geekitarian

Softball questions  are questions the interviewer asks to try to find out about your personality, your history, your level of enthusiasm, and your experience.  While technical questions evaluate your skills or your knowledge, softball questions are meant to have you talk about less quantifiable abilities.  An interviewer might ask a dozen or more softball questions to determine what you're like outside of an interview room. The word to remember for interviews, especially the softball questions, is: STORIES .  People who are good storytellers tend to be good interviewees. Technical questions are important - you need the skills to be able to do the job.  However, often interviewers are convinced by your answers to softball questions - then they spend the rest of the interview trying to convince themselves why they should hire you, instead of spending the rest of the interview trying to convince themselves why they shouldn't. A great strategy for prepa...

In the most common case, when a hiring manager looks at your resume, it’s the only time that he’ll (or she, there are a few women in this business, at least three or four) even see your name, or anything else about you, for that matter.  That means that you’ve only got one shot at catching his (or her) attention. The best thing to do when you’re writing your resume for a hiring manager is try to think like somebody who is reviewing resumes – somebody who is trying to identify a good candidate to administer a phone screen or to bring in for an interview.  I’ll give you some points to help you put yourself in this person’s shoes. Either you’re terribly busy because your boss has unrealistic expectations, or you’d just like to get back to watching YouTube and you don’t want to be bothered by reviewing resumes. You’re hoping to hire somebody to help alleviate the load caused by previously mentioned unrealistic expectations (or who you can order around and will do all of th...

What the interviewer is really asking: Can you recognize weakness in yourself?  Can you overcome failures and learn from them? How to answer: I love this so much more than the “What is your biggest weakness?” question because it provides so much more insight.  The interviewer is getting the same information, but they are asking the question in a way that people can give an honest response without bashing themselves.  It also is universal.  Everybody has failed at something. Be careful when you’re answering this question, because you don’t want to look like the sole reason for the failure; however, even if you are, highlight how you learned something from the experience.  You want to make it sound like you are able to take failures and stop the same thing from happening again.  Tell a story.  Interviews are a great place for stories.  Emphasize what you learned from the experience and talk about how you'd prevent the same failur...

What the interviewer is really asking: It's equally likely that the interviewer is asking you, "Can you see weakness in yourself?" as it is that the interviewer is asking you, "Will you outwardly bash yourself and convince me not to hire you?" How to answer this question: Jokingly say "I'm an obsessive perfectionist," and try to laugh.  It will open everybody up. Honestly, this is probably the biggest BS question that people ask.  I understand what the interviewer is trying to find out by asking it, but there are MANY better questions that also get the same results, and can get the same results with a more honest response. Regardless, almost everybody asks it, so have something prepared that sounds vaguely like a weakness but really is a thinly veiled strength.  Something like, “If I have time, I really have a hard time letting go of a difficult problem,” can sound almost like a weakness but really isn’t. Another strategy for this...

When I say networking, what I’m talking about doesn’t have anything to do with plugging Cat5e cables into NICs.  Personal or social networking is a great way to find a job and to get an interview.  The best leads you will get will be due to knowing somebody who knows somebody. The reason why networking is so important is because the interview process is inherently flawed.  Think of it – you ask somebody to come in, at their best dressed, most prepared, and likely at the top of their game to ask a few hypothetical questions with little or no consequences for wrong answers.  Networking removes some of the mystery.  Instead of hearing the best possible description of a situation (“My application was responsible for 2 million dollars in revenue!”), you can hear the whole story (“That application was responsible for 4 million dollars in lawsuits!”). A personal reference is likely worth more than anything you can put in your resume (except for maybe “Nobel Pr...

What the interviewer is really asking: Can you figure out the computational complexity of a situation, algorithm, or process? How to answer: It might seem like a great idea to just memorize the Big O notation of every algorithm or process you've ever heard of, but this is going to be a lot of memorization and isn't going to be as impressive as reasoning your way through a problem. Big O notation is simply a way to quickly describe how efficient some computing code is.  O(n) means that the process runs in time proportional to the amount of information processed; O(n 2 ) means that the process runs in time proportional to the amount of information processed, squared.  So, for instance, if a O(n) process is processing 10,000 pieces of data, this process might take 10,000 milliseconds (or 10 seconds) assuming that each datum requires 1 millisecond of processing; a comparable O(n 2 ) process would take over a day to process the same set of information. An algorithm th...

Technical interviewers are notorious for asking a question with dozens of potential right answers, but wanting to hear only one of these answers for a completely arbitrary reason.  If the interviewer asks you a question, and you give an answer (that you know to be right), and they’re still pushing for a response, look for any hints they might be giving you to lead you into a certain answer.   If you're confused on the question, it's totally understandable.  You've already answered the question, and in a way that any sane person would find acceptable and correct - but these aren't normal, sane people, they're geeks.  Try to think through the problem from the beginning, and don't be afraid to ask if there's a direction you should be moving in.  Unfortunately, the typical interviewer in this situation is the kind of person who is going to answer every question with a question (when asked, "Am I missing something?" they will respond with, "I ...

The first rule I like to lay down about resumes is, “Be Brief.”  But, if there’s a second rule, it’s, “Be Honest.”  Lots of people will tell you that embellishing on your resume is common practice, but I don’t think those people are trying to get a job programming C++.  You should state what you have done and what you can do realistically.  Lying on your resume will only get you into trouble later.  It might get you a phone screen or an interview, but it will set the expectations for those to a much higher (and probably unrealistic) standard.  Interviewers ask gurus different questions than they ask entry-level programmers. Some people like to put lots of technologies that they’re only vaguely familiar with on their resumes.  This may or may not be a good idea. Early in my career, somebody once gave me some interesting interview advice.  This person told me, “If an interviewer asks you if you can do something or if you know a certain te...

What the interviewer is really asking: What motivates you?  What interests you?  Are you really a geek, or are you just pretending and going to tell me something like 18th century English literature? How to answer: For this question, it's much less important which class you say; what's most important is how you justify it.  The interviewer is trying to find out what gets you excited.  Be enthusiastic.  Talk about what you learned.  You can go an extra mile and make it memorable with a quirky story about a project you did for the class. Whatever you do, don't justify your choice with, "Because it was easy." Surprisingly enough, most employers aren't looking for employees who don't like to work hard.

What the interviewer is really asking: When people ask this question, generally, they’re not interested in you reading your resume back to them.  They have it in front of them, so either they didn’t read it (a real possibility, especially if they’re very busy), or have forgotten.  This is sometimes used as a stall tactic.  However, it might be that what the interviewer really wants to hear is what YOU think is worth mentioning. How to answer: Be prepared to talk about what you've done and what you've worked on.  Don't talk forever, but spend a minute or two on each of the points that you consider important and relevant.  Typically an interviewer will ask for clarification or more information on areas that spark interest. Personally, nothing drives me crazier than when I ask this question and somebody just reads their resume back to me.   DO NOT read your resume or discuss every single bullet point on it.  Not only is this boring, but it makes y...

If you learn one thing about resumes from this blog, I hope that it’s that they don’t need to be 12 pages long.  Seriously.  I cringe every time I pick up a resume that’s more than 2 pages.  I just don’t even want to read it.  I'm sure that the time you spent 2 hours learning about the differences between ECMAScript and Javascript eight years ago was really important to your career growth, but I'm just too busy to get to the tenth page. There are two schools of thought on resume length.  One school is to keep it simple and digestible.  The other school is to keep a resume long with as many possible buzzwords and information about every single day you’ve ever worked on every single job in your career and include lots of minute details about things that somebody, somewhere might actually notice and care about. I’m a big subscriber to the first school of thought here.  When I’m looking at 50 resumes to fill one position, I am looking at them FAST , be...

Getting a job is hard.  Getting the one you want is even harder. Lots of us got into IT for one reason: To make money.  Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that.  We’re geeks, we like toys, toys cost money, money doesn’t grow on trees or magically appear when we show our abs, so here we are.  We need jobs.  So, it’s quite possible that your dream job might just be any one that pays a six-figure salary. Some of us actually enjoy the practice.  Software development is definitely an interesting career.  It presents lots of opportunities to utilize reasoning and solve unique problems.  Of course, it also means you’ll spend what most people consider an obscene amount of time behind a computer.  If you’re thinking right now, “There’s no such thing as an obscene amount of time to spend behind a computer,” then you’re probably looking at the right field. Your reasons might be altogether different.  You might actually enjoy a specific li...