Where do you see yourself in five years?

The correct answer is to talk about being a part of the company, growing professionally within the company, and actively contributing to the company’s growth. None of your answers to this question should ever be about you planning to leave the company, such as, “I want to get a better job somewhere else.” If you say that, you’ll be dismissed immediately and then you’ll need take some time off to discover what it is you really want in life.

What are your greatest strength and greatest weakness?

The biggest problem with identifying your greatest strength is choosing the answer you want to use. If you can’t figure out what your greatest strength is, think about the strengths you showed at work and/or school from your past experiences. Then think about which strength you think the company would benefit from the most.

The trap you can find yourself in when answering the question about your greatest weakness is trying to frame another strength as a weakness. For example, you might say, “My greatest weakness is that I’m a perfectionist. I like to do things perfectly.” Being a perfectionist doesn’t show the vulnerability required to be a weakness.

Instead, consider a similar response about perfectionism, but add some vulnerability. For example, “My greatest weakness is that I tend to be a little bit too obsessed with things, and sometimes I cannot complete a project, even though it’s already good enough. I might spend too much time working on a small detail, polishing something that doesn’t need to be polished.”

When you give an example of a weakness that tells the interviewers it’s something you need to work on, follow up by telling them how you’ve worked to turn that weakness into a strength. For example, you can say, “Over the years I’ve learned how to turn this weakness into a strength. What I’ve learned is that my attention to detail and my tendency toward perfectionism can be used in the right places to make sure that things are done properly. I’ve learned over time to know when things are good enough and I can move on. This has really helped me become a better developer.”

How and why did you leave your last job?

Answer this question not by bad-mouthing the previous company, your bosses, and/or your coworkers. Always be positive about your previous company. Some reasons you can use for leaving your last job include:

• I felt that my professional development had stalled, and I wanted to take some time off to grow my knowledge and contribute to the programming community by taking advantage of speaking and writing opportunities.
• I needed to take time to get away from the computer screen for a little while and spend time with my family and some other important projects I needed to finish before I could return to programming.
• I had some family issues that needed my attention, but I still managed to keep my feet in the programming waters by adding posts to my blog and answering questions on Stack Overflow.

These sample answers are honest, and talk about you and your situation at the time instead of denigrating others.

How do you deal with conflicts in your job?

This question is also one you want to answer without saying anything bad about anyone else. Your older family members were prepping you for an interview when you were young by saying, “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.”

Answer this question by saying that in some instances you realized you were wrong. Perhaps you said the wrong thing during a conversation, didn’t say anything when you should have to resolve the situation, or didn’t ask a question you should have asked. In this case, tell the interviewers how you learned from the situation by learning how to change your behavior: You learned to listen more clearly, think better on your feet, and talk with the other individual instead of withdrawing.

The interviewers aren’t looking for you to show that you’re perfect. If you did, the interviewers may think that you’re being dishonest and/or hiding something. Instead, they want to know that you’re a human being and that you’re a better person now because of your past experiences.

Showing how you’ve grown personally over the years is even more critical if you’re applying for a higher-level position such as a senior-level programmer or a manager of a team, where maturity at this stage of your life is an important asset.

LinkedIn

If you have one or more LinkedIn connections who work in the human resources industry, contact them and ask if they know anyone who has worked at the company before. You’ll obviously have much better luck if you’re applying at a large company with many locations because such a person will be easier to find. What’s more, the company likely has a fairly standardized interview process, so if your HR contact recommends someone at another location, the process at that location is likely the same as the one for the office in your area.

You can also search for the company directly in LinkedIn. A company search will also bring up the profiles of people who currently work for or who have worked at that company. If you’re lucky, one or more of those people will be linked to one of your connections so you can ask your connection for a referral. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay for and use InMail to make a connection and hope that person is happy to help you.

Programming forums

There are plenty of programming forums and groups on other social media websites such as Facebook and Reddit where you may be able to find people who work (or have worked) at the company. And don’t forget to canvass programmer-centric websites, including Stack Overflow (https://stackoverflow.com; shown in Figure 8-3) and LeetCode, that have online forums; on those sites you can chat with other programmers and find out if they know anyone who works for the company you’re interested in. Web-based programming forums and groups are less targeted than LinkedIn, but it’s still a path with breadcrumbs.

In-person events

If you’ve applied to a job at a specific company in your area, then you should check out in-person programming events in your area. Your local newspaper and/or business journal as well as online meeting sites like Meetup (www.meetup.com) should have information about when the next event is.

Even in-person events aren’t as effective as LinkedIn at finding people because you have no idea who will be at the event, let alone how many people will be there. But, like programming forums, live meetings are another opportunity to find the person you’re looking for, or a person who can get you in touch with The One (or several Ones).

Schedule your mock interview

Your ability to schedule a mock interview will depend on how much time you have between the time you get the call from the company and when your company will be holding interviews. Many companies hold interviews during a block of time, such as during one week, so everyone in the company can get his or her other projects done and then concentrate on hiring the new employee.

When you talk to friends, strangers online, or strangers in person, ask them if they would be interested in participating in a mock interview at a convenient location like a rented conference room. Also be up front about your time constraints, and hopefully many of the people you talk to can accommodate your schedule.

You should block off at least four hours (that is, an entire afternoon) for the interview because you’ll not only go through the mock interview but also receive feedback from your interviewers as well as people you may want to serve as observers (which we talk about later in this chapter).

Reward your interviewers well

You should approach all mock interview members either in person or online to ask them about what they want in return for their time and effort. People will want to be compensated in some way, and you’ll need to figure out what that is — it could be a hearty meal, a gift card, or just a trade that you’ll participate as an interviewer in the other person’s mock interview.

You may need to give different gifts to different people. One way to do that is to give people a choice of what type of gift they want from a list of gifts you’re willing to give. Your potential interviewer may have a suggestion for a gift instead, and you’ll have to decide for yourself if you want to do that (or your budget may decide for you).

Don’t serve any snacks or even meals until after the interview. During the interview, just serve water as that’s likely all that’s going to be served by the company during your real interview.

Prepare your interviewers

A mock interview is a good opportunity for your interviewers to role-play and give you a good idea of how to work with the personalities of your interviewers.

At least a day before you meet for the mock interview, think about who your interviewers are going to be, fire up Microsoft Word or your favorite word processing application, and type a one-page description for each person about what department each works for and what type of personality each is. For example, one interviewer can be very dominant, another can be nice, and another can be submissive.

Don’t type suggested questions into these descriptions. The mock interviewer is responsible for coming up with a list of questions based on the description. You’re not supposed to know the questions ahead of time, just as with a real interview.

When you’re done, print out each description and give it to each person at least a few days before the mock interview starts so that you know each interviewer knows his or her role. The interviewers will have some time to absorb it, form their questions, and rehearse their behaviors in their heads before the mock interview begins.

Here’s a sample mock interviewer description that you can use as a starting point in building your own:

• You are an expert in Java, but you feel like your skills aren’t being used at the company to their fullest extent. For that reason, you feel like any new person interviewing for a job better be at least up to your level or you don’t even want to deal with them. You are dismissive of anyone who claims to know Java and doesn’t have the skills to back it up and assume that everyone fits that category — unless interviewees prove otherwise.
• You don’t really want to hire anyone because you feel threatened by anyone who could challenge your skills, so you’ll be looking for flaws in even the highest qualified applicants. You also like to see how people react under pressure, so you often try to get a rise out of candidates by directly challenging them and being combative.

Include observers

The mock interview should also include at least two observers who will take notes about how you and your mock interviewers perform. These observers should sit out of easy sight, such as in the corner of the conference room. Feedback from people who aren’t participating directly is invaluable to getting information that can help you during the real interview.

All this good feedback will also be invaluable for everyone else on the team since they may find themselves looking for another job someday. That argument may convince one or more people who are on the fence to join your mock interviewing team because they’ll know they’ll benefit from the experience.

Take notes to improve your answers

A mock interview is the perfect opportunity for you to take notes as you’re asked questions and after you finish the coding test so you can understand what you’re doing well and where you’re falling short.

You should also write some notes right after the mock interview to get your impressions of the experience and any other thoughts about where you could do better. Your observers will be able to fill in some gaps in that knowledge as well, so be sure to get copies of their notes. (And don’t be surprised if others in your mock interview group want copies of your notes to refer to the next time they have an interview.)

If you have the time and your interview team is willing, you may want to have a second interview after decompressing for a couple of hours and then see how well you fix some or all of your issues. However, some problems may need to be fixed during the time between your mock and real interviews, such as filling holes in your programming knowledge.