On Over-thinking It
I had my first interview for a full-time dev position on Friday morning. It was thirty minute phone interview, and was entirely non-technical: the company trusted that graduates of my program had the sufficient technical skills to be shaped into valuable employees, and were instead interested in sussing out how well the candidates would fit into the team.
I spent a good week in a low-key panic for this. I’ve interviewed plenty, but there’s a special clench in your jaw that you get when the job is something you’re this hungry for, something you’ve spent over a year working towards. I wrote out customized responses to the most common behavioral interview questions, practiced them to an empty room, bounced them off my wife, re-wrote half of them. I paced a rut in the floor practicing how to quickly and neatly sum up ten messy years bouncing in and out of academia and the hospitality industry.
The morning of the interview I drank a venti cold brew coffee and ate too many donuts (In my defense, it WAS National Donut Day). The sugar and caffeine brought my already jangling nerves up to a transcendent hum, an angelic choir singing “Don’t mess this up”.
The call came, and I quickly learned that in actuality I had prepped too much. He didn’t ask any of the questions I had prepped for. I used barely any of my carefully thought out anecdotes. Instead we had a friendly, evenly paced conversation. I got a little stumped on one question, but otherwise had a fine experience. I learned a lot about the position. We chatted about my neighborhood, a place my interviewer had once lived. I talked about my experience. I asked a lot of questions. He told me that I had made a good impression, and that was that.
The anxiety off-ramp took most of the rest of the day.
Do I regret spending so much time practicing? Well, yes and no. The anxiety was largely unhelpful, as anxiety generally is. All it really did for me was leave me with lot tension in my shoulders that I’ll have to work out on a yoga mat. But despite me barely using any of it, I actually would recommend anyone in my position to spend some time writing out answers to behavioral interview questions. I think its a really useful exercise.
One of the problems I’ve had in interviews for professional positions is a difficulty talking about my work experience. I’ve often tried my hardest to divert away from talking about hospitality. I didn’t see the use in it, didn’t see how it applied. I feared I might be judged for it. Spending some time really thinking through and writing out anecdotes about my time in the industry helped me reframe how I think about myself as a professional. I learned how many skills I had built up, and regained some pride in my work experience. It helped me feel more like this career transition isn’t so much starting from scratch as it is a continuation of past experience, and helped me draw a line between the person I used to be and the person I am now.
Time will tell how well the interview really went, but this experience has absolutely made me a better interviewer.
