[NorCalAthlete]

Like I said before it's not always about how "good" your answer is vs your thought process to arrive at it.

General interviewing techniques / advice:

1. Think out loud - it's ok to ramble a little bit as long as it's quick and directed. Meaning, show what your brain is bouncing off of to arrive at a given conclusion. Example: "What would you do in X situation?" Answer: "Hmmm...well, if I did A I'd have to consider B & C, do you have any assumptions I can make for those? No? Ok then I'd probably go with doing D, though that would involve N, or possibly go with doing E instead. On the other hand if I can assume B & C involve blah, then I would explore F."

So you're bouncing off of 2-3 different decision choices and showing that you're considering secondary effects / dependencies to make your decision, but realistically in a 30 min interview where you may get asked 3-5 of these questions they're not expecting a fully fleshed out roadmap - just thoughtful consideration and logical problem solving skills.

2. Ask expanding / clarifying questions. In the military / on the shooting range we refer to it as "know your left and right limits" to keep your fire directed towards the target. You could also think of it as the foul lines in baseball - try to figure out where your boundaries are so you can stay on target / in bounds, and just because you started in-bounds doesn't mean you can't drift out of bounds. Treat it as a conversation with the recruiter, not a soapbox monologue necessarily.

3. If no dress code is told, assume business casual - polo shirt + slacks, tie + button up, no jacket, something along those lines. Unless you're a lawyer or maybe interviewing for finance. In which case full suit. (You can also ask the recruiter who's setting up the interview what the company's expectation / protocol is - sometimes the interviewer may have a different preference than the company policy).

4. Be 5 min early even if the interviewer runs late.

5. Have your 30 second elevator pitch "about me" ready to go at all times, and have a core "story" you can stick to while swapping details as relevant to the interviewer / position - just like your resume as I mentioned before and swapping out targeted blurbs towards the position or company.

6. Keep your additional questions we mentioned before - about the interviewer, the company, the team, etc - in mind to ask at the last 5-10 minutes.

7. Keep the company's motto / slogan / whatever in mind as you answer questions, and see if you can work it in / tie your answer to how your ideas / proposals / decisions would link to the overall mission, even loosely.

In a meeting right now so just a couple quick notes. Good luck.

edit - expansion to #1 - in programming we call it the "naive" solution to a given problem, but the gist of it is you always want to at LEAST get the obvious answer first at a minimum and then build on refining it with whatever time you have left. Stupid simplified example : "What is 2+2?" "Well, obviously it's 4, but you could also do 2*2 to get 4. If what you're really asking is how to sum two numbers, then A+B=C and you would be able to plug in any number besides 2 to still get the correct answer. On the other hand if what you're trying to do is double an initial quantity, it would be better to multiply A*2 as simply adding 2 would not give you the correct amount and would be further away from the correct amount the larger the number is."

Take it, explore it, mull it over, ask questions, refine. Fair warning - this may take too long for some questions, may go too far into the weeds for others, and your interviewer may smoothly shift to another question entirely mid-answer. It might sound like they're just asking a clarifying question but in actuality it's a whole new problem. So thinking on your feet is key. Don't get stuck on a 1-track mind.