Mock Interview Techniques for Tech Job Searchers

Jun 24 2022

Boost your chance of landing a dream job by learning what a coding mock interview is, how to prepare, where to find questions and how to evaluate yourself. By Lea Marolt Sonnenschein.

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Mock Interview Techniques for Tech Job Searchers

25 mins

Knowing When You’re Ready to Interview

How do you know that you’re ready to have a real interview? Unfortunately, the answer is: You don’t. Your goal should be to do as many mock interviews as your timeline allows. You’ll learn something new from every single one.

However, you should keep applying for interesting positions, even as you set up your mock interviews. If you’re tight on time, you should concentrate on doing a:

  1. Mock interview with a question you know the answer to, to focus on performance.
  2. Mock interview with an unknown easy question to see how you handle new problems.
  3. Mock interview with an unknown medium or difficult question to see how you collaborate with the interviewer to make progress.

Remember: “The point of a mock interview is not to prepare you to solve a problem, but to prepare you to succeed in an interview setting.” Ash Furrow, Senior Staff Developer at Shopify.

Where to Go From Here?

Now, it’s time to challenge yourself and put what you learned into action:

  • Do at least one mock interview on your own, from start to finish.
  • Create a list of your interview strengths and weaknesses by watching the recording and thinking about what went well and what didn’t in past interview experiences.
  • Create your personal evaluation rubric based on the weaknesses you identified above.
  • Find other people to interview you.
  • Start a list called “My Unique Interview Strategies” where you catalog every story, gesture or interaction that received a good response from your interviewer.

Key Takeaways

  • Practice makes perfect. The more mock interviews you do, the more you improve.
  • Buy a whiteboard and practice coding without an IDE.
  • Practice addressing your weaknesses, not your strengths.
  • Record your mocks.
  • Always make time for reflection and feedback.
  • Be intentional about the evaluation rubric, the feedback you want and what success looks like for each mock.

Resources

Here are suggestions for handy resources to use when setting up your mock interviews.

Useful Items to Purchase:

  • Reusable whiteboard sheets.
  • A whiteboard.
  • A revolving whiteboard with stand.
  • A good quality lavalier or clip-on lapel microphone.
  • A standing microphone that you can place on your desk.
  • A good quality webcam.

Helpful Sites:

Common Collaboration Tools:

Resources for Finding Mock Interview Questions:

More Tips to Improve Your Job Search Skills: