Over the years, recruiters in our company have conducted thousands of interviews. Candidates often make mistakes during interviews that play a critical role in the decision-making process for their next steps.
Today, I would like to focus on the main mistakes that candidates make during interviews.
What are the most common mistakes made by candidates?
- Candidates are late for the interviews.
- During the interview, candidates go somewhere or drive (This is not safe!)
- Candidates don’t turn on their camera (Yes, it’s a minus!)
- Candidates do not prepare for the interview (don’t even read what’s written in the job posting!)
- Appearance (Yes, we are used to developers being untidy, they are creative people. But lying on the couch shirtless with a plate of borscht on their belly is too much!)
- At the beginning of the interview, candidates say that their goal is just to see what’s happening in the market (Honesty is good, but how will the client want to ask or tell something after that!)
- During the interview, candidates try to resolve their personal issues (for example: coordinate the time when they will have pizza delivered, or start discussing problems with their neighbor)
- Candidates exaggerate their knowledge critically (For example, stating in their resume: “Fluent spoken English,” and then claiming during the interview that they don’t know English.)
- Candidates ask someone else to pass the interview instead of them (very often!)
- Candidates swear during the interview.
- Candidates start telling jokes, talking about politics, etc.
- Candidates don’t let the interviewer ask questions, keep interrupting.
- Candidates conduct the interview the other way around, and the client gets the feeling that they are being interviewed.
- And much more.
Many candidates, especially from the IT industry, may say that these are just minor things, and the main thing is to show how smart they are and how well they can code!
In general, clients want to see in a candidate someone who will come in to work on the necessary part of the project, and complete the assigned tasks so that the client can focus on other important aspects of the project. Hiring a new employee is always a risk for the client (time loss in training, salary payments, time loss in product development). All these mistakes during the interview add up in evaluating the candidate and result in a high % risk, leading to rejection. And it could have been the project you wanted to be a part of!
In turn, we can prepare you or your engineers for interviews, which is why we have added a service to our offerings for Candidate Interview Preparation. This is important for both the candidate and the company that wants to showcase its engineers to clients.