interview advice?

[olstad]

So, a good friend of mine* has a phone interview tomorrow. He's a CS graduate who like me spent awhile after graduation finding himself- in his case teaching English in Japan for two years

Comments

[pmb]

Not to worry. Symantec tech support is looking for a calm demeanor and the ability to pick things up quickly.

Is this person moving to Eugene/Springfield where the huge call center is? Do I know them?

[ukelele]

The husband does a lot of phone interviews, albeit for coders, not for tech support; I've asked him to provide his advice

[nonnihil]

ukelele asked me to drop a note here about telephone interviews, one of my least favourite things in the whole world

[nuclear_eggset]

They'll probably ask a "describe a time you were in a team environment" type question. any maybe the "strengths and weaknesses" questions (though that's a sucky question for the crappy interviewers). possibly a "describe a good and bad experience in a team" and a "how do you handle conflict in a team" and "what's your approach in teams" type of thing.

I find, for interviews, the best thing to do, is to brainstorm significant events/scenarios that I would use to highlight challenges, experiences, strengths, capabilities, and so on.

[alpinebutterfly]

I second the above advice ... phone screens in my experience have been weed-out calls so face time isn't wasted on someone who's super-flaky. The most useful short term thing to do is brainstorming questions and practicing answering them. I think the actual answers are not quite as important as just being cool, calm, and responding smoothly and naturally - not too fast like it's memorized but neither 10 minutes going "that's a good question, hmmm, I never thought of that, I don't know."

Extra bonus points if he can practice with another person over the phone ... that should help allay nervousness and give him experience with phone interviews. The position is a trainer ... so that sounds like people skills will be a big plus, as will communication clarity. Maybe a good thing to practice might be fake training - instruct someone how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, etc.

-Anna