Looking for a job and being in different interview processes at the same time can be stressful. In this post I will share some of my personal advice to prepare yourself for a technical interview in a position.
Collect information about the company
The first step is probably the most important in my opinion, you should collect all the company information possible. I usually ask myself the following series of questions:
- What is the bussiness model?
- What are their products?
- Do I have any ethical issues with their products or business model?
- Are they positively impacting the community? Are they doing free software?
- What conditions does the company usually offer its employees?
- Do they allow remote work (or your preferred location)?
- How is the company doing financially? If the company is losing money, then what is the long term perspective about the job / team?
- Are they promoting diversity and inclusion in technology?
If the overall response is mostly positive, then it means it is a good place to work.
Read the job description carefully
A good job description should tell the applicant what skills they will need in order to get the job. Read carefully the job description and the required skills. In the end you should have the following information:
- Which project am I going to work on?
- What level of experience is required?
- What programming languages are required?
- Is knowledge of a specific area required? If so, which ones?
- Is the going to make me happy or I am just there for the paycheck?
- If I join the team will I be the most experienced person in the team/project?
It is important to evaluate if you are good fit for this position, what could you bring to the team? In my opinion, the required years of experience is not too relevant is nice to consider it.
Prepare for the interview
If you have applied and have been contacted for an interview then I recommend you the following steps.
- What are the projects that the people who are going to interview you are working on?
- Is a free software project? CONTRIBUTE! Sending a contribution to a project related to the job position you are applying can be quite nice :-)
- Review as much as possible your knowledge of the required technologies.
During the interview
It is important to be relaxed even if it is difficult. Try to be yourself and act normal. If during the interview you don’t know the answer for a question, it is completely fine to recognize it and say “I don’t know the answer but I would like to know more about it”.
Ready to start a selection process?
If you are looking for a job and are interested on Red Hat, you can contact me and ask me any questions, good luck! :-)