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What is your job interview ritual?
(lemm.ee)
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I have a couple. The first one is the easiest. Absolutely not a god damn thing. I just chill. That's gotten me offers. That works for me because when I over think it or over prepare, the part of me that's actually good kind gets buried under all the shit I'm trying to remember.
I've never once had slamming leetcode shit do a god damn thing for me.
For the "culture fit" aka behavioral interviews, they almost always just ask you to describe some projects, and then poke around so to speak. Sometimes they ask dumbass questions but it's fine, it happens. This is where preparation is helpful if you're anything like me, because for me, once a project/feature is done, it's on to the next thing. I don't spend time writing down my accomplishments and I think it's gauche. But if I did, it would be very helpful for these interviews. What I've begun doing since the market has been so garbage is organizing using a note app (logseq). I make an outline with sections for types of projects or type of positive attribute the project/task would showcase. then I write myself a little story (they basically just want to hear a story that confirms what they're looking for). I have examples for being able to "hit the ground running", mentorship/leadership, and projects. For projects, my most comfortable flow is to describe the business practice before hand, the goal or reasoning behind provisioning the feature/change, the part I had in it, and the impact it had. Here's the trick. Just make it up if you don't remember. Embellish. Don't be moron because they will ask clarifying questions. for example they love to hear concrete specific numbers. They're not gonna check but it adds that extra something. Just btw make sure you're very comfortable with the embellishments you make. Like don't make up that you invented a compiler for rust that improve efficiency by %2,000. But don't diminish your own accomplishments just because every last detail isn't crystal clear to you several months or years after the fact.