With more and more people joining the IT industry, how do you make yourself stand out from the sea of candidates with the same background as you? There are so many people with similar backgrounds and qualifications, so sometimes there’s a possibility that the reason you weren’t hired is not because you don’t tick the boxes, just unprepared for the interview. This is where we come in as we are here to give you some tips on how to prepare for an IT job interview.
1. Prepare a few stories using the STAR method
When there are two similar candidates, the one who is able to present themselves well in terms of the way they speak, the way they dress, and how professional they seem will most likely get picked over the one who doesn’t. One thing you could do is to have a few stories prepared that you could use for answering questions, and these stories should all come from your past experiences. We absolutely do not recommend making up any stories as the consequences and risks overwhelmingly outweighs the advantages. In any case, try to use the STAR (Situation-Task-Action-Result) method to ensure that your stories have a proper structure. You can try to refer to the example below on how it may be used:
Situation: At my previous company, we launched a new system which involved migrating our clients’ data and we found that there were compatibility issues with it.
Task: I was responsible for finding out the root cause of the problem.
Action: I asked my colleague to help me (Bonus for including an interpersonal skill!) with running some tests to see where the data mapping had gone wrong
Result: In the end, we managed to find the cause and developed temporary solutions before the real fix was implemented.
Hiring managers tend to ask various sorts of questions in relation to you and the IT industry. Some of these may sound as simple as why are you interested in IT? What about it makes you passionate? If you do have the passion, then these sorts of questions wouldn’t be a problem for you to answer at all, as you could talk about any hobbies or personal projects that you do in your free time or how you keep up with the latest IT trends.
On the off chance that you’ve never done the aforementioned, this might be a good time for you to start doing so. What no hiring manager wants to hear is how you just happened to choose to study IT because that’s what’s popular in the current job market, and that maybe you were actually aiming to study something else but your parents wanted you to pursue this instead. These are all considered red flags. If you’re not actually interested in IT then would you be able to commit to projects in the future?
3. Research the company
Unexpectedly, a very common way for candidates to shoot themselves in the foot is by not researching the company they’re applying for. You can’t walk into an interview and ask the hiring manager what the company does. All it takes is a simple Google search for you to find out.
Researching the company might also reveal how you can relate your skills to be valuable to them. A lot of companies would also share on their social media about whatever celebrations or events they might have, and this is a great way for you to see if you would fit in with the company culture, and during the interview, you may ask the hiring manager about all these things too, as it shows that you’re not just interested in getting the role, you’re also interested in the people you could be working with.
4. Practice your technical skills
As our last advice for this post, we would like to advise you to practice your technical skills. Some interviews would inform you beforehand if they would do a technical assessment, but some might not as they would like to see if you could do it without any prior notice. This would be the most nerve-wracking part of the interview which would leave you feeling like a sitting duck if you were unprepared.
If you were asked to, let's say, program in a language that you’re unfamiliar with, it would be better for you to tell them that you’re better in something else, but you’re willing to try it although it’s not your expertise. Again, this is why you need to research everything you can before you walk into the interview. Pay attention to what’s written in the job description as they would likely test you based on that.
To wrap up this post, if you follow all the advice we have given, trust that you’ll feel more confident in giving your best in the interview. If you don’t happen to get the job after preparing so hard, then you should at least not have any regrets as you’ve done your best, and that in itself is something to be proud of too. Therefore, we’d like to wish you the best of luck in your job search and if you’re interested in joining our team, click on the button below to apply!