hacking the interview
DESCRIPTION
President Emeritus Clark Wood's talk on techniques for soaring over tech interviews. Clark covers: Side Projects Resumes Public Speaking and Leadership Appropriate Behavior & Appearance General Career AdviceTRANSCRIPT
Hacking the InterviewHuman Buffer Overflows? Gross...
Inherent Bias
● I’m SFS (security guy)● Internships in public and private sector, but
no long term work experience in tech field● Advised and conducted technical interviews
for ACM’s sponsors
Agenda
● Before● During● After the interview
Agenda
● Before● During● After the interview
Do Interesting Stuff
Public Speaking and Leadership
● People want to hire future leaders
● Get involved in ACM :) ● Give presentations like
this one (even better….technical presentations)
Stay Current
● T shape: Breadth of general knowledge, know one area deeply
● Read conference papers● Subreddits, blogs, etc.● GPA
Resumes
● Bullets, verbs, how you added value, etc...● The good places to work don’t want
buzzwords...● But HR does● So does software:
egrep -i “mobile|big data|the cloud” > hireNow.txt
Resources
● Your professors● Google Scholar● http://makingawesome.org/● https://studentgroups.fsu.edu/organizations● Internet (for InfoSec I can give a huge list)
Agenda
● Before● During● After the interview
Behavior & Appearance
● Suit will never hurt, looking scrubby might not help
● Be ready to self promote, have stories ready● You are in the interview to MAKE FRIENDS
Interview
● Certain types of questions are inevitable, so have good answers
● Google moving away from “shrunk to 1 inch and stuck in a blender” type questions and GPA requirementshttp://www.businessinsider.com/how-google-hires-2013-6
Interview Judo (Sorry Gustafsson)
Do you know $foo?
Well, I know $bar, which has:
$bar.a$bar.b
Just like:$foo.a and $foo.b
Their Questions
● Technicala. Convergent - List and describe the OSI Layersb. Divergent - You need to hack a vending machine
● “Tell me about a time…”a. You succeededb. You failedc. You dealt with a difficult colleagued. You came up with an ingenious solution to a hard
problem● “How do you feel about?...”
a. Working remotelyb. Company culturec. Etc
Your Questions
Nature of Question Impact
About the organization Asking for facts is lame. Asking about company culture, or about living in the location is fine.
About the interviewer If it looks casual, very good. Otherwise you are a brown-noser.
Technical questions Jackpot! Bonus points for (politely) stumping the interviewer
Resources
● ACM (soon)● http://www.career.fsu.edu/mockinterview/● Places you don’t want to work● Engineering Fair next Tueday (Suit up!)
Agenda
● Before● During● After the interview
Follow Up
● Give it a few days, then send a “thank you” email to your interviewer
● DO: Be short and sweet, polite● DO: Use names, mention something funny
or memorable that came up● DONT: be a suck-up
General Career Advice
● High GPA, one novel project, Meaningful outside school stuff
● Apply to lots of places● Get started early● Craft a personal trajectory, make
incremental progress
Questions, Comments, Complaints?