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**Emma Draper:** Yeah. And I would say lean on your recruiter, or the hiring team that has brought you on, and just ask. I was really lucky to have an over-communicative recruiter, that was just telling me "Nothing's gonna happen for about a month. Don't have anything for you, again." That's also fine. But I think it's... |
**Jonas:** Yeah. Plus one on that. Make your recruiter your friend. Talk to them all the time. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** So in Germany, where I am based, the average developer has a three months' notice in the contract, and the average manager would have even -- well, not average manager, but many managers would have six months of a notice. So I wonder if the answer would be different if it's here... It would be ... |
**Jonas:** Yeah. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** So zooming in on that duration of the process... How long should a coding assignment take if you do it at home, versus if you do it on-site, on Zoom, or whatever the equivalent is? Please don't say eight hours. \[laughs\] |
**Jonas:** No, I was gonna say -- I mean, I think there's like what happens in reality versus my advice... I prefer to keep them roughly the same. I've definitely seen some where it's like this take-home exercise "Yeah, it's been four hours", and that's kind of absurd to me, because you're interviewing at a ton of plac... |
\[28:27\] I think take-homes can be a nice option, but you should treat it the same as you would an in-person one, and try to keep it around an hour, maybe 90 minutes, depending what it is... But I just think after that point, you're just exhausting people. I don't know if you're gonna get much better signal... Unless ... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** When you do this specifically, do you say like "Start a timer, and 90 minutes - whatever, you're done. Even if you didn't finish, just submit what you had." Or do you say like "It should take 90 minutes, and this is what you should do", and then it ends up in people sometimes taking longer, som... |
**Jonas:** I feel a little torn on this honestly, I feel like I'd rather just give them the recommended time, because the idea of a timer feels stressful to me... when I've done it with a with a timer-- |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** Not a real timer, but in the sense of "Don't do over 90 minutes" is what I meant. |
**Jonas:** Yeah, yeah... I think I would rather just say "Yeah, please don't spend more than this." Because there are other tools that then do that, but they enforce it. So you start the exercise and it's forced, and that can feel stressful. I want to minimize stress as much as possible. So yeah, ideally, when I have s... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** And then the guideline is basically if it's been 90 minutes and you didn't finish, just submit what you have. You don't say "I expect this to take 90 minutes, and I expect you to do A, B, C." |
**Jonas:** No... Yeah, I was gonna say, it's usually pretty open. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** Emma, what are your thoughts? |
**Angelica Hill:** I have a follow-up that I really need to say... If you're a software engineer and you're interviewing for a company, and they're like "Do this thing. Create this app. It should take no longer than 90 minutes", it's like, I'm gonna put my hands up and say, "I will spend all night to make it the perfec... |
**Jonas:** So when I've used these - and I'll say I've only done take-homes to do interviews a couple times - is one is really how you structure it. So I would not be like "Build an app", because to your point, there's almost no end, and you can go so far with that... Usually, it's something that's already pre-built, a... |
**Emma Draper:** \[32:12\] So I tend to lean in favor of a technical screen in-person as opposed to a take-home. If I have either been sent a take-home to fill out myself, or if I'm sending that to candidates, in my personal experience, if I see it and it's going to take -- I mean, I've received one that was just an ab... |
When I have crafted or helped craft, what those take-homes look like - it is very similar to what Jonas is saying. The first question is something like "Remove the duplicates in this array." And then the follow-up questions would be, "Can you do that using recursion?" or "Can you do that and inherit a class?" or someth... |
**Angelica Hill:** You talked a lot about the many, many different parts that make up the full interview process, and the fact that it could be spread over many months, it could be one day of intense interviews... I've certainly experienced and done that... So how do you prepare for all this? How do you get yourself re... |
**Jonas:** Yeah. I mean, ultimately, practicing. And I think I even saw a study that basically said people are more successful the more they practice... Which isn't surprising, but it just shows you that, unfortunately, I think for the most part, interviewing is a skill, and you have to practice to develop it. There's ... |
I feel like I definitely didn't do that well earlier on, and so then you just go in like a wormhole of answering like coder challenges, and then suddenly you're like "Oh, but that actually isn't what I need to practice." You know, you can just get really stuck in one thing. So try to actually step back and be like "Oka... |
**Emma Draper:** If I were going to tips and tricks, I like to create a document and a list of questions that I would like to practice, to Jonas's point. A kind of learning plan of what I would like to cover in preparation for -- and again, it's more broad. It's not specific to a particular role, but the roles that I'm... |
\[36:27\] So I think that in preparation for the technical portions of your interview, I think you should familiarize yourself with pretending or doing some sort of role-play, and just say "This is what collaborating meet with me would look like and mean, and so this is how I'm thinking about doing checks against "Is t... |
**Angelica Hill:** And prepping those stories, prepping your examples. |
**Emma Draper:** Yes. |
**Angelica Hill:** And what is your fun, little story that demonstrates you've done this thing, whether made up or real? |
**Jonas:** \[laughs\] Oh, and just read your resume, and then remind yourself what's in there... Because sometimes you write it, and then you just send it out there... And then practice talking through those examples; because to your point, it's crazy how you just forget everything you've ever done when someone asks yo... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** "Tell me about yourself." |
**Jonas:** Yeah, right? I even did a practice with a friend recently, who was getting into an interview again, because it's just --especially if you haven't interviewed in a while, right? You just need to wake up that part of your brain that knows how to talk about yourself in a nice, concise, very clear and direct way... |
**Angelica Hill:** So when you're asked to talk about like a challenge you faced, or tell us about a time you like failed, how honest should you be about that? Like, "Hey, I once took down the production DB..." True story. \[laughter\] Like, how honest should you be with those stories? Or how do you frame it as a win? |
**Jonas:** Yeah, the weird thing about those - and it's helpful because I now have interviewed but think about what the interviewer is trying to learn from it. Generally, those questions are trying to get at your ability to learn, your ability to have empathy, your ability to recognize mistakes... To me, it's not so mu... |
Again, I think you want to be careful about treading into weird waters of, I don't know, maybe really weird interpersonal conflicts or something, because that could just start sounding a bit like "Ooh, I don't know..." For the most part, you want to just think about what the takeaway from that story is, and that's real... |
**Emma Draper:** Yeah. I agree with everything Jonas is saying. I think that as with anything, it's not that you haven't made mistakes; that would be absurd, if your interview -- like, that would be a red flag for me as an interviewee, if the interviewer that I am running through this process with is looking for perfec... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** \[40:24\] I also have a genuine follow-up question that came up to me, very similar to what Angelica was asking... My question is how would you craft your answer to "Tell me about yourself"? Because many interviews begin with this; like, two minutes where you have to put everything into context... |
**Jonas:** Yeah, I would definitely recommend not too long. Like, keep it at a minute. I tend to avoid that question, to your point, because I think it does end up being a little too weird and open-ended... And because I have seen sometimes you ask it and someone just starts talking, and they're going for like a really... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** That was me at my very first job interview... \[laughter\] |
**Jonas:** Sometimes it can be interesting! |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** "I studied in high school..." |
**Jonas:** Yeah... You give like your whole life story, and it's like, it's nice, but it's also like "Oh, my God, we have 45 minutes, and I have ten other questions to ask you." So yeah, I usually think it's good to just talk a little bit about -- like, try to find a way to summarize your career journey through a coupl... |
It's amazing how many people sometimes don't read resumes... So I do think it's a nice chance to just highlight a couple things from your resume, in case they didn't read it... Because at least you're calling that out; because otherwise it actually may not come up in your interview at all. |
**Emma Draper:** The thing I'm thinking through is - you know how you can watch a preview for a movie, right? That's how I think about that question, if you do get asked it, is "What are the highlights? What would you say about yourself that either is on your resume, and you just want to bold and underline, and say "He... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** Okay. And then the other side of this question, as an interviewer this time, what are some things that you're looking for in a candidate, and you want to make sure that they happened in the interview? |
**Jonas:** For something like the technical side, the coding challenges or system design, some things I'm looking for is, one, are they able to dig in and ask more questions, and get more clarification, and try to really understand the problem? But it doesn't always happen, and most people just jump in, and they end up... |
And then yeah, that ability to really speak to why they're doing certain things... Because that's the biggest -- I think in a technical thing, you want to make sure they understand the trade-offs of different algorithms they use, or different libraries, or approaches, and not just that they have always done it one way ... |
\[44:17\] I also think though being okay to admit where -- "Oh, but this I'm not 100% sure, and so I would do this to understand it further." That's okay too, again, because I don't expect you to know everything, so it's okay... You don't need to pretend. It's also okay at a certain point to be like "This piece I don't... |
And then I think just more on the team and communication, it's really all about just "Will you be a good teammate? Are you going to work effectively in this team? Are you going to be a good mentor, or partner, depending on that maturity? Will you be able to learn? Will you be able to add to this culture in some way, or... |
**Emma Draper:** I think you definitely touched on the things that I feel are most important. I think it's a red flag if a candidate should likely have said, "I'm not sure, but I would be happy finding out, and this is what my process for further exploring the solution would look like." I think interviewers can definit... |
I think it's crucial that they ask clarifying questions before beginning to explain how they're going to solution their problem. As engineers, we love to build things, but you don't want to jump in and start solutioning prior to really understanding what problems you're solving for. And I think that goes across the boa... |
And I would also say, refreshing yourself on what you have on your resume and not exaggerating the scope of your role... Because that's just an easy red flag for me, if I see someone who doesn't actually have the experience that they're speaking to... It's obvious. |
**Break:** \[46:25\] |
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