In this video, full stack development professionals will give you an overview of the interview process and advice regarding answering questions, asking questions, and negotiating an offer. Please describe an overview of a typical interview cycle for developer candidates. When it comes to assessing candidates for developer roles in my team, I like to structure it in two interviews. The first interview is a half an hour conversation- technical conversation- and it will be the candidate, myself as the hiring manager, and one of my senior developers as well. We will alternate asking questions to the candidate. Generally speaking, in this first interview we’re basically focusing on technical aspects. So, we’ll ask questions about their previous experiences, projects they worked on, some code that they they wrote and may be made it available, let’s say on Git Hub. It's more technical in nature. And then for the best candidates, candidates that have the most promise for the job we will promote them to a second interview and the second interview is an hour long and it's with myself and my manager will be the second line manager for the candidates. And in the second interview we focus on soft skills. We focus on communication, ambitions, and it's really a way for the candidates to learn more about what we do, the kind of team we are, what's our mission and so on. In what ways can this vary? Now, you have to keep in mind the different companies have different approaches. Large companies like to have these gruesome, you know five, five hour interviews or multiple rounds of interviews. Can you give examples of behavioral questions that a candidate might encounter? There are some classic questions that almost all interviews ask. They will ask you about a situation where you had trouble with a certain problem, and you couldn't get out of it what would you do in that situation or if you had a conflict with a colleague how would you resolve it. What constitutes a good answer to a behavioral question? You can literally go and search for behavioral questions, interview questions, and see what are some of the suggested answers. But in general, I would say just be yourself, be true to yourself. Say the truth. Say you have a conflict say how will you go about resolving that conflict. What are you looking for when you ask a behavioral question, and can that be different at different times? Personally, I try to ask behavioral questions only when I'm trying to clarify certain things like if I get a hunch that the candidate maybe has some problems with working in a team. For example, if they're very individualistic. If they're very focused on working on their own, which can be a good trait. It's good to be resourceful and being able to work on your own but in a team it's important to be able to work with others and so if I sense somehow that the person won't be a good team player, I might ask and poke a little bit, probe them with questions about their behavior in certain circumstances where having team work skills would be beneficial. Just to see that I know I'm not having the wrong impression about the candidate. So, generally speaking out, I just don’t blankly ask for a bunch of behavioral questions. I tend to tailor them to fine tune and understand better what the candidates is about like. If I know there is something in the candidate and it worries me a little bit, I will ask questions that are specific to that issue. What are you looking for when you ask a case study question? Case study questions can be very useful to determine whether the candidate has the right mindset or how they reason about things. What constitutes a good answer to a case study question? My advice is to take your time. Reason about them. Don't rush. Don't give the first answer that comes to mind. Just focus on really clarifying what the interviewer is asking. Asking some follow-up questions to clarify will usually be a good indication that you're a great candidate. What kind of questions should a candidate ask during an interview? Having some prepared questions that you like to ask is a good approach in my opinion and I would suggest that you keep the questions oriented towards the job, maybe the job interviewer’s experience or other team members. Another common question is to ask for breakdown of what the day-to-day life as a developer in the team works, like how does it work, what it looks like. What questions are not appropriate? Don't ask too personal questions or don't, you know, don't ask questions that would clearly irritate someone, like don’t ask questions that are intentionally confrontational. Don’t make all the questions about so what kind of benefits do I get, what’s the vacation like, how does sick leave work. You know all those things. Don’t focus too much on those because they might send the wrong message. What advice can you share about the process of negotiating an offer? When it comes to negotiating an offer, my first advice is to have them make an offer in the first place. So, have them make the offer and then counteract it. Generally speaking negotiations it’s not great to be the first one putting a number out there. In general, I know it can be very confrontational, it can be very unnerving for someone, especially if you are not used to it. But my suggestion is also to not undervalue yourself. Do some research online. Figure out what's the salary range you know that is given for a given position. And you know trying to figure out what is the number- the bottom number that you would be willing to accept. And then make your offer like a little bit higher than the minimum that you would accept. Because it's likely it will counteract with something else.
