Don’t Make This Mistake in Your Software Engineer Job Interview
In a software engineer job interview, your main priority is to help the interviewer or hiring manager visualize what kind of employee you’ll be at their company and how your previous experience and achievements make you great.
Allan Mac Gregor is an engineering manager who regularly interviews developers and software engineers. As he told it, these are his top tips, lightly edited and republished from HackerNoon with permission.
One of the things that I still find surprising after years of hiring and interviewing engineers is how poorly software engineers prepare on average for behavioral job interviews.
As a hiring manager, I’m looking for software engineers that are flexible, able to perform under pressure, and above all, adapt to their environment. Assessing soft skills is a crucial part of my evaluation process.
Common behavioral questions for a software engineer job interview
In a software engineer job interview, chances are you will be asked one or more of these questions:
- Tell me about a challenging problem you had to solve within the last year.
- Share a recent example of when you dealt with conflict within your team and explain how you handled it.
- Walk me through a difficult bug you had to resolve.
Behavioral questions generally start with the following phrases:
- Tell me about a time when…
- Describe a situation when…
- Give me an example of…
- Think about an instance when…
- Tell me how you approached…
Most people do a decent job answering these questions, but programmers sometimes fumble.
How to prepare for the behavioral software engineer job interview
These are my top four tips to avoid fumbling and nail the behavioral job interview:
- Write a script.
- Have specific stories in mind.
- Practice. Practice makes perfect.
- Slow down. Don’t answer too quickly.
Behavioral job interview questions are fairly predictable. Putting the work ahead of time and practicing a good narrative will help you make a great impression and stand out in the job interview.
The thing most developers get wrong in job interviews
Most developers and software engineers don’t do enough research into the company.
I cannot stress this enough: Before you prepare for anything, research the company. You’ll be asked why you’re applying for the role and your interest in the company.
Many candidates give generic answers that could apply to hundreds of other companies; at worst, some candidates will come so poorly prepared that they won’t even have the faintest idea of what the company actually does.
As a candidate, you want to show the job interviewer that you’re excited about their company and tackling the problem. Know the answers to these questions:
- What does the company do?
- Why are you interested in the company?
- What excites you about the industry?
- What differentiates the company from the competition?
- What are the company’s core values?
The bottom line
In this competitive job market, you need to show that you have both the skills as a software engineer and how you will be a good team member. Turn the job interviewer into your advocate at the company by making a connection during the behavioral job interviews. Don’t forget to ask questions about them, the company and the product or service. Your conversation will be natural and become a genuine two-way exchange with active listening.