Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Jobhunting with Less Pain, Part 3

I’ve already had some great feed­back from the first two parts of this art­icle, so I’m pleased to be able to share the third and final part today.

Having read this far, you should have some idea about the pro­cesses required to set your­self up with an inter­view with a pro­spect­ive employer for a job you actu­ally want. For most roles, this is the most cru­cial step, and giv­ing your­self the best pos­sible chance of suc­cess is key.

Interview tech­nique: The face-to-face inter­view is gen­er­ally the crux of an employer’s assess­ment of you and your suit­ab­il­ity for the role they have on offer. Interviews are some­times sup­ple­men­ted with aptitude or tech­nical tests that are in most cases just as import­ant, but these tests are far more object­ive and if you know your stuff, chances are you’ll do just fine without think­ing too hard about them.

If you’ve spoken to the employer on the phone before this point, it’s likely that they’ll have already asked you the key ques­tions relat­ing to the role — the inter­view is then more often a chance to get to know you a bit bet­ter, observe how you come across in per­son and how well you’re likely to fit into their work­ing envir­on­ment. They’ll also get a chance to assess your present­a­tion (with more or less sig­ni­fic­ance placed on this depend­ing on the industry and role) and see how you handle your­self under the pres­sure of questioning.

Regarding present­a­tion, this is a very expans­ive sub­ject as stand­ards depend very much on the industry you’re in and the nature of the job you’re apply­ing for. My key points would be some­thing along the lines of: get a hair­cut, have a shave if applic­able, dress smart. A suit isn’t always a require­ment, but even for more cas­ual envir­on­ments you should at least wear a jacket and trousers that aren’t jeans.

Time your jour­ney so you have plenty of mar­gin to accom­mod­ate delays. Depending on dis­tance, aim to arrive at least half an hour early to be sure you’ll make it. You must not, under any cir­cum­stances, allow your­self to be late. Scope out the place from the out­side and park your­self in a nearby café, have a cup of tea and relax and, if neces­sary, go over your notes again (more on that shortly) until the pre­scribed time approaches. Then return to the employer’s loc­a­tion and time your arrival such that your con­tact (ringing the entry phone, or the recep­tion­ist phoning up to your inter­viewer) occurs at exactly the time you were told to show up. A lot of people say you should show up early — I would say do so if you feel you have to, but no earlier than five minutes before the sched­uled appointment.

If you’ve brought notes or portfolio-type items, have them enclosed in a smart folder and not just fol­ded up in your pocket. You can bring notes like this even if you don’t intend to look at them — it shows that you’ve done some pre­par­a­tion. Be super-polite and, of course, greet your inter­viewer (and any­one else you’re intro­duced to) with a sin­cere hand­shake and a smile.

The most import­ant work is actu­ally per­formed before you even show up. The three key words have already been men­tioned: pre­par­a­tion, pre­par­a­tion, pre­par­a­tion. Before you arrive at the inter­view, you should know the job spec back to front. You should research the com­pany thor­oughly — what they do, who they do it for, and how they’re regarded in their market.

If they pub­lish inform­a­tion on recent pro­jects, read into these and be pre­pared to talk about them. You should have ques­tions of your own pre­pared: ask the inter­viewer about the com­pany, their role within it, recent pro­jects they’ve been involved in. Ask ques­tions about the job that aren’t covered in the spec (e.g. oppor­tun­it­ies for advance­ment and pro­gres­sion within the com­pany — this demon­strates long-term think­ing and com­mit­ment). Don’t talk about money at this stage, unless they bring it up. Basically, you need to demon­strate interest — in the com­pany, the job and the work. If at any point they say, “do you have any ques­tions?” you should always have some­thing to say. Unless their ques­tion was rhet­or­ical, of course — ha!

When it comes to answer­ing ques­tions about your­self, be open and enthu­si­astic. Have examples pre­pared of pro­jects you’ve worked on and the skills that you used in doing so. Depressingly, a lot of inter­views still fea­ture for­mu­laic ques­tions like “describe a situ­ation in which you had to demon­strate lead­er­ship”. You should have answers pre­pared for these, but try to work them into other responses so it sounds like you’re volun­teer­ing the inform­a­tion. For example, when describ­ing a past pro­ject, you can segue from dis­cus­sion of the tech­no­logy to dis­cus­sion of the pro­ject team struc­ture and how you had to take a lead­ing role — and how that worked out for you. This will give a bet­ter impres­sion than respond­ing to the lead­er­ship ques­tion in isol­a­tion. Additionally, bear in mind that you can use examples from out­side of work when answer­ing these questions.

If you worked under pro­jects while under an NDA or other secrecy agree­ment, explain this and try to find a way to dis­cuss the pro­ject in a use­ful and pos­it­ive way while adher­ing to the terms of that arrange­ment. Discuss pro­jects in terms that are rel­ev­ant to the role you’re apply­ing for. Bring a port­fo­lio if appro­pri­ate, or send some mater­ial to the inter­viewer ahead of time — for example links to web­sites you’ve made, or to an online port­fo­lio that they can review before the interview.

Be pos­it­ive, but don’t be afraid to admit your short­com­ings if they crop up in dis­cus­sion. Always spin these points in the dir­ec­tion of your ongo­ing improve­ment and exper­i­ence. Have a couple of examples pre­pared of situ­ations where you’ve suffered set­backs and learned from them — this is another clas­sic form ques­tion. Most import­antly, don’t bull­shit. You can get away with a little pol­ish­ing but if you make stuff up out­right you’ll get found out and it won’t end well. In tech­nical roles you’ll likely be sub­jec­ted to a tech­nical test which will soon estab­lish what you do and don’t know.

Bear in mind that, espe­cially in tech­nical roles, know­ledge rap­idly becomes out­dated. Most com­pan­ies are look­ing for people who fit within their cul­ture, have an interest in the sub­ject, are easy to work with and can be taught — if they like you and they need you to have greater skill in a cer­tain area, they will train you. You should have a good idea before you arrive at the inter­view which skills are “nice to have” and which are hard require­ments. If they ask you if you know some­thing and you don’t, try to avoid a flat-out “no”. If it’s some­thing you’ve come across before but not worked with, say so. Phrases like “I’ve a passing famili­ar­ity with X” and “I’ve not worked spe­cific­ally with X before but I under­stand it’s very much like Y which I have some exper­i­ence with” show that you have a broad appre­ci­ation for your sub­ject area and exude positivity.

You should also do your utmost to demon­strate your wider appre­ci­ation for and interest in the area in which you work. I’ve been to sev­eral inter­views where after a short while the dis­cus­sion became very con­ver­sa­tional as we talked about recent events, emer­ging trends and humor­ous obser­va­tions in our industry. These were always very pos­it­ive, and such dis­cus­sion will help show your inter­viewer that your pas­sion for the sub­ject extends bey­ond the bound­ar­ies of the job itself.

When you leave the inter­view, thank the inter­viewer for their time and say that they should feel free to con­tact you at any time if they have any fur­ther ques­tions. When you’re done, talk to your recruiter — if one was involved — about how it went and restate your enthu­si­asm for get­ting the job (if the inter­view hasn’t changed your mind, that is). They’ll com­mu­nic­ate this back to the employer. Chase things up soon to ensure you don’t get for­got­ten about. With any luck, they’ll get back to you after a short time with good news. If they ask you to return for a second inter­view, repeat the pro­cess. If they decide to pass you over, thank them again for their time and cor­di­ally wish them suc­cess. If they choose you for the pos­i­tion, hurrah!

The hard part is now over. You’ll now move through nego­ti­ation to even­tual con­tract sign­ing and start­ing work. These are sub­jects worthy of their own dis­cus­sion, and per­haps I’ll write a few words on those in the future — gen­er­ally, how­ever, it’s all com­mon sense and you should be fine.

The calm after the storm: If your exper­i­ence is any­thing like mine, you’ll remove your accounts on the vari­ous job sites and then con­tinue to receive spam from recruit­ment agen­cies for some time after­ward — here’s the real value of using a sep­ar­ate email address. You can either dump the address or respond to the emails request­ing to have your details removed — the lat­ter is prefer­able as it should stop the phone calls as well.

I con­tin­ued to receive spam for irrel­ev­ant oppor­tun­it­ies from the fol­low­ing com­pan­ies up to three months after I’d removed my details from Jobsite, and des­pite numer­ous emailed requests to have my details deleted:

• PSR Recruitment Ltd
• Gregory James Group (no website)

In the case of PSR, after hav­ing mul­tiple emails com­pletely ignored I even­tu­ally phoned them and deman­ded that they delete my con­tact inform­a­tion. That res­ul­ted in about a fort­night of peace before the emails star­ted again — a fur­ther phone call revealed that my details “may have been acci­dent­ally added back into our data­base.” These guys are clearly professionals.

The moral of the story is that most agen­cies keep their own data­bases of con­tact details sep­ar­ate from the job web­sites, mean­ing that you’re bet­ter off using tem­por­ary con­tact details wherever possible.

Conclusion: I’m par­tic­u­larly for­tu­nate to work in IT — a sec­tor that hasn’t been too badly affected by the eco­nomic cli­mate, and one in which skills can be eas­ily quan­ti­fied and, more import­antly, more eas­ily picked up than in many other indus­tries. So I real­ise my exper­i­ence was a lot smoother than it could have been — that aside, how­ever, I hope that the advice I’ve scribbled here is of help to someone tak­ing the next step in their career, whatever their industry. Good luck!