Interviewing 101

Whether you are breaking into the job market for the first time, or are ready to write the next chapter of your career, nailing the interview is always a crucial step in the process.

Pre-interview preparation is important – know about the company. Start with their website, current press releases, look up the LinkedIn profiles of the interviewers if you have that information, and see what Glassdoor.com says about what it’s like to work there. Write down a few key questions you’d like to know more about. A few generic but helpful questions for any interview include:

• What is a typical day like in this role?
• What are the expectations about accomplishments expected in the first 3/6/12 months of this job?
• What do you like best about working here?

Now that you’ve completed your homework on the company, next you should know how to dress – should you wear a suit? Or business casual attire? If in doubt, it’s always better to be overdressed than under-dressed. Many companies will coordinate the interview and send you an email with information on what to expect, how to dress, and who you will be meeting with – this information can allow you to feel more relaxed about what the interview will be like, so take a deep breath and soak that information in.

It’s important for all job seekers, not just recent college grads, to identify their skills and interests and be ready to verbalize them easily and convincingly. Consider these questions when evaluating what your key skills and interests might be:

• In your past work experience, what have you been energized by?
• What gets you out of bed in the morning?
• What would your last supervisor say is your biggest asset?

Once you have answered these questions, spend some time thinking about how you’d explain your competitive edge – why should they hire you over other candidates? Be ready to sell yourself as the best candidate in a confident but non-boastful way.

Be familiar with behavioral interview questions, where you will be asked to tell a story about a time when you experienced a certain situation. Do so briefly and effectively, further convincing your interviewer that you are capable of the doing the job. Quantify whenever possible. Briefly tell the story using the STAR method: the Situation you were in, the Task you were faced with, the Action you took to get the job done, and the Result. By preparing a few key stories that back up your competitive edge and skills, you’ll feel more confident handling typical interview questions.

Finally, close the interview by asking for the job, if you feel like the role is a good fit for you. The interview is as much about them evaluating you as a potential employee as it is about you deciding whether you can see yourself thriving in the role with the company. Ask what next steps are, and when you get home, send a thank you email to your interviewers.

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Interview red flags for the IT consultant

Sometimes the new IT consulting gig you're walking into is a mess. These early warning signs might set off your inner Geiger counter.

For a number of years, I've practiced IT as a consultant rather than an employee, meaning I pop in and out of various companies for six to 18 months at a time. There's always a conversation up front during which the task is spelled out to me, and we see if it's a good fit.

The thing is, there's a quality spectrum to deal with: Some projects are exciting and progressive, some are necessary drudgery, and a scary few are nuclear meltdowns, requiring a sacrificial technician to wander into the hot mists. One way to detect potential meltdowns is to pick up on the early warning signs and then ask the right questions from the start.

Interview questions that are red flags

"Do you have experience with application support?"

There isn't anything farther removed from the typical IT consultant's range of interest than application support. Most of the time it doesn't come up -- it's much more likely to surface as a necessary evil in an interview for a staff augment gig.

But when a project is crashing and burning and consultants are being rapidly hired, that usually means a system in production has gone haywire and no one knows how to fix it. The project will involve rebuilding the app as well as propping it up in production in the meantime, or, at the very least, reverse-engineering the existing mess to the point that you can teach someone else how to prop it up. Do you really want a piece of that?

"Would you be comfortable working with products that are no longer supported?"

If a production app is wigging out, oftentimes it's because the legacy app is built out of parts and pieces that no one in-house has on their shelf -- the technology is so outdated that the current crop of developers are all newer than the legacy app platform. This also explains why a consultant is brought in to fix it. Most consultants have been around awhile and have hands-on experience with obsolete technologies. I was in this situation in the past year, dealing with an Adobe PDF generation system that was deployed during the Clinton administration.

If this kind of thing doesn't float your boat (it floats mine!), steer clear of it, because there's usually no surviving documentation and no one to call.

Follow-up questions you should ask

If your alarms are starting to go off, you can take some initiative to pin down exactly how messy the situation is, and this can help guide your decision about wading in.

"How many releases out of date is the platform you'll be working on?"

The rule of thumb is No More Than 2. If you're a Microsoft junkie (as I now am), two releases puts you back 4-5 years, which is an eternity in IT time. And while the typical application life cycle used to be friendly with that time span, it's less so today. If I'm sitting in an interview in 2014 and the SQL Server back end of the app to be rebuilt is SQL 2005, I'm in trouble.

There are several reasons why: If it went that long without an upgrade, it's probably been neglected through-and-through, not just on the back end; if it's a multi-tiered app, its layers are likely way out of sync, and it's probably unscalable. And the documentation (if it exists) is not likely to be very good.

"How many folks in-house have expertise in the legacy system?"

If the answer is none, you know why they called you. If the answer is one, two, or a few, your next question has nothing to do with the IT side: "Is there a business-side expert who knows the app, its users, and where it needs to be today?" If the answer to that last one is yes, then all is not lost.

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5 Things that Good Job Candidates Hate

Your business's most expensive asset is probably its people. It's all about those brains getting your work done, so you want the best you can possibly get, right? But, if you're not careful, you may be inadvertently driving away the best candidates with your recruitment policies. Here are five things good job candidates hate.

Tedious online applications. Go apply for a job at your company. How long does it take you? 30 minutes? An hour? Do you get almost done when it crashes and tells you to try again later? We like data. Data is good. But the method which many online job applications collect it is painful and intrusive and unnecessary. At some point, people who aren't desperate get fed up and quit.

Who are the least desperate for a new job? Those already employed in good positions. They tend to be the very people you want to hire.

You show me yours, but I won't show you mine. No one wants to go through a huge interview process only to find out that the job candidate wants $50,000 more than your budget will allow. But instead of having an honest discussion at the beginning, where both sides reveal what they are thinking, many recruiters demand candidates provide a complete salary history.

Now, the reality is that you should be tailoring the salary to fit the job and not basing it on previous salaries. I understand that your star candidate isn't likely to leave his current job for less money, but you know what? You never know. Instead of demanding their information, try giving up some of yours. Be honest: "We don't have an exact salary in mind for this position. It will depend on the candidate's skills, but we're looking for somewhere between $75,000 and $95,000."

Now, I know can see the sheer panic on the faces of your recruiters. "If we say that, everyone will expect $95,000!" No they won't. They aren't dumb.

Silence. If a candidate has simply submitted a resume, you're not obligated to do anything other than send an automated response that says, "We've received your resume. Don't contact us, we'll contact you." (Although you should say it a bit more nicely.)

Once you've brought someone in for an interview, radio silence is just rude. Socially unacceptable behavior. Inappropriate. You should fire your recruiters if they do this. Heaven knows I understand that things happen in the recruiting process--priorities change, budgets shrink, internal candidates get shuffled around. Still, once someone has taken time out of their day to come in to your office, you owe them a response. Remember that the candidate who isn't exactly right for today's open position may be perfect for tomorrow's open position. Simply by not responding, you may have lost that candidate forever.

Meaningless job descriptions. "Dynamic individual, self starter, who can provide thought leadership, through effective communication." Sound familiar? It means nothing. I mean, honestly, is there job description out there that says, "Boring individual, drone, will be micro-managed and expected to communicate poorly"? Because otherwise, the first job description is meaningless.

Focus on what the person in the position will actually do. And don't worry about skills that are not needed. If someone's job is going to be to sit in a cube and produce TPS reports, they don't need to be dynamic thought leaders, so don't ask for it. When you write a job description, sit down and write a list of tasks that the candidate would be expected to do in a week. Provide that information and your candidates will self-screen.

Too much focus on the perfect candidate. We all want perfection, but it's not likely that the picture you've created in your head actually exists. So don't throw out the great candidates in your search for the perfect candidate. Some things can be taught. Others really aren't necessary. I've seen people dragged through four or more rounds of interviews only to be rejected at the end, and the position reposted. In the meantime, not only does this make quality candidates want to avoid you like the plague, but you're spending a fortune trying to find someone and the position is still empty. Look for great, yes, but not perfect.

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