What you need to know about interviews
Published: 2021-04-16 07:26:54

* [Audio version](https://anchor.fm/gabriel-romaymachado/episodes/What-you-need-to-know-about-interviews-ev11sk)

### Talking about myself

Last week it was my anniversary of becoming a Professional Web Developer. I have been doing this for 6 years now 👴🏾. That's [a lot of time in developer-years](https://hackerlife.co/blog/san-francisco-large-corporation-employee-tenure), so I have been in many job interviews already.

I have never been an interviewer yet, but I have worked with people designing and "evaluating" interviews so I know a bit about both sides.


### The best and the worst

* 👌🏽 An interview with an American company where I was rejected on the first interview because my English wasn't good enough 🙊. I didn't agree with the concept, but I liked the way they did it: at the beginning of the process and offering me free 💸 online tools to improve, and letting me know when I could try again to have an interview with them in the future.

* 👍 An interview with a local small company. The interview was wonderful 💖: it felt just like having a chat with an actual coworker about tech. But a better opportunity had arisen for me so, days later, I wrote back to them to let them know that I wasn't interested anymore. I didn't expect an answer at all, but the email they sent me 💌 telling me it was a pleasure to chat with me and hoping me the best really got me.

* 👎🏻 An interview where I was rejected after a long code test without any explanation: was it the UI? Was it the tests? Guess we'll never know 🤷🏾‍♀️. I tried to ask them because I honestly wanted to improve and know what I did wrong. Never got a response.

* 🥰 I was in a selection process with [Habitissimo](https://labs.habitissimo.com/2018/12/11/como-trabajamos-agilmente-en-el-equipo-marketplace/), a Spanish company, and I had 3 interviews with 3 different employees in the same morning: HR, CTO and Agile Coach 🤯. That same afternoon I received a call to let me know they were interested. Talk about being efficient ⚙!


### What I expect from interviews now

* Interviewers should be clear and honest with the candidate from the beginning 🔓. Do not ask the candidate to do anything that does not really affect at all the decision of hiring them or not. In our industry, many candidates have other jobs and studies to attend to, so respect their time 🕒 as they should respect yours.

* If the candidate has a good [github portfolio](https://github.com/W01fw00d), maybe there's no need to make them do a code test, especially if they are not going to receive any feedback about it at all afterward 😓.

* Interviews should be fun and engaging 😀, not just a report from the candidate about how many responsibilities they handled in the past, not an interrogation 🕵🏻‍♀️ about why they left past companies… thinking more about talking with the candidate than evaluating them helps.


### How I try to help as a candidate

* Have questions for the first interview: remember that you are deciding if that company is a good fit for you too 🧩.

* Engage in any opportunity of [giving a talk](https://gist.github.com/W01fw00d/8c80c137d4f0d3c6514cdcefb81290b6) or [writing an article](https://gist.github.com/W01fw00d/6f4dd234e561f89ae3dafd222ecb44f7): some interviewers have told me that they read some of mine and that's always a good conversation starter. And, of course, that way you can tell if they're really interested in you 💘.

* Let's face it: many developers lack in the "soft skills" area 🥀. I include myself there too, but we can always improve. I think we all know that developing is more about communicating than anything else. You code to communicate with a computer 🤖 and the current or future human maintainer of the project 👨🏽‍💻. You are sharing ideas through code.