IT interviewers: fuck you

Contracts require a significantly different soft skillset at interview. And before and after it, for that matter. And a basic understanding of the legal landscape. What follows is just me thinking out loud; it may be useless to you.

My success rate at interview hovers around 50%, and I'm missing some fairly significant technical skills I really should have (front-end is a foreign country, and they do things differently there). I don't say this to boast (I recently had a three month dry spell that got me pretty nervous) but rather to support my advice:

Job hunting is a sales process, not a technical process, and most of us don't have sales experience. You've got a sales funnel, you shovel leads in at the top, and eventually a gig pops out the bottom. Thinking of it as a sales process might free you up to step outside what people think of as "the interview process" - do follow-ups! Cultivate personal relationships! Control the meeting agenda! Advertise!

Be comfortable losing three quarters of the leads at each step of the funnel - this is normal. I actively reject a lot of leads earlier in the process (I don't want your no-name company on my CV, I don't do technical tests, I don't do agencies, etc etc) and I think that winnowing gives me a better success rate at the bottom of the funnel.

Your CV is a marketing document, a response to an RfP (this doesn't seem to be a problem for you).

Your interview is a sales pitch. This is where you're doing something wrong (and to be clear, it's you doing something wrong, not the customer - you're the salesman, this is all on you). But that's ok, it just means your funnel needs a little tweaking because you're losing too many leads at this point. Rejecting obvious bad fits earlier in the process may actually work for you. Ditto considering a larger geographic area (I'm open to the whole of England and Wales).

My approach at the interview stage is to identify the problems the client has (which means I have to question the client, not the other way around), then explain how I offer a solution (preferably with supporting examples culled from my work history - think of them as war stories, and have a bunch memorised so they're easy to call on). A successful interview, for me, is one where I've broken out of the "they ask a question, I answer it" pattern, and gotten closer to a back-and-forth conversation where we figure out how to solve their problems together. This is a very analytical, techie approach to sales, and there are probably better ways of doing it, but this works for me.

On whiteboard questions: your goal isn't to solve the problem on the whiteboard, that's only secondary. Think about how programmers use whiteboards in their jobs. They use them to sketch solutions for other programmers, and to collaborate. If you can get the interviewer to collaborate with you on a solution - if the pen starts going back and forth between you while you sketch out possible solutions - I guarantee you the job's in the bag. You've proved you're someone they can collaborate with, which is the clearest possible indicator that you'll be a good team member. How to get the interviewer out of their seat, how to get the pen going back and forth between you, that's the real problem you're trying to solve in a whiteboard exercise.

On personal fit: the question in the back of the interviewer's head is "can I stand to spend more time with this person than I spend with my spouse for the next three years of my life?" You need to get over this "I can't be at ease for 90 minutes because capitalism" mental block and just do it. Have you considered interview coaching and practice interviews? The first might get you honest feedback, the second might put you at ease.

/r/unitedkingdom Thread Parent