So, I have been interviewing a lot of candidates lately for a position at CNLP and thought I would share a few thoughts on things that might help people when they interview.

1. Come prepared for the interview. Be prepared to talk in-depth about what you did at previous jobs/internships. If we ask for details on a technical aspect of what you did, be prepared to explain what you did in detail without blabbering on about it.
2. Don’t say you did something on your resume when you really didn’t. Don’t say you know some technology when all you did is read the first chapter of a book on it. It is almost always painfully obvious within a minute or two that you are not telling the truth because you can’t recall any of the details of what you did. For instance, don’t say you know Struts just because you worked on application where the project used Struts but you never touched a configuration file or wrote an Action class than don’t say you did.
3. Here’s a tip for those fresh out of undergraduate or master’s program: when asked to rate your Java skills on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best, please, please, please (I am begging you) do not say you are a 6 or 7 or 8. You are not a 6, 7 or 8.  If you truly are at that level, please explain why you think you are.  And your reason had better be because you have written more than one fairly complex program with multiple developers over several months.
4. Show an interest in your career choice.  I don’t want people who just want a job.  I don’t expect you to give your first-born either, but at least show you have more than a pulse.
5. Show up on time (and that doesn’t mean 20 minutes early, either)
6. Ask questions.  And not just the standard “Please tell me more about the position”.  Do some background research on the potential job.
7. Show me you’re not afraid to stand up in front of 4 or 5 people and work through a problem, explaining your answers as you go along.  Show me you aren’t afraid to ask for help.  We sometimes give out pretty hard problems with the sole intent of working with you to solve the problem.  There really isn’t a right answer.  We just want to see how you think and how you would collaborate with us.

Hope these tips are useful.  Please feel free to add your own.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 7:29 am and is filed under Misc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.