3 Tips To Help You Ace Your Next Technical Interview
I used to be a little nervous about doing technical interviews. Even though I spend much of my free time learning about technology, I’m still afraid that I’ll be perceived as an idiot. To combat this feeling, I have developed several practices to improve my interviewing skills.
1. Review Your Resume
Every interview I’ve been to asks you for examples from your work history. To prepare for these types of questions, review your resume before each interview. For each job on your resume, think about the challenges you faced, what technologies you used, and what you were proud of. Think about stories you can tell from previous jobs to potential employers. Practice telling those stories in your head or in front of a mirror. This exercise primes your brain. When prompted, you will be ready with a story from your work history.
2. Practice Answering Standard Technical Questions
Depending on the technology stack and what job you are interviewing for, most employers ask a list of standard questions. You will get a feel for this list as you do more technical interviews. I’m an ASP.NET Developer, therefore I get questions on the following topics:
- Basic OOP (Encapsulation, Inheritance, Polymorphism)
- Abstract Base Classes vs Interfaces
- The ASP.NET Page Lifecycle
- String Concatenation using StringBuilders
- Basic Design Patterns
- Linq
- Generics
- Job Specific C# and ASP.NET Trivia
- Major features in new releases of ASP.NET (async, await, etc...)
To prepare, you need to research the concept, practice describing the concept, and for more complex questions, come up with relevant examples. For example, when describing OOP concepts, come up with a novel example. Instead of the usual examples of vehicles or animals, try something a little different, like a beer factory or different types of ducks. The key here is to show that you understand the concepts, as opposed to being able to memorize a textbook example.
3. Practice Your Public Speaking Skills
I learned my public speaking skills by competing in college forensics (speech and debate). It was a great experience that has helped me in many ways. I highly recommend competitive speaking if you have the opportunity. If you are no longer in school, you can join Toastmasters or practice with a group of your peers. Meetups are a good way to find groups of people to practice with. You can also give presentations at user groups and conferences. Practicing your public speaking skills on a regular basis will help you eliminate filler words from your vocabulary and help you learn how to handle fears surrounding public speaking. If you can explain a complex technical concept to a group of thirty people, then you should have no problem with three people in a job interview.