Job Interview Advice for Techies from a Career Counselor

The following excellent interviewing advice comes from career consultant William Varnell via Dice. Darnell does a really nice job of explaining some things that might seem obvious, but are often taken for granted, including the awareness that hiring managers are busy people and if they are interviewing you, then they have evaluated your resume already and believe you have the skills.

What these hiring managers are really trying to discover is your fit. So paying really close attention to what is being told to you by the questions being asked is crucial.

Varnell also gives strong practical advice around two key things:

-Almost every resume bullet point and item should be showing specific, measurable results. -For every bullet point, you need to prepare 90 second summaries on how you achieved these results.

The idea is that hiring managers can see the what on the resume, they want to know how.

The second video deconstructs follow-up questions. Varnell gives a great breakdown of what a hiring manager is telling you by the questions being asked.In technology interviews especially, they often want to know what impact you would have on day one. In many technology job opportunities you are potentially being hired to fix something that is broken or replace someone who did not get the job done.

Learning how to listen for these queues is key. Understanding and being prepared to explain how you would impact and help the team over the first 90 days on the job is also crucial.