Interview Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

I have interviewed hundreds of people, mostly for engineering positions. One of the things that is very important is to try to put the candidate in a difficult/stressful position, because it’s important to see how they perform/think when they are a bit off balance. Some people just break at that point, and become almost argumentative, they lose focus. The goal we have when putting people into that situation is to see how they behave, not necessarily see that they answer a particular question correctly.  

Other things I have noticed is that candidates focus on being technically prepared, but don't develop a genuine good attitude. Having a bad attitude is a deal breaker for most companies. If I had to rank the importance of things a candidate needs to have it is as follows:

1) Attitude (a deal breaker, if you have a bad attitude we stop)

2) Aptitude (it doesn't matter what you know as much as what you can learn)

3) Knowledge 

What you know is least important, as technology changes so fast, your ability to keep up is more important. And obviously a bit of this depends on the position and the timeliness of that position.

There are several common mistakes people make in interviews:

First, people don’t take the time to prepare for the “Tell us about yourself” question. They may spend time preparing for the “What’s your greatest weakness?” question but figure they can “wing it” with the “Tell us about yourself” response because their attitude is, “Hey, who knows me better than me?”

But once faced with that question in the interview, they freeze up. I’ve seen it time and time again, both in mock interviews and in actual interviews. When I pose that question, I get the deer-caught-in-headlights look staring back at me. The candidate has no idea where to start or what to include in their answer.

There is a method to answering this question that takes preparation ahead of time. This is something I teach my clients how to do.

Second, candidates don’t provide real-life examples to illustrate their answers. Most people just answer questions in generalities without telling stories about how they’ve demonstrated their skills in the past.

Anyone can speak in generalities. But your own personal stories are what set you apart and make you memorable to the interviewers. Provide specific examples of times when you’ve demonstrated your skills in the past even if the interviewer doesn’t ask you to provide an example.

Whenever I’ve done mock interviews with clients, I point out to them where they need to insert an example. Even then, when they try again, they think they’re providing an example when in actuality they’re still speaking in general terms.

When I share with them how their response sounds and give them an example of what I really want to hear, they finally get it. An interviewer isn’t going to do that kind of “hand-holding” in an interview. They’ll simply move on to the next question. You can’t take that kind of risk.

Third, most candidates don’t bring a professional portfolio with samples of their work to share. Or, if they do, they don’t present them properly. Always have on hand a few tangible samples of past work. Pull it out and show it when you’re telling your specific story of how you’ve demonstrated that particular skill. Think of it like “show-n-tell” from your elementary school days!

When choosing samples of work to bring to an interview, always choose quality over quantity, and never share anything that is confidential or proprietary from your previous employer. Organize your samples in a nice portfolio.

You can also house some works online in a digital portfolio. Include on the bottom of your resume the statement, “Professional portfolio available for review.” This will make your resume stand out as well.

Fourth, most candidates don’t take the time to have questions of their own prepared. Interviewing is a two-way street! They expect you to have questions of your own, and if you don’t, that makes you look bad. Not having questions indicates you have no real interest in the job.