Interviewing Again After All This Time

Then and now

Twenty years ago you walked in, sat across a table, and somebody had your résumé on paper with things highlighted. If they wanted more people in the room, more people came into the room.

Now it's a Teams window. You can't see what they're looking at. And instead of one interview, it's a loop: several rounds, sometimes all in one day, each with a different purpose and often a different person. The good companies will tell you ahead of time who you're meeting and what each round is for. Read that email carefully.

At the end of the day you're still talking to people. But the mechanics changed while you weren't looking. Here's what to expect.

The coding screen

Before the loop, there's usually a gate: a timed coding challenge, often on a third-party site, sometimes automated. Fifteen minutes, a problem, go.

They're looking for data structures. One I got: you're in the middle of a maze given as a grid of ones and zeros, find your way out. Try that with a pile of while and if statements and good luck. With a tree or a linked list, it's easy.

If it's been a while, this is where to spend your study time. There are free coding-challenge sites; some companies send you a private problem on those same sites. Find one you like and do a few every day.

When you write it: small, clean functions, not one big block. Talk through what each function is for before you fill it in. And use the language you're strongest in, not the one you think they want. If you're rusty in Python, don't do it in Python. You'll look like a beginner who lied about their experience.

The personality round

Usually one person, and they're gauging two things.

First, do you answer in STAR: the situation, the task, the action you took, and the result. They'll ask STAR questions, and they want to hear that shape back.

Second, how you handle being pushed. They will make you a little uncomfortable on purpose, because work is uncomfortable. Do you shut down? Do you get angry? Do you hang up? They need to know before they hire you.

Then there's the weakness question. "My weakness is I work too hard" is not a weakness. It's a strength wearing a costume, and they've heard it a thousand times. There's no wrong answer here except a dishonest one. Have a real one.

The résumé deep-dive

They'll tell you it's a résumé review. It's not. They already have your résumé. They don't need you to read it back.

What they're testing is whether it's real. If you lived it, you can talk about any line off the top of your head and fill in the parts that aren't written down. If you made it up, you'll have to look at the page. That's what they're watching for.

Keep your résumé honest and this round is the easiest one.

Whiteboarding and system design

A common one: design a parking garage. Don't do the three-minute version to show how fast you are. You'll miss half of it. Start at the top, go big, and talk the entire time. Ten people given the same assignment will design ten different things; they don't care much what you draw. They care why. Your reasoning, your judgment calls, out loud.

If they use a drawing tool, install it beforehand and practice on it. If they'll let you use a physical whiteboard on camera, consider it. A small one you can hold up is faster than scrolling around a screen, and you can wipe it and keep going. Some interviewers quietly prefer it. They did call it whiteboarding.

The camera

You're on camera for all of this. Before the first call:

Check the background. Clean, professional, and if you can, real. Mine tells you I've got kids without showing them, and it has the books I've kept through my career, on purpose. Your background says something about you. Decide what.

If you use a virtual background, make it a personal image, not the canned one.

And here's the thing about being on camera: they can only see what's in frame. I kept a whiteboard on the wall to my right with the terms I always blank on. Database consistency, partition tolerance, Redis, Mongo, Kafka, Kubernetes. For a while I taped notes to the side of the monitor. It looks like I'm looking at the screen. Find where you're weak, and if you can't study past it, give yourself a chance. You dont' work off the top of your head, don't interview that way.

Any tool, before you need it

Whatever software they might ask you to use, have it installed and be comfortable in it before the call. And use what wasn't available to me the first time around: screenshot your practice work, paste it into whichever AI you use, and ask what it thinks. Feedback on demand, at midnight, for free.

Next: what I've learned from the other side of the table, now that I'm the one asking the questions.