/suck-less-at-interviewing

Suck Less at Interviewing

Interviewing is hard, but there’s good news: most interviewers use a predictable set of questions, and we know the best way to answer them. Join us to learn the secret!

Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Tell an interviewer about yourself
  • Demonstrate the STAR technique

The Question Beneath The Question

Part of getting better at interviewing is realizing that there's a lot of theater involved with it. A lot of the seemingly straight-forward questions you get asked are actually meant to reveal more complex things about you. You'll do a lot better if you address the real question being asked.

Some common interview questions, and the question you should actually be answering:

Question Real Question
Tell me about yourself! How does this job fit into your story?
Why do you want to work here? Why should we hire you?
Tell me about a time when you... How do you think through problems?
How did you hear about this position? Do you know anyone here?
What do you know about the company? Could you bothered to learn anything about us?
What's your biggest weakness? Can you take over this interview for me?
Where do you see yourself in 5 years? What's your career plan?
What are your salary expectations? Can I trick you into low-balling yourself?
Why did you leave your last job? Are you hard to work with?

Always keep your answers brief unless they ask you to expand. You do more damage than good by over-explaining an answer.

Let's expand on the first question: "Tell me about yourself." Your answer should:

  • Should be brief
  • Include what you do (be aligned to the position!)
  • Some relevant professional experience (aligned to the position!)
  • A recent accomplishment (aligned to the position!)
  • 1-2 things you like to do in your free time (something unique and memorable)
  • An expression of gratitude for the opportunity

The STAR Technique

STAR is a framework that helps you tell stories about things you've done. You use it to answer questions like:

  • Tell me about a time when you (demonstrated something)?
  • What's the project that you feel the most (adjective) about?

STAR stands for:

  1. Situation - What's the context of this story?
  2. Task - What challenge did you have to overcome?
  3. Action - What did you do to overcome it?
  4. Result - What was the result of your work?

This framework helps your stories stay on track and be easier for people to follow. For example, if you're asked "Tell me about a time you overcame a challenge at work," you say:

  1. "The situation was that I was working as a new engineer on a dev team, and had a we were trying to hit a deadline for a new app campaign. 3 days before the deadline, the client changed a bunch of important details about the app."
  2. "The task we had to do was hit our deadline, and accomodate the changes. There wasn't enough time to do everything, and we also wanted to maintain a sustainable pace on the team."
  3. "The action I took was to implement some static versions of the things they wanted that didn't scale especially well, but allowed us to hit the deadline and bought us the time to refactor the app correctly after the deadline. I hard-coded some values instead of pulling them from the database, which allowed us to move a lot faster."
  4. "The result was that we were able to accomodate the last-minute changes, hit the deadline, and maintain our positive culture."

Some important things to note:

  • Each of these should take about the same amount of time- don't linger too long on the situation and the task
  • It's really common to not clearly dilineate between the situation, the task, and the action:
    • The situation is context- the company you worked for, the composition of the team, etc.
    • The task is a defined problem that needs to be solved
    • The action is a solution the problem that you came up with or implemented
  • Do these in order, and don't double-back- it's confusing if you're talking about your solution, and then start giving more context
  • Don't get too caught up in the details. The stories need to be true, but they don't necessarily need to be factual. The point is for the interviewer to learn something about you, not to fact-check your memoir.
  • Don't be afraid to literally say the words "situation," "task," "action," and "result." You don't have to be sneaky about using this technique- knowing that someone is using STAR to explain something doesn't reduce its efficacy.
  • Don't leave off the result! There should be some positive outcome, even if the outcome is that you learned something valuable

Assessment

  1. Answer the question: "Tell me about yourself" for a job of your choice
  2. Use the STAR technique to answer: "Tell me about a time when you overcame a challenge at work"