The Interviewer's Mindset
A glimpse inside the hiring manager's POV 🔎
Welcome to the third edition of Unraveling with Hardware FYI! Today, we’ll be discussing our collective wisdom from having sat on both sides of the table - as an interviewer and the interviewee. 💼
The following is an excerpt from Hardware FYI Pro - Ace the Mechanical Engineering Interview Guide.
If you’re getting started or looking to get a competitive edge in hardware interviews, we’ve written a guide dedicated to helping you growth hack your career!
The hiring manager's POV 🔎
To understand the interviewing process, it’s essential to see it from the employer’s point of view. It’s not just candidates who find the process stressful, employers find it to be a grueling process too!
Employer’s Standpoint:
It’s expensive for companies to find the right candidate, stressful for hiring managers, and monotonous at times for interviewers. If you’re nervous going into interviews, just remember that these are just human interactions!
At the end of the day, it’s a conversation you’re having with a group of people who happen to work at a company you’re applying to. 🤝
Important Signals in a Candidate
When you’re interviewing, the goal of the hiring manager and interviewing panel is to assess whether the candidate has the correct skills and company fit needed to do the job.
At a high-level, it’s a mix of both technical and non-technical skills that signal to a hiring manager they’ve found the correct candidate to extend an offer.
Attitude - Looking for candidates brimming with a readiness to dive in and embrace learning from the get-go.
Aptitude - Prior knowledge or background in the skills needed is a major plus. Actual hands-on experience is even more valuable.
While not knowing all of the expertise is not an automatic disqualification, candidates familiar with the technical stack may be prioritized over those who are not.
Technical Ability - Technical interviews and/or challenges are common. Sometimes it’s to verify you have working knowledge of the domain space, or it’s to delves deeper into first principles engineering to see if you have a core understanding of engineering fundamentals. The emphasis, however, lies less on the final answer and more on your problem-solving process. If you stare blankly at the screen, no one wins! But if you actively attempt solutions, vocalize your thought process, and explain your approach, even if it’s not flawless, they’ll appreciate your methodology.
Technical Emphasis Variation
The mix of technical and soft skills changes depending on the company you’re interviewing with.
Companies like Neuralink, SpaceX, & Apple lean heavily on assessing technical knowledge during the process. You’ll find a heavy dose of technical interviews, design challenges, and presentations through-out the interviewing process.
On the flip side, start-ups care just as much about cultural fit as they do about technical skillset, as each hire they make carries a disproportionate impact on the team culture.
For small companies, culture fit is important because they want candidates who share similar work habits and align with the mission and similar work habits.
TLDR;
Big companies: Your impact on culture is minimal. Just be likable and not a jerk.
Small companies: Culture fit is crucial. Mission, drive, ethics, and work habits matter.
Hiring Panels: How Decisions are Made
When it comes to aggregating feedback from interviewers, hiring managers have different approaches. Some place importance on the average feedback received from all interviewers, seeking a candidate with consistently positive reviews. However, there are also those who prioritize the best feedback, valuing candidates who have genuinely excited at least one interviewer, even if the overall feedback is not universally outstanding.
Notably, companies like Google actually exemplify the second approach, as they place a premium on enthusiastic endorsements rather than uniformly lukewarm reviews.
There’s so much human variation in interviewing decisions. Remember, you can only control how you present yourself to companies.
Closing Remarks
Best advice I’ve seen thus far is simple: “Each interview is learning experience, just focus at learning, results are byproduct.”
If a single interview leaves you feeling disheartened, don’t lose hope! Numerous unpredictable factors beyond your actual performance influence the outcome of an interview. The questions posed, the candidates interviewed before and after you, the expectations of the interviewer, and even their mood at the time all contribute to this intricate equation!
Companies understand this as well, often inviting previously rejected candidates to interview again after a certain period, recognizing the potential for a different outcome in the future.
Remember, the result does not define your abilities or self-worth.