Four Tips to Help Crush It in Your Tech Interview

I get a ton of questions from candidates asking for interview tips. How should I dress? What do I talk about? Well here are some easy-to-follow tips for your upcoming in-person interview to help you land that sweet gig.

1) Lose the suit dude! Only tech workers from the 1990's wear formal clothing. In fact, not only are jeans an absolute must but preferably a T-shirt and black-rimmed glasses, like this guy. He's definitely sick at software development.

Notice the bike? Yeah, you should be biking to work like him but if you're not I guess that's still OK if you can make up for it with a cool snarky T-shirt or some neatly-trimmed stubble. 

2) Be sure to make snide comments about Trump to break the ice. Everyone likes a good laugh!

3) Casually drop in a reference about craft beer. Minimally you should be touring lots of craft breweries, and ideally brewing your own beer at this point. It's 2016 for Pete's sake. 

4) Cut off the interviewer at some point mid-question and bust out your Mac. (You do have a Mac...right?). Make sure it is adorned with stickers from all the craft breweries you have toured recently. Open it up and just let the code rip. 

Deciding Whether to Accept

So now that you've got the job, you're asking yourself, "how do I know if this is a place I want to work?" 

Here are some tips to help guide you make this life-altering decision

• Ask if they allow pets in the office. If not, the company is definitely not forward-thinking. DEAL BREAKER.
• How is the office space? Are there hardwood floors? How about light fixtures? If there aren't cool light fixtures tell them thanks but no thanks. And if they don't have an open concept floor plan, then run, don't walk in the other direction. Offices with doors are for the uncollaborative.

• What do their whiteboards look like? The tech team may have shown you their whiteboard with fancy tech diagrams and such as seen here:
  

But just having a whiteboard isn't enough, so don't be fooled. Is it surrounded by glass so people can see it from the hallways? (Sorry, not hallway, that's an outdated concept. Adjacent space is a less offensive term. Sorry guys! I mean guys and girls. Sorry again!) Are there also sticky notes? Cause if there aren't it's a sure sign that the team isn't disruptive enough. A real whiteboard should also look like this:

So there you have it, your complete guide to how to nail the interview and what to do with that job offer. You're welcome. 

Four Tips to Help Crush It in Your Tech Interview

1) Lose the suit dude! Only tech workers from the 1990's wear formal clothing. In fact, not only are jeans an absolute must but preferably a T-shirt and black-rimmed glasses, like this guy. He's definitely sick at software development.

Notice the bike? Yeah, you should be biking to work like him but if you're not I guess that's still OK if you can make up for it with a cool snarky T-shirt or some neatly-trimmed stubble. 

2) Be sure to make snide comments about Trump to break the ice. Everyone likes a good laugh!

3) Casually drop in a reference about craft beer. Minimally you should be touring lots of craft breweries, and ideally brewing your own beer at this point. It's 2016 for Pete's sake. 

4) Cut off the interviewer at some point mid-question and bust out your Mac. (You do have a Mac...right?). Make sure it is adorned with stickers from all the craft breweries you have toured recently. Open it up and just let the code rip. 

Deciding Whether to Accept

So now that you've got the job, you're asking yourself, "how do I know if this is a place I want to work?" 

Here are some tips to help guide you make this life-altering decision

• Ask if they allow pets in the office. If not, the company is definitely not forward-thinking. DEAL BREAKER.
• How is the office space? Are there hardwood floors? How about light fixtures? If there aren't cool light fixtures tell them thanks but no thanks. And if they don't have an open concept floor plan, then run, don't walk in the other direction. Offices with doors are for the uncollaborative.

• What do their whiteboards look like? The tech team may have shown you their whiteboard with fancy tech diagrams and such as seen here:
  

But just having a whiteboard isn't enough, so don't be fooled. Is it surrounded by glass so people can see it from the hallways? (Sorry, not hallway, that's an outdated concept. Adjacent space is a less offensive term. Sorry guys! I mean guys and girls. Sorry again!) Are there also sticky notes? Cause if there aren't it's a sure sign that the team isn't disruptive enough. A real whiteboard should also look like this:

So there you have it, your complete guide to how to nail the interview and what to do with that job offer. You're welcome. 

Four Common Misconceptions about Tech Recruiters

One of the challenges recruiters have is that few people understand what we do. I think it's only recently, in fact, that even in tech circles people have started to truly understand the role of a tech recruiter, maybe in the last 5-7 years as the job market has fully rebounded, and even there we still aren't quite understood.

Take your typical barbeque or whatever since it's Spring outside and outdoorsy and stuff:

"So Ben, what do you do?"
"I am a technical recruiter"
"Oh, so what is that like a headhunter?"
"Yeah I guess, although I find that term weirdly offensive actually. It makes us sound like wild savages I think."
"Huh."

Usually it's more like:

"I am a technical recruiter."
"Oh." (blank stare)
"Yeah, I basically hire software engineers, cause they're super in demand these days."
"Hmm. And Kim what do you do?"
"I'm an anesthesiologist"
"Wow! How about you Derek?"
"I'm actually an attorney"
Me: (God dammit)

We're like auto-mechanics, if auto-mechanics were constantly jamming up your inbox with messages. Like, 90% of the time you'd be thinking "leave me the hell alone, auto-mechanic." But when you need one, damn it's good to have one or two you can trust, right? But you really don't want to need one. But you inevitably will one day. Muhahah.

Onto the Misconceptions:

• Corporate Tech Recruiters are paper pushers. A lot of people, even inside recruiting, see corporate tech recruiters as glorified admins. They seem to think our job is to simply take candidates who apply to req's, coordinate the interviews, send out the benefits and initiate the background checks. Maybe that used to be the case but generally it is a myth. The truth is, most corporate recruiters I know are highly intelligent and have complex work to do, not the least of which in many cases is to find non-active job seekers from scratch. It's actually pretty competitive too, when it comes to finding good software engineers. And it also doesn't pay like an admin job. 
• Recruiters are pushy and annoying. Maybe the unsuccessful ones are. I don't know anyone who has made it very far in this business, though, being Vin Diesel from boiler room. Those wild Hollywood sales stunts rarely work in the real world and the fact is, nobody likes the hard sell. The hard sell died in the 80's along with suspenders, which I think is what Wall Street types used to wear a lot. 
• Most technical recruiters don't know the first thing about the job they're recruiting for. Unfair and untrue. At least 50% of us know what we are doing.
• Do all technical recruiters have STEM backgrounds? Actually you'd be surprised. While most of us do come from Math, Science or Technology backgrounds in undergrad, there are a few recruiters who may be wayward liberal arts majors. You could almost say those few recruiters stumbled into the profession after wasting their degrees on majors like Sociology, Psych, Anthropology or History.

 If you think of any others, definitely chime in with your thoughts.