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Recruiter Tips & Tricks: Non-Technical Interview Prep
November 3, 2011
Introduction: In last week's
Recruiter Tips & Tricks
post, Jeff Moore talked about how you can best prepare for a
technical interview
. This week he's focusing on tips to help you prepare for non-technical interviews. Don't forget that internships and new grad opportunities are posted on our student jobs site at
www.google.com/students
As you’ve probably noticed by now, a lot of my tips are especially relevant to engineering students. Well, not this week! I wanted to take some time to help everyone else who’s going through the interview process but won’t be writing code. Truthfully, these tips are pretty universal and will help you in any interview, technical or not. These may seem pretty simple but they absolutely, positively work.
Research
- Take time to do your homework and thoroughly research the role before your interview. You want to have a solid understanding of what the business is and how this role fits into the business. If applicable, do a quick search to find out the background of the people you’ll be meeting. I can’t stress this last point enough. Knowing your audience will potentially give you a shared interest or experience with the interviewer and make both of you more comfortable.
Resume prep and review
- Chances are, the person you are meeting with during the interview is looking at your resume. Chances also are, you wrote that thing a few weeks or months ago and don’t have as deep an understanding of every word in the resume as you think you do. So, take 15 or 20 minutes to go through your resume line by line, think about the content and make sure that if you’re asked about a particular item you have a clear and concise answer. Your resume is a paper version of experience—know what’s on that paper and be able to speak to it.
Build a list of sample questions and answers
- Biggest and best tip I can give you. Hands down, this one works. Take 30 minutes or so before the interview to build a list of any possible question you might be asked during the interview. Questions on your background, behavioral based questions, role play, you name it. Write it down. Now that you’ve got this list, go through and write down a few words on what your answer will be if you are asked this question. Finally, bring these notes with you...not to read them, but so that if or when you do get asked one of these potential questions you’ll have the perfect, thoughtful answer right on the tip of your tongue. I’ve been doing this for years and find it to be the best way to be prepared for anything during the interview.
Have your questions ready
- Almost every single interview you’ll have will end with the same question: “Do you have any questions for me?” The worst answer is something like,“um, no.” When an interviewer asks you if you have any questions for him or her, this is your time to shine. You want to show off how much you understand the role and ask a question that give you additional insight into how you’d fit into the team. This is where tip #1 comes in. You’ve done your research on how to answer questions poised to you, now you have to jot down a few questions for each interview. These questions should be specific to each interviewer, too.
That’s it this week, I think you’ll find these tips to be pretty easy and quite useful. Take the time to implement them and they will serve you well. Being prepared and having done your research will not only enable you to answer difficult questions but will also allow you to stay on target and get across any specific points you are hoping to emphasize to the interviewer. Next week, we’ll be talking about how to negotiate and deal with job offers....so get ready, it will be a lot of fun.
Posted by Jeff Moore, Lead Engineering Recruiter
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