DEV Community

Matt Ruiz
Matt Ruiz

Posted on

Soft skill tips for a Technical Interview

Hola hola,

As a Corporate Software Trainer, I’ve conducted hundreds of technical interviews.

Some of these interviews were coding exercises and others were solely focused on soft skills.

At THT, I’ve interviewed and onboarded dozens of contractors.

Here are my list of tips if you’ve got a technical interview coming up:

Be yourself and trust yourself

Your background is unique and you should use that to your advantage. People (interviewers) judge based on your confidence. This is the time where you can really sell yourself as someone who can exist in meetings and collaboration sessions.

Relax

You’ve been working hard. Let your hard work subconsciously carry you through the interview. The more you approach the interview as a conversation the better.

Give detailed answers

When you’re asked a question, run with the answer. Talk through your different thoughts and ask questions so that your answer remains relevant. What we don’t want is for you to spend 45s answering the wrong question. That’s 45s of the interviewer wishing you gave them a second to interject.

Spend too little time answering a question and you’ll leave the interviewer wanting more - they’ll treat this as a sign of you not having the experience or great soft skills.

Extend the small talk

You may hate small talk but it’s the only opportunity during a technical interview where you can ask questions about the interviewers life. People love talking about themselves and their experience so take this time to learn about the individual in front of you. Aim to hype them up as much as possible.

Summary

Technical interviews can be intimidating and stressful. But, they can also be fun and insightful.

Relax the shoulders, hold your chin up high, and keep pushing forward.

If they don’t like you as a candidate, FTBs.

  • Matt

Top comments (0)