A common interview mistake to avoid
Don't treat each interview in your loop as a completely separate experience. They're all part of your overall interview, and you should consider them as pieces of the whole.
An on-site interview is really a condensed version of the work environment. You are thrown into a new situation, given challenges, and when you move on to the next challenge we want to see what you've learned.
If we ask you a problem or about a concept that you haven’t heard of before, you should let the interviewer know! They'll explain to you what it is, but then you are expected to build off of that. When you go into the next interview, assume the two interviewers have spoken about you! The second interviewer will bring up things that were discussed in the previous interview when they ask you questions.
Make sense? I know it's confusing, but just keep thinking about it as a condensed work experience. If an interviewer gives you advice or tells you, “for your next interview you may want to communicate your ideas out loud,” then that’s what you should do!
It's not about getting everything right or wrong. It's about taking feedback, learning from your mistakes, and how quickly you can apply that to your next experience, just like it is on the job!
- Janelle
4 Comments
said:
No that makes sense. I've a few interviews OF candidates with our boss and it's not so much "What grade are you, and what do you dream of" but we need to get a feel for a technicians potential.
I mean nobody starting is going to be as experienced as the lead person (Sometimes yes but rarely no) but I think potential counts as well as overall personality.
A person could have a 853 IQ and make every customer in the company and staff member angry. Would upset business I think.
So I would actually expect an interview to be a little trial. I mean if somebody walked in claiming to know basic Exchange but can't run the ESEUTIL.EXE command, one of your interviews would probably show that up. On the same token I suspect if the interviewee was intelligent to say "Hmmm, you know? Not familiar with that but who would I ask to get more info?" Or possibly suggest online resources.
Cheers
yaskil said:
Janelle said "When you go into the next interview, assume the two interviewers have spoken about you! The second interviewer will bring up things that were discussed in the previous interview when they ask you questions."
Is it a good idea to talk about candidates between two interviews? Is there any possibility that talking about candidates may result prejudice. That is a fact that no matter how experienced they are, interviewers are human beings and can be easily affected by their collegues in positive or negative manner. In order to provide healthy interview process I think it is not a good idea to speak about candidates during two interviews. Each interviewer should speak with a candidate with fresh mind. Evaluation should be done at the end of all interviews. Interviewers should talk about candidates after each decides whether to hire them or not, end of the day is good time for that.
No need to say that prejudice not only result missing really great candidates, but also result loss of money and time when you travel far countries to find talents (not only yours but also candidates'). Wrong decisions may affect candidates' thought about your company. Really smart and talented people who is not hired with a wrong decision may think Microsoft is not a great place to work. Also there is a possibility that one of your competitors can hire him/her. All we know that one people can change a lot especially in computer industry.
Kim said:
I will be interviewing for a Tech Support Position in the next month, since this is a non-programming position, will I be required to write a program from scratch on the whiteboard?
Angela said:
I will be interviewing for a Tech Support Position in the next month, since this is a non-programming position, will I be required to write a program from scratch on the whiteboard?