What should an interview be like#

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10.12.2023 | 5-6 min. reading

Introduction#

As we see today, the system or pipeline of getting people to companies most likely contains such elements as:

1. Recruiters (HR)
2. First contact mail
3. General interviews
4. Technical interviews.

Even more, somewhere there're extra steps to it - 1st technical interview, 2nd tech. interview, third… And they have goals of picking up the best algorithmic programmers, people of typical tasks, of widely spread frameworks. Of course, it depends on the level of what person is being hired - junior, middle, senior. Even though i still think this job hierarchy is quite subtle from company to company and from exact work to work that a person does.

In one company an employee maybe put in the role of middle developer, but when he/she tries to go to another company, there's only a junior rank for that. Or the opposite example, i know several of them, people are hired to senior or team-lead positions, but their dev skills in the sense of value for the project, business, team, maintainability are at least should be paid as the starting "middle" position

Different companies#

1. In big traditional companies
2. In small-medium like companies
3. In a startup

In this chapter i will explain in short how i see and think nowadays companies of each type as mentioned in the list above conduct their interviews and how it would be better to change them, let's take a look on pros and cons of it.

Big traditional companies#

That's a flagman ship in the ocean of recruiting employees, they have large and experienced departments for HR, for checking candidates. It's most probably, that they carry out such activities in a sustainable and dry scenario which, of course, implies regular stream work for the customer. In these types of companies it's difficult, as i think, fully apply your enthusiasm at the beginning because they do care about resource and risk management when hiring people. What they truly need is the employee, that can just do his/her work at full-day time in 8 hours, close necessary high priority tickets and be in good relations with the leadership of a department.

While, at the same time there're pros to it too:

• Huge knowledge and process bases for products, communications.
• Support by labor laws from the government
• More people to communicate with
• Sometimes interesting tasks and projects, products for internal/external usage with high-loading and extraordinary details
• Career growth in long terms is much better

Now, lets summarise the cons:

• Typical and conveyer like work and tasks
• Most likely the management style is less strict and less formal
• Company does not so much appreciate your free time, even though it can affect the work in a good way somehow
• Career growth in short terms is worse
• Some companies may fire you without transparent and clear reasons, results for understanding
• When you quit by yourself it affects for future job story in the bad way sometimes, especially when the time you've been in that company less than a couple of years.

Small-medium size companies#

These types are the medium line between corporate tankers and casual boats and brigs. Medium size companies i estimate around 100 and more people in state, have stable development orders and annual cash turnover approximately is 500 000$ and more. They have probably most in common with big tech companies, except the scale of that items, but one more difference is that medium companies, even though they aim to grow in business effectiveness and profitability, they appreciate innovative and strong, brave specialists, strict working process (here we consider the fact, that the company has passed the stage of chaos and self-organising).

Small companies, surprisingly, are the same, but they still may have the tracing spot of initial self-organising, management style, clear business targets and financial plan. Pros here are that they do not care so much about your free time, in particular, when and how you work, but only if it has began in that direction. Because there're small companies sometimes which would run you out of bleed and fresh mind due to the ambitions of founders, team, chaos, bad management, bad company development plan, that are big disadvantages.

Startup#

Here we finally have the most interesting type of companies, because of the enthusiasm they have and the faults they face. Here are present most of the bad thing i've mentioned above with the most attractive thing too. And yes, let me not to forget how much money, time, energy etc. do investors and developers waste on in these projects. But the experience the smart guy can get out of it is a good one, if apply it cleverly.

Pros:

• Freedom and variability of actions
• You plan your time and task in most cases
• Extraordinary experience and projects
• Open source
• A chance to influence with the most valuable deliverable than in other types of companies in usual positions similar to one here

Cons:

• Money
• Time spending
• Lazy management or it's absence
• Unclear goal
• Risky

Thus, lets make a digest of how does all 3 do an interview today in the world and how, as i think, it can be done in a better manner.

Interview approaches#

Now:

How i think it should be like:

As you may see, the only one similarity is the last one, besides everything else, it's the only thing which today, unfortunately, is the prior criteria among others to filter people on recruitment stage. Thus, i think, it's important in reality to get a job or be in your place, not playing a revolutioneer just to work fine, so keep that last rule as it is today.