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Think Geek to Combat Interview Nerves
July 23, 2013
By Edward Guiness
As a programmer I’ve been going to interviews either as the candidate or as
the interviewer for more than two decades. I’ve organised and attended
literally hundreds of interviews in the UK, India, New Zealand and Australia
. I’ve experienced and witnessed more interview nerves than most
programmers, and I’ve seen nerves undermine the performance of promising
candidates time after time.
If you turn to the popular “coding interview” books you find a lot of
advice pertaining to graph traversal algorithms, linked lists, relational
database normalization, and so forth. You don’t find much advice for
programmers suffering from nerves, the interview mind-killer.
Here are some of the things I’ve learned, as a programmer, that help me
combat nerves at the programming interview.
1. Realise that most hiring managers were once human
Interviewers might sometimes act like wounded Klingons but that is usually
because they are almost as uncomfortable holding the interview as you are
attending it. Programmers who are turned into hiring managers can find it
hard to adjust. I know this first hand. What happens is they read a few
random articles on interviewing and conclude that they need the interview -
and their behaviour - to be structured, focused, predictable, and basically
unpleasant.
Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. How would you feel if you were
torn from the comforting glow of your favorite IDE and thrust into the role
of interviewer? There are no compiler warnings to guide you through the
human interaction of an interview. It’s just you, your notepad, and them.
So this is my first tip: realise that the interview might be just as
uncomfortable as you, and look for opportunities to put your interviewer at
ease.
2. There are worse fates than not getting the job
You might have read my first tip and thought wait, that’s nuts, this person
can ruin my life and you want me to put them at ease?
Put the interview and its outcome into perspective. What is the worst
possible outcome? If you think not being offered the job is the worst thing
that can happen, take it from me that it isn’t.
Imagine landing a job you soon come to hate, working with people who are
actively out to undermine your work, working for a boss who wants to make
you a scapegoat, and feeling stuck because you work in an area with few
other opportunities. You will be miserable, and you will wish you’d never
been offered the job. If I had more space to write about this I would tell
of my own story, a year in which I suffered almost every nasty thing that
can happen to a programmer, technically, financially, and socially.
So my second tip is this: don’t be afraid of missing out on a job, there
are far worse things that can happen to you.
If you need a metaphor, think of the Sarlacc from Return of the Jedi; "In
his belly, you will find a new definition of pain and suffering as you are
slowly digested over a thousand years." Ouch.
3. Use your passion to combat nerves
Think back to the last time you debated something important with a fellow
programmer. Maybe it was a heated disagreement over whether code should be
formatted with spaces or tabs, or perhaps you couldn’t believe the
stupidity of anyone who would prefer Emacs over Vim, or Notepad over Visual
Studio. I bet you weren’t nervous while having this debate. I guarantee you
did not tremble unless it was because of your nerd rage.
The same trick works at the interview; focus on the technology, or the
details of the job, or on understanding the questions your interviewer asks
you. Focus on important things with all the concentration that your mighty
programmer’s brain can muster. If you concentrate on the interesting things
, or even better, the interesting and controversial things, then you will
forget all about being nervous, and you might even enjoy the interview.
So my third tip is: concentrate on interesting things at the interview to
distract yourself and banish your nerves.
4. Work with the interviewer, not against them
The realisation that you don’t want a job that sucks (see tip 2) should
make you see the interview in a different light. Instead of trying to sell
yourself to the interviewer you will want to find out as much as you can
about the job so you can judge for yourself whether or not you want it.Ace
the Programming Interview
If it was me, I would want to look at their source code, talk about how they
use their CI server, and - once I’d established a comfortable rapport with
my interviewer - I would ask for candid opinions of the best and worst
aspects of the job.
The interviewer is your best chance of getting real insight into the reality
of the job. If you can get alongside them at the interview, both
figuratively and literally, then you can both work together to find out how
well the job fits you. If you stay on the other side of the table then your
insight will be limited.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to work toward a comfortable
rapport with your interviewer. It’s the key to an effective interview, and
it’s something I cover in more detail in Ace the Programming Interview.
So my fourth and final tip (for this blog post) is this: establish a rapport
with your interviewer so you work with them to see how well the job matches
your skills, experience and personality.
July 23, 2013
By Edward Guiness
As a programmer I’ve been going to interviews either as the candidate or as
the interviewer for more than two decades. I’ve organised and attended
literally hundreds of interviews in the UK, India, New Zealand and Australia
. I’ve experienced and witnessed more interview nerves than most
programmers, and I’ve seen nerves undermine the performance of promising
candidates time after time.
If you turn to the popular “coding interview” books you find a lot of
advice pertaining to graph traversal algorithms, linked lists, relational
database normalization, and so forth. You don’t find much advice for
programmers suffering from nerves, the interview mind-killer.
Here are some of the things I’ve learned, as a programmer, that help me
combat nerves at the programming interview.
1. Realise that most hiring managers were once human
Interviewers might sometimes act like wounded Klingons but that is usually
because they are almost as uncomfortable holding the interview as you are
attending it. Programmers who are turned into hiring managers can find it
hard to adjust. I know this first hand. What happens is they read a few
random articles on interviewing and conclude that they need the interview -
and their behaviour - to be structured, focused, predictable, and basically
unpleasant.
Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. How would you feel if you were
torn from the comforting glow of your favorite IDE and thrust into the role
of interviewer? There are no compiler warnings to guide you through the
human interaction of an interview. It’s just you, your notepad, and them.
So this is my first tip: realise that the interview might be just as
uncomfortable as you, and look for opportunities to put your interviewer at
ease.
2. There are worse fates than not getting the job
You might have read my first tip and thought wait, that’s nuts, this person
can ruin my life and you want me to put them at ease?
Put the interview and its outcome into perspective. What is the worst
possible outcome? If you think not being offered the job is the worst thing
that can happen, take it from me that it isn’t.
Imagine landing a job you soon come to hate, working with people who are
actively out to undermine your work, working for a boss who wants to make
you a scapegoat, and feeling stuck because you work in an area with few
other opportunities. You will be miserable, and you will wish you’d never
been offered the job. If I had more space to write about this I would tell
of my own story, a year in which I suffered almost every nasty thing that
can happen to a programmer, technically, financially, and socially.
So my second tip is this: don’t be afraid of missing out on a job, there
are far worse things that can happen to you.
If you need a metaphor, think of the Sarlacc from Return of the Jedi; "In
his belly, you will find a new definition of pain and suffering as you are
slowly digested over a thousand years." Ouch.
3. Use your passion to combat nerves
Think back to the last time you debated something important with a fellow
programmer. Maybe it was a heated disagreement over whether code should be
formatted with spaces or tabs, or perhaps you couldn’t believe the
stupidity of anyone who would prefer Emacs over Vim, or Notepad over Visual
Studio. I bet you weren’t nervous while having this debate. I guarantee you
did not tremble unless it was because of your nerd rage.
The same trick works at the interview; focus on the technology, or the
details of the job, or on understanding the questions your interviewer asks
you. Focus on important things with all the concentration that your mighty
programmer’s brain can muster. If you concentrate on the interesting things
, or even better, the interesting and controversial things, then you will
forget all about being nervous, and you might even enjoy the interview.
So my third tip is: concentrate on interesting things at the interview to
distract yourself and banish your nerves.
4. Work with the interviewer, not against them
The realisation that you don’t want a job that sucks (see tip 2) should
make you see the interview in a different light. Instead of trying to sell
yourself to the interviewer you will want to find out as much as you can
about the job so you can judge for yourself whether or not you want it.Ace
the Programming Interview
If it was me, I would want to look at their source code, talk about how they
use their CI server, and - once I’d established a comfortable rapport with
my interviewer - I would ask for candid opinions of the best and worst
aspects of the job.
The interviewer is your best chance of getting real insight into the reality
of the job. If you can get alongside them at the interview, both
figuratively and literally, then you can both work together to find out how
well the job fits you. If you stay on the other side of the table then your
insight will be limited.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to work toward a comfortable
rapport with your interviewer. It’s the key to an effective interview, and
it’s something I cover in more detail in Ace the Programming Interview.
So my fourth and final tip (for this blog post) is this: establish a rapport
with your interviewer so you work with them to see how well the job matches
your skills, experience and personality.