I'm preparing to interview for software engineering roles. I heard companies like Salesforce, Square, Uber, LinkedIn and Twilio have one round of their onsite (or at least some portion of the loop) dedicated to discussing your work projects. This is my first time interviewing out of school so I've never participated in a round like this. I'm struggling to prepare for several reasons: 1. The guidelines for communicating effectively about what I've worked on aren't clear to me. How much context is enough for the interviewer to be able to understand the problem? If the project involved many components, I'm not sure which are useful to mention. 2. As I'm preparing descriptions of the work that was done, my contribution, things I would do differently, I fall into a rabbit hole and start spending a lot of time preparing for this. There are so many things I could talk about that each require sharing a certain amount of context. How do I prioritize and manage time? Any tips for preparing for the work history / technical communication / past projects round? Does your company include this in your onsite loop? If so, how much weight does this hold compared to DS/algo, system design, and behavioral?
There are three primary topics that you will be asked about during behavioral: 1. Accomplishments - what impact did your work have 2. Challenges - did you fail and what did you learn 3. Teamwork - how did you motivate and influence your peers, how did you resolve conflicts Almost all behavioral questions are a flavor of one of the above three topics. You need to come up with 5-6 concrete stories for your experience so far, and mould them to the question asked on the fly.
Thank you. Have you been in an interview when the interviewer pointed to something on your resume and said "Tell me about this project"?
Yes, that has happened a few times. You need to be prepared to elaborate comprehensively on any project mentioned in your resume. As cliched as it may sound, the STAR technique is generally useful to structure your communication.