You can find technical interview tips about most common technologies but how are effective they, we never know. Usually interview tips are written based on some assumption about how the interview would go, what the pattern of the interview would be etc. The more closely the interview adheres to the expected pattern more effective the tips would be. Unfortunately unlike an HR interview the technical interview varies a lot in scope, expected questions, interview methods etc. Considering this diversity the effectiveness of the interview tips are highly in doubts. Before making any final decision about the effectiveness of the technical round interview tips however, let's take a closer look at these tips.
The technical interview tips can be divided in to interview preparation tips and tips about how to face the actual interview. The interview preparation tips in turn can be further divided in to general purpose tips such as those about researching the job and the company before the interview and specific tips about a particular technology or skill.
- Interview Preparation Tips
Interview preparation tips can be about one of the following points:
- Research
Research tips are concerned with finding as much as you can about the company, job and the interview. As the rest of the preparation for the interview would be guided by and depend on the information gathered in this stage, a proper research is very important. The tips about the research are pretty generic and are effective for almost all cases.
- Resume
You should revise your resume before the interview, keeping in mind the requirements and specifications of the job. The interview tips would be of limited effectiveness for this as the modifications required would depend entirely on the information that you have gathered in the research phase. You should go through the tips as well just to see that you are not making any obvious mistake or missing some important point.
- Preparing for Questions
You should prepare in advance for questions expected in the job interview. But what exactly are the expected questions, we do not know. Unlike an HR interview the range and type of the questions that can be asked in a technical interview is usually too wide to be covered by interview tips or questions available online. You should go through these as they'll refresh your knowledge and give you some idea of what to expect but their effective is best in cases where the job requires only a basic understanding of the technology. The effectiveness of these tips for an experienced person is limited at best.
- Preparing Questions
Just as in previous case the interview tips will give you some idea of what to ask and more specifically what not to ask but the specific questions would depend on the job specification, your own experience, company etc. You should go through these as they'll help you get started but you'll have to formulate most of the questions by yourself.
- Attire & Arrival
Although a technical interview is more about your technical knowhow, but it's an interview and therefore your appearance and presentation skills matter as well. The tips about the attire would help you choose appropriate interview attire. The tips about the arrival are obvious but very important nonetheless, never be late for an interview. Arrive before the appointed time.
- Tips About Presentation
The preparation is important but in the end the interview is all about the presentation. The interview tips about the presentation in a technical interview fall in to these categories, let's look at their effectiveness.
- Introduction
This is the initial, and beside the closing, most non technical part of the interview. The tips regarding the introduction part would hold true for most of the technical interview and are therefore effective in most if not all cases.
- Body Language
Confidence as well as appearance of confidence is important for the interview. Confidence, so that you won't panic and answer the question in a calm and well thought way; and appear confident, because it would be hard to convince the interviewer that you deserve the job and are the right person for this if it looked like you don't believe it yourself. The body language is very important for projecting confidence and as the rules about the body language are universal, the tips about the body language are applicable to all technical job interviews. Overall the tips regarding the body language are very effective and universally applicable.
- Etiquette / Manner
Similar to the tips about the body language the interview tips about the etiquette and manners are more or less uniform for all interviews, technical or otherwise. These tips therefore are effective in helping you make a good impression.
- Answering Questions
The interview tips about answering focus on how you should answer and these tips are applicable in most cases. These are effective as long as you also consider the time frame, the tone of the interview and response of the interviewer.
- Closing
Similar to the introduction, the closing part is mostly non technical in nature and therefore the interview tips about the closing of a technical interview are effective and can help you bring the interview to a good finish.
Overall we see that the effectiveness of the technical round interview tips varies a lot. These are more effective when the actual interview matches and is similar to the scenario considering which the tips were written. These are more effective in parts of the interview which remain similar across different interview and are less so when the part of the interview is unique to a particular job or company. We should always remember that every interview is unique in some way and thus keep an open mind when applying the technical interview tips.
