Interview Question

IamtheWalrus

I have an interview for a development role soon and am trying to think of a good answer to the questions of what I personally, contributed to my team.

I'm am pretty much mid-level and haven't had any team leading experience yet. My roles have basically centered around me build software components and testing them.

But how to I enhance this to make it look like I contributed more? I don't mean lie, I mean how do I word this that it makes me look like I'd be a valuable team member, to really impress the interviewer?

Any suggestions are welcome.

Walrus

IamtheWalrus

I might highlight my ability to not shy away from hard work. That when deadlines come, I'm the first to offer to do overtime.

smcelhinney

Tell them you're a Walrus, that should win them over.

Serious response: definitely don't lie. You can big yourself up by telling them about your interests outside of your role, how you gained valuable experience on things outside of the role, and tried to bring that experience to the team.

Its better than saying "I showed initiative", it demonstrates it.

Also, have a couple of "efficiency" answers in your arsenal. Think about a tedious process that you automated that resulted in a) better quality or b) reduction in time spent.

Best of luck..

IamtheWalrus

smcelhinney wrote: »

Tell them you're a Walrus, that should win them over.

Serious response: definitely don't lie. You can big yourself up by telling them about your interests outside of your role, how you gained valuable experience on things outside of the role, and tried to bring that experience to the team.

Its better than saying "I showed initiative", it demonstrates it.

Also, have a couple of "efficiency" answers in your arsenal. Think about a tedious process that you automated that resulted in a) better quality or b) reduction in time spent.

Best of luck..

Good points. I'll try to think of things I've done to help the team meet its deadlines; maybe offer to help out in areas that I wasn't involved in.

COYW

I would also look at telling them the phases of the SDLC you worked on and where you fitted into the overall cycle. This will show them that you have a good overall understanding of the SDLC.

IamtheWalrus

COYW wrote: »

I would also look at telling them the phases of the SDLC you worked on and where you fitted into the overall cycle. This will show them that you have a good overall understanding of the SDLC.

I mainly work in Agile so I'm involved in the entire process.

I'm really looking for something to make me stand out. Something I can tell them that makes me stand our from other candidates, other than 'went in and did the job asked of me'.

Boskowski

Tell them you have actively and positively experienced the full software development life cycle in a biggish team/project.
Customer interaction, requirements gathering, planning, design, prototyping possibly, implementation, testing, QA support, deployment. Thats a positive and most likely not even a lie if you think about it.

ChRoMe

Boskowski wrote: »

Tell them you have actively and positively experienced the full software development life cycle in a biggish team/project.
Customer interaction, requirements gathering, planning, design, prototyping possibly, implementation, testing, QA support, deployment. Thats a positive and most likely not even a lie if you think about it.

Rare for a developer being actively involved in requirements gathering, customer interaction and QA tbh.

srsly78

Rare in large companies, common in small companies.

Boskowski

srsly78 wrote: »

Rare in large companies, common in small companies.

That, also with QA I mean working with the QA team fixing the bugs reported and having them retested.

ChRoMe

srsly78 wrote: »

Rare in large companies, common in small companies.

A developer involved in requirements gathering? I've worked in three software companies all with less than 25 employees in Dublin. Not one of them had a developer involved in that process. It was also in very extreme support situations where a developer would have any direct contact with the customer.

As a rule, if either of the two things above happen, your management has ****ed up somewhere.

srsly78

I worked for 2 companies where I was the only developer!

amen

As a rule, if either of the two things above happen, your management has ****ed up somewhere

really ? A lot of companies cross train employees ensuring they have a good experience of not only development but the entire produce life cycle and the business decisions that go into making a specification/product.

COYW

srsly78 wrote: »

Rare in large companies, common in small companies.

I have done this in both large and small companies. It has always proved very valuable to me when applying and interviewing for jobs. Having a person who has strong technical ability coupled with the ability to interact with non-technical business people is an extremely attractive quality.

KonFusion

srsly78 wrote: »

Rare in large companies, common in small companies.

I'd agree.

It's rare that I'm not in contact with a client at least once. While for most projects I wouldn't be the main point of contact, there have been projects where I've been the point of contact from start to finish, and I find it very beneficial.

Plus it's refreshing to be able to get out, meet clients and influence the project from the get-go, rather than staring at code all day.

richie murray

So I am a recruiter (boo I know) and the reason that this question is so broad and open is so that you can answer in a million different ways. The main thing to concentrate on questions like this are to get a concrete example of a task you completed.

This will be whatever piece of development you are most proud of and ran perfectly or a serious piece of fire fighting that you identified and fixed.

I feel the best way to answer a question like this is;

Our team worked really well together and we all got along and worked off each other(people person) in terms of what I contributed that was the most valuable I would say my attention to detail\passion for technology\coding skill\ability to put in the hours (what you say here is surprisingly unimportant just make sure that whatever you pick ties into the example you give) A good example of this in action was the time that I .... what ever example

You will want to explain this example using the star method. Cover off these 4 areas for a complete answer
Situation - What was happening and what the purpose of the project was
Task - What you were personally responsible for
Action - What you did to resolve it
Result - Finally how it was resolved.

Questions like these are asked as a round about way of saying tell me 4 tasks you completed and your thought process on how you approached them. That would be fairly daunting question so instead 4 open questions that will allow you to answer will be asked.

The other upside of going down this route is the first half is rehearsed and planned. Following this he will have specific questions regarding why you used x approach to fixing a certain problem and it will become a much less formulaic interview and more of 2 passionate tech guys having a chat.

Basically you want to turn open interview questions into a description of something tangible you achieved at every opportunity. Remember to use "I" rather than the team or we as much as possible also.

Best of luck with the interview.