I failed many technical interviews, but one of them hit hard, I guess because the full feedback was available to me. Part of the reasons was also because it was very direct (seems like it was internal but somehow got forwarded to me). To be honest I was triggered LOL I am a high ego person so I was ready to find a way to respond to them. But then I realize, most of the things in that feedback are true.

The elaboration (severe)

I have been always bragging about being a Generalist that excels in solving problems and hence answering interview question in a general and trivial manner. What I want to show off is that I can tackle all and don’t ask me the specifics, but what the interviewer wants is to understand me more with my experience, my insights, my progresses, which are the more reliable metrics for evaluating performance. To the interview’s POV my answer hints the insecurity rather than a true problem solver. The good answer should have been to clarify the vagueness, determine the assumptions, elaborate the high-levels into low-levels and details and thrive on them with the reasonings and resolutions. This was where I found one of the biggest gaps from me to reach for the Senior title.

The fit (moderate)

This is more like a dynamic game. Aside from the soft skills and general technical background, the hard skills (the language, the framework, the domain, the position in SDLC) also play a part, and huge. I once think that they are trivial and should not be considered part of the metrics for the interviews, but they actually imply how productive the candidate is after joining the company. Therefore I tends to present the most complex system I have ever designed, a Data Platform, emphasize the reasonings, the tradeoffs made, the “soft skills applied” and barely about the framework features and workarounds. That might be the reason why I usually excel at Data Engineering interviews (because those are the problems in the Data industry). Bringing this to traditional Backend and I fail the hard way. In this ever-increasing intensive competitive environment, those advantages might be key to decide the interview outcome. These advantages also seem to create a bias to the interviewer, because mental models between those in the interview are usually resemble, the questions and the expected answers are usually predicted and well-prepared. Hence, understanding the interviewers expectation/intention is crucial to gain interview’s interest and credit.

Conclusion

Don’t underestimate the power of hard skills and experience and brag about the Logical Thinking, Problem Solving, … bla bla bla. Try to understand the interview’s interest, focus on it and prove yourself in it. That’s what the interviewer is seeking.