where's the data for the 60 interviews? I feel that this piece is nothing more
than link bait without that data. That data could be anonymized, too.

------
peter_d_sherman
>"With every unsuccessful application, I saw that something needed to change.

That change came when I took a break from meeting my daily numbers and began
to think of my applications differently. I began to see each application as a
sales pitch to the hiring manager or whoever was going to be reading my
application, but here the _product being sold was me_."

[...]

>"Backed with my resume, _this cover letter had a 95% success rate_. The one
time this didn’t work, the hiring manager still replied to let me know that
the position was no longer available but he would like to connect in the
future."

[...]

>"It is also important to understand the _peculiarity of the company you are
applying to and its specific needs_. A startup or a smaller-sized company may
have different needs from a bigger company, thus requiring a different skill-
set."

[...]

>"But hey, you are also an excellent professional, and that means you never
get on a phone call without knowing at least these two things:

the first name of your interviewer, and

at least one tangible thing about the company — what they do, where they are
located, any recent news, something, anything!

I noticed that for interviews where I put in the effort to make these
findings, I always came across as _being genuinely interested in the company_.
That’s something recruiters typically look for in these kinds of interviews."

[...]

>"Good candidates know how to solve a problem (e.g. a sorting problem), but
_the best candidates know multiple solutions to a problem and understand the
trade-offs of one solution versus the other_.

The interviews where I performed the best (Cruise comes to mind) are the ones
where I didn’t just solve the algorithmic challenge – I was also able to
provide alternative solutions and discuss the trade-offs.

Aim to provide multiple solutions to a problem, be willing to discuss the
trade-offs, and be able to implement at least one of them."

[...]

>"One of the companies I interviewed with provided hourly pay, about $68/hr,
for the number of hours you worked on their take-home project — it’s that
serious, so you should be serious about it."

PDS: It's actually not "that serious" <g>. That's because from the company's
perspective, they are spending ONLY $68 or so -- to screen out bad applicants
for a position that might pay $120,000 a year or more. Which is quite the COST
SAVINGS (again, from their perspective) if the wrong candidates can be weeded
out at that stage of the game. There is no business on the face of the planet
which would not pay $68 to save $120,000, and if there is, then they aren't
going to be in business very long! So is it "serious"? To you the applicant,
from your perspective, it appears so, but from a purely business perspective,
it looks like a tax-deductible $68 expenditure to potentially save $120,000 or
more in the future.

In other words -- don't let things like this phase you.

You'll do infinitely better if you're relaxed, yet conscientious.

>"I had three virtual on-site interviews and I didn’t pass any of them. Sorry
I’m not your guy for this one, but I’ve shared some resources that I think you
may find helpful below."

You nail these ones via an "appeal to everyone" / "offer something to
everyone" social vibe mixed with the tech. It's what politicians do, or what
people do who arrive at parties where they don't know anyone, yet by the end
of the evening, everyone winds up liking them. Why? Because they showed they
can handle multiple people with different understandings and possibly
competing interests. You didn't nail this one because this "skill" \-- is
purely a social skill(!), it's not tech related -- the greatest computer
scientist with 10 Ph.D.'s, hundreds of papers and patents, and a Turing Award
-- if he didn't have this social skill -- would also have been rejected, so
don't feel bad!

Now, on a different note, I wanted to add the following comment/suggestion to
your great article:

Historically I have had a 2:1 ratio of of tech job interview : job offer.

In other words, historically, half of all of the companies that I have
interviewed at, wanted to hire me after the interview.

One time, to understand this phenomena better, after being offered a job, I
asked the interviewer,

"If you don't mind me asking, _exactly why did you want to hire me?_ ".

His answer was absolute pure common sense.

He said to me:

"All of the people that we interviewed told us _everything that we would have
to do for them_.

You, on the other hand, told us _everything that you would be willing to do
for us_."

You see?

180 degrees reversed...

And absolutely pure common sense...

Anyway, great article!

------
n_t
> "Since your interviewer is a friend, a buddy, a team member who’s on your
> side and means well for you (Refer to 4), talk to them while you're figuring
> it out."

I strongly disagree with this. It is true in theory but doesn't work in
practice. Most FAANG interviewers are looking for a fast optimal solution.
Unless you are interviewing for very junior role, if you take hints from
interviewer, it'll likely go against you.

~~~
derpistan
It depends. It's better to get a candidate unstuck with a few hints and then
not give them a perfect score, than just staring at them while they struggle
then crash and burn and panic. Sometime a little hint is all it takes, and
then you get to see a great solution you didn't expect, or awesome code, and
the candidate still passes the bar - while not in flying colors.

