I feel like I am the type of person that takes much longer than everyone else to be able to understand things. When it comes to tech interviews, I feel that I always need to over prepare because I have a hard time thinking things through. So for those of you out there that are just about to get into the interviewing world, here is my aggressive stanch on how I prepare for interviews. I’ve also provided a video version of this post for those of you (like me) that would rather listen than read.

Research the Interviewer

I said that I take an aggressive approach right? Knowing the ins and outs of the people in the company help you to understand what their goals might be. Research the leadership team on what their interests and credentials are. The idea is to know more about your interviewer (and their bosses) than they know about you. I look up at least 10 people in the company on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. If they are into coding IoT devices in their spare time, then that is something that I want to know. I want to be able to bring it up in the interview and hopefully cause them to think of me in a positive light. The intention is not to be creepy, but instead to take a human approach to interviewing. At the end of the day, this person is just trying to figure out if they would like to work with you.

Research the Company Products

I once interviewed for a company where the job req said they wanted someone to work on Product A. They started the interview off by asking me to explain what the product did and I had absolutely no idea. Put yourself in their shoes for a second. The people in front of you have been working long and hard on a project that they probably believe in. They want to find someone that is just as energized as them to be able to help build the product. With this in mind, I would research as much as I could about their product and in particular, ask questions on why certain decisions and features were made. Most likely they were the ones that built it.

Probe the first interview to prepare for the second

The first call that you get from a company is usually from a non-technical recruiter. Remember that engineers have their own work to do and so they are really trying to decide if it is worth their time to even see you. In that interview, I recommend that you ask them what are the exact technology stacks that the team uses.

Example Questions

• Since python was on the job req, do you guys have a django backend?
• Do you guys work in Angular or React? What is the frontend built with?
• How is the infrastructure handled? Is it aws, azure, google?
• Is there any container orchestration? Kubernetes? Nomad?

Once you have a grasp of what all of this is, you can plan out what type of questions that they will ask you.

I hope you enjoyed how I approach the behavior side of the interview. I’ll put a link here for part 2 after I write it. In part 2 I’ll be going over how I like to prepare for the technical side of the interview. Thanks for reading!