6 Interviewing for your place on the team

Learning a programming language and its associated best practices is only one step on the journey toward getting your first tech job. If you’re just starting out, and you’re unable to show actual experience for the position you’re applying for, a good CV will only take you to the first interview. After that, you’re on your own, which is not a bad place to be, but it’s important to understand how the interviewing process works and what to expect from it.

Different companies have different hiring processes. Some of them will only perform one interview and make a decision, while others can take up to a month of interviewing and testing. There is no standard, but there are certain patterns of what you’ll find and how you should behave (what you should say or avoid saying), which is what we’ll tackle in this chapter.

By the end of this chapter, you should understand how the interviewing process works in our industry and some key indicators that will let you know whether a company is right for you or not.

6.1 The tech interview experience

6.1.1 What can you expect from a tech interview?

6.1.2 Warning signs you should look out for

6.2 Things you should never say during a tech interview

6.2.1 What do you do here, exactly?

6.2.2 I don’t know, I’ve never done that before

6.2.3 I hated that place because ...

6.2.4 I’ve built multiple SPAs using SSR with MERN

6.2.5 Well, nobody uses that anymore

6.2.6 It’s listed on my resume