Comment by ipnon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ipnon | Hacker News Reader

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I struggled so much as a new grad I wanted to give you some specific advice: There are two kinds of employee candidates, red flaggers and green flaggers. By this I mean people look at your resume and either think "wow, what's the catch?" or "hmm okay, maybe there's something good here."

A red flagger would be someone who built a supercomputer out of beach pebbles then proved P=NP on it. The interviewer already knows you're good enough for the job, they're just looking for red flags that would disqualify you. A green flagger would be someone who worked at GenericCorp for 2 years on a Java queue. The interviewer knows you're a programmer, but they need a signal that you'll actually be able to do the job.

Why does this matter? If you're a red flagger, all you need to do in the interview is not make an obvious mistake. They already want to hire you, they just have to do the HR dance first. If you're a green flagger, you have to do everything right in the interview to get the job. They need programmers ASAP, but you still need to prove yourself. Being a green flagger is much harder than a red flagger. Becoming a red flagger is simple: Your interviewer needs to think you are smarter than them. If you pull this off they will always give you the benefit of the doubt. Your job interviewing will be so much easier.

To do this you just need one thing on your resume that they don't know how to do. If your resume has an internship writing React, and a side project using NodeJS, your relative inexperience will make them think "I can code circles around this chump." Switch that side project to a niche area they've never dabbled in, and suddenly they're over their head. "What do they know that I don't? We must hire immediately!"

I accomplished this by doing side projects in machine learning and crypto. For any programmer with some tenacity these are totally doable, but most people I interviewed with hadn't done it themselves so I became a red flagger. It doesn't need to be these subjects, it should be whatever niche computer topic you're most interested in. It doesn't need to be complicated either. If you can demo it, and it works, and you can explain it in a way that teaches the interviewer something, you've made the job of interviewing much easier.

>> in a way that teaches the interviewer something, you've made the job of interviewing much easier.

A tip I have that I don't see much is related to this - good people love to learn, and also generally like to teach, and this goes both ways across the interview table. If you know something the interviewer doesn't and they want you to teach them about it, that's a good sign for your interview outcome, and also a great sign that this is probably someplace you want to work.

And vice-versa - if you don't know something in an interview but you have time to ask the interviewer to explain it, or to point you to a reference where you can learn about it, that'll help a lot with the they-don't-know-this signal, especially in more junior roles. In most technical jobs, it's impossible to already know everything, so demonstrating that you're someone who is always learning is the next best thing to already being the expert they want.

Wow there is a lot to unpack here — thank you so much for taking the time to write it out. I've sat here thinking about this and going over my past interviews and this is an extremely helpful way to approach how I build myself as a candidate.

Thank you again!

You're welcome. Good luck, and try your best. If you don't give up it will work out in the end.

I don't think this is necessarily good advice for a new graduates, especially because new graduates don't really have a good handle on how to judge coding smarts (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect). There are plenty that talk a big game, but if you listen to what they're saying you realize they are throwing out a ton of big buzz words. My first time interviewing I thought I was super smart, and looking back I realize the interviewers saw through me to the inexperienced idiot beneath.

Further, focusing too much on a niche area totally unrelated to the job you're interviewing might be evidence against you. If your interviewer is hoping that you'll spend the next decade on graphics frameworks, an intense interest in crypto might be a red flag that you won't stick around.

I think it's much more important to find the right balance of confidence without over-confidence. Do lots of practice interviews, including interviews at companies you're less interested in. Learn how to pace yourself to a speed where you don't have awkward pauses but also don't make stupid mistakes. If you practice to the point where interviews start to feel like a fun chance to meet people and solve interesting problems, you'll do great.

Do at least a little research into the companies you're interviewing for, and show an eagerness to learn about what they do. As a new grad, an eagerness to learn can make up for some other gaps. Similarly, if you happen to have a personal project related to the team, it shows you've already thought deeply about the area, even though the interviewer probably knows the area better than you.

Also, make sure you can talk with confidence about anything on your resume. You never know when the interviewer might happen to be an expert in whatever obscure skill you put on there, even if it's unrelated to the job. For example, I know a few people who lost out on entry-level jobs because they put a real-world language they learned in high school on their resume, and when the interviewer happened to speak it fluently and realized the candidate had forgotten it entirely, the interviewers disqualified them for lying on a resume.

Good critique. What I was try (and failed) to communicate is that you should have a project that your interviewer wouldn't know how to make, rather than puff yourself up with hot gas. Having a project the interviewer couldn't make means they already know you have something to contribute to the team that they cannot. Acting like you are God's gift to Earth however is only useful if you are quickly trying to end an interview you are no longer interested in.

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