Sweetening your Interview preparation

A beginner friendly guide for your upcoming interview to land a job in tech industry

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Resume being entry point of any interview, ever imagined how they are processed before the recruiter reaches out to you? As tech industry is growing exponentially, most of the firms now make use of ATS. Thus, it is important that your resume should be ATS friendly and consistent.

What’s ATS?

ATS a.k.a Application Tracking System is a software used by recruiters which performs multiple actions such as sort, scan and ranks the resume incredibly fast. A fact to remind, on an average recruiter scans a resume for about six seconds. Yes, SIX SECONDS before deciding if the applicant is a good fit for the role.

Keeping things short and simple, you can learn more about the six seconds test in this amazing article by TopResume

Feeling lazy to go through article? Check out the video below

Video by TopResume on YouTube

TL;DR

Make your resume ATS friendly along with recruiter’s six seconds test

Crafting Resume

A resume is the first point of contact which speaks about yourself. It should have to be precise and organised enough that, it describes you in accordance to the job role you applied for.

Whether you are making your resume in legacy format with plain old text or by using an tool. I recommend to use this online tool available for FREE. A good approach to consider can be:

• Header: Mandatory information such as your Name, Email address, Contact number has to be included. Optionally, information such as your Nationality, decent photograph, links to your social profiles like LinkedIn, GitHub, StackOverflow, Medium, CodeChef, HackerRank, Quora can add advantage

Sample resume header

• Summary: Choose summary driven resume over conventional objective driven. In short, a summary driven resume describes your experience in particular domain or technology in a line or two

Photo by Jobscan

• Education: If you are a fresh graduate, then your educational details plays a vital role. So make sure to include about it in reverse chronological order. Information like your school/college name, specialisation, percentage, university and year of graduate would be of good choice

Sample education layout

• Achievements: If you’d like to highlight something that your recruiter should know about, then you cannot miss this. Things like certifications, awards and volunteer experience can be included. Keeping achievements related to your job role on priority
• Technical Proficiency: If you are targeting for software development role, then this section gives a quick idea about programming language or technical knowledge you have to your recruiter

Sample layout for technical skills

Projects: Your project says a lot about your experience in technology and the recruiter goes through it thoroughly to judge whether you are fit for the open role or not. So, make sure to include projects related to your job role. A few things to be noted when describing about your project are:
1. Be specific about projects you’ve worked on or managed.
2. What was the outcome?
3. How did you measure success?
4. How big was the team?
5. What was the scope of your work?

Sample project highlights

Interview

Once you qualify initial screening by recruiter, pat yourself and keep going. Preparing for an interview can seem daunting. Remember, interview is not just communicating your experience but also, it should have to be driven by you and not the recruiter. So highlight the skills you are good at. By the end of the day, presentation skills also matters and not only your good looking resume.

S.T.A.R Approach

The basis of the S.T.A.R format is to answer an interviewer’s questions by telling mini-stories.

S- Situation
T- Task
A- Action
R- Result

• Situation: Start by describing the situation you were involved in. Make sure you always choose the most appropriate example and one that best fits the role for which you are being interviewed.
• Task: Briefly describe what you were tasked with, your responsibilities and assignments for the situation.
• Action: This will be the section that the interviewer is most interested in and should detail the actions you took to resolve the problem. Describe all of the actions, detailing each stage and in the correct, logical order showing your thought processes, how you reached your conclusions and the steps you completed.
• Result: The Result is the second most important part of your answer as a successful outcome proves that your actions were effective.

Questions to think as you prepare:

1. How do you work best, both as an individual and as part of a team?
2. What challenges have you faced at school or at work and how did you overcome them?
3. Which of your skills or experiences would be assets in the role and why?

(Source: Google Careers)

Bonus

A few things to keep in mind, may sound silly but matters the most.

• Aim for ONE page only. Highlight things on priority
• Curate your resume as per job role. A generic resume is unliking to be shortlisted further
• Include things in your resume only if you can explain. After all, it’s about employment
• Don’t put personal pronouns.
  For example: Instead of I developed over 3 applications in 4 months use Developed over 3 applications in 4 months. Since it is your resume, your name on the top, it makes sense that you did it
• Consistency is the key. Follow Typography norms throughout your resume
• When interviewer asks you “Tell me about yourself”. Make sure you follow 80–20 rule. 80% professional and 20% personal
• If you don’t understand a question, ask your interviewer(s) for clarification and take the time you need with response.
• Think out loud. Recruiters will analyse your thought process in technical interview

That’s all from me. Hope this helps.

Good Luck!

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