How to prepare for first interviews, AKA screening calls

Nervous about your interview? Good preparation is key. Here are the 4 questions you will always get asked, and how to answer them like a pro.

A quick Google search of “job interview” yields about a billion results, and most contain a giant list of interview questions to prepare for. “60 Most Common Behavioral Interview Questions and Answers” can certainly be helpful, but if you are new to interviews or early in your career, starting with these lists can be disorienting. What’s important is to understand the goal of the interview process and prepare for interviews with a strategy in mind. That way, no matter which company or interviewer you speak with, you’ll know what to say.

What are they looking for in the screening call?

Because this is the first conversation between the company and the candidate, there is a lot to go through in a short amount of time (30 mins, sometimes 25 mins or 35 mins), so recruiters usually need to follow a very clear structure.

If the screening call is 30 mins long, the first 20-25 mins are spent getting to know the candidate, then the last 5-10 mins are used to pitch the company or position and answer any questions from the candidate.

Typically, a recruiter will cover these 4 questions in the first part.

1. Why are you interested in this position with our company?

2. Tell me about yourself.

3. Tell me about your experiences.

4. What are your career goals?

It’s not difficult to give good answers, you simply need to follow the golden rule: be specific. What’s actually difficult is knowing whether you are being specific or not. If you are only using adjectives like “data-driven”, “passionate”, make sure to immediately back up with specific examples. More on this later.

Photo by Good Faces on Unsplash

Why are you interested in this position with our company?

Most mediocre answers I hear are along the lines of “I’m looking for a next challenge and I want to develop my skills. I saw Company A’s job posting and thought it was interesting". Unfortunately, these answers are not good enough because 1) they only talk about the candidate themselves and didn’t actually answer the question of “why our company”; 2) this answer is used by so many that your recruiter probably heard it for the 10th time that week.

One trick to test if you are specific enough with your answer for this particular question is to swap the company name with another random company name. Instead of saying “I wanted to apply to Company A because…”, try saying “I want to apply to Google because…”. Does your answer still make sense? If it still makes sense, your answer is not specific enough.

Think about your unique connection to the company. Why do the company’s mission and values speak to you? How did you get to know the company? Do you know someone who works there, or did you read a particular blog post from them?

Tell me about yourself

Sometimes this question is asking for the same things as “tell me about your experiences”. But you’ll stand out clearly against other candidates if you have a snappy 2-minute pitch about yourself that presents a strong, memorable identity before diving into the details of your professional experiences. In case you don’t get asked this question but the “tell me about your experiences'' right away instead, you can check in with the recruiter to let them know you’ll get into it in a bit. You could say: “Before jumping into my experiences, a few quick words about myself and why I am here.”

Give yourself a rough time limit, and then be as creative and personal as you’d like. If you feel confident enough, you can go with “There are 3 reasons why I would be a great fit for this role”, then briefly list out the reasons. If you are a mission- or purpose-driven person, you can bring out your unique career mission or purpose. If you have an interesting life story, tell it (especially if you changed careers paths to enter tech).

Make sure you leave an impression early, bringing out the most relevant information first. Most of the time, it only takes 10 mins of interviewing for the recruiter to decide whether you should move forward or be rejected.

Tell me about your experiences

The biggest mistake people make here is being completely unstructured. I’ve seen too many candidates who literally read out the “Experiences” section on their resume chronologically. Well, the recruiter will have already read your resume, so you won’t provide any additional value. 

There are 3 things that the recruiter will look for in this part: 1) context; 2) main challenges; 3) your achievements.

Context is important; it helps us understand the scale of your challenges and achievements. Did you work in a big team where your role is highly specialized, or did you work in a small team where you needed to be very versatile? What stage was the company at? If applicable, what budget did you work with? Was there any time pressure? Did you have to venture into uncharted territory? Use context to your advantage, so that even if nobody has heard about your previous company, they can still get a clear picture of your work.

Sometimes recruiters ask for challenges and achievements directly, sometimes you’ll hear questions like “Tell me about the highlights and lowlights of your experiences”. Be specific. Don’t worry about throwing out jargon that the recruiter might not understand. Even if the recruiter never worked in your function, they will need to check for specific skills as requested by the hiring managers. They are, for example, told to look out for candidates that worked with Typescript, Node.js, or Taboola and Outbrain, so make sure you don’t skip those keywords.

Lastly, use numbers and specific examples to illustrate your achievements. How many people did you mentor? How much revenue did you bring in? How many clients did you sign? Which specific features did you design? How did you help improve your company’s processes? If this is hard to come up with, think about the performance metrics used in your performance review with your managers. Think about what difference or impact you’ve made in that company. Don’t be afraid to sell yourself; if you don’t tell me what you’ve done, I can’t ask questions about them!

What are your career goals?

This question gets asked in a few different forms, for example: “Where do you see yourself in the next 3-5 years?” or, “If you end up joining us, what do you plan to learn and achieve in the first few months?” Companies that ask these questions typically look for candidates that are ambitious and eager to learn.

A generic answer here would be: “I’m looking to further my expertise and grow into a senior role.” I hear this in almost every single interview I conduct. I understand that it’s hard to plan for the next 5 years of your career and you want to keep your options open. Best to have a few specific goals for the next 1-2 years, and if you get asked about the next 3-5 years, don’t be afraid to say “The world changes quickly and I want to be open about the future, but I do have a few specific goals for the next 2 years.”

A few memorable answers I’ve heard:

• I’d like to work on my public speaking skills and speak at some conferences in the next few years, including Conference A, B and C.

• I come from a non-traditional background and would therefore like to contribute to diversity and inclusion in tech, by giving my knowledge and experiences back to others who also come from different backgrounds.

• I want to found their own company in the next 3 years, so they’d like to work very closely with the founders to learn from them (interviewing with a 10-people early stage startup).

See? These answers didn’t go into incredibly meticulous details, but they fit very well into the candidate’s personal story and offer a clear vision of their future careers. These are the answers that will make a recruiter say, “that makes sense, and I can see why this candidate will be a good fit.”

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Which part of the job search do you find most challenging? What would you like to read about in future newsletters? Comment, reply, or tweet @ me, I’m ready to spill aaaallll the recruiter secrets.