Treasure Map to Success in An International Job Interview

Are you interested in two key insights about nailing an international job interview? That’s exactly what we have for you today! Anurag Srivastava presented a fun and resource-packed masterclass on how to succeed in job interviews with international companies. Anurag is an interview advisor and instructor with our Premium Academy and here are some of the highlights from his masterclass.

Being a data scientist, Anurag says he likes making decisions based on facts. So he starts his masterclass by telling participants that all the knowledge he has to share comes from research and experience. Once a candidate himself, Anurag moved from India to Canada in search of a job. The instructor says some of the mistakes he talks about are ones he made himself. “That’s why I am extra motivated today. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I made”. 

Be a holistic employee

First, an exercise. Let’s say you are the owner of a company looking for a skilled tech worker in the post-pandemic world. What candidates would you be interested in?

Anurag explains that being a good candidate who’s able to perform the task at hand may not be enough anymore. A holistic employee sees the bigger picture and has a broader understanding of the company and its market. “The biggest shift in international jobs nowadays is that companies have stopped working in silos. Everything is streamlined together so companies need holistic employees. You need to think about products, consumers, and processes. You have to be like a CEO”. 

Hiring process overview

Finding the best holistic candidate takes time. International hiring processes can go on for some months. During his masterclass, Anurag went over the steps of being hired abroad. It usually looks like this: 

• Screening call
• HR interview – behavioral assessment 
• Technical interview / assessment
• Final round

Most popular technical international job interview questions

Some questions are very common in international job interviews. Take a look at them and check how many you have you heard before:

• Explain one of your past projects
• What is the tech stack you are most comfortable with – this is something you will hear in the first call and also again in the technical interview
• As a full-stack developer where do you see yourself being more comfortable in the different tiers? 
• What Apple framework is necessary to store private health information securely?
• How would you assess the security and privacy of cloud providers?
• What is the biggest challenge with a specific tech stack that they are using?
• How would you choose a tech stack of a product?
• Write a rails model structure for user, blog, and comments
• Write a plain SQL query with multiple joins and group by
• What happens when you hide/override a method?
• Likely causes of intermittent timeouts in API responses

If you are familiar with any of the scenarios above, Anurag, bets that you already started answering the questions. Did you? He says that seems ok, but isn’t. The reason why you shouldn’t do that relates to the first myth about technical interviews. 

https://blog.vanhack.com/blog/why-is-premium-academy-a-great-option-for-tech-talent/

Technical interviews wrong practices and myths 

🙅‍♀️ Myth: Behavioral interviews and technical interviews are separate and don’t overlap.

In some countries, candidates don’t even go through an HR or behavioral screen so it’s common to think they don’t matter. But they do! Anurag is emphatic about this. “The behavioral interview is the most important part. If the HR person doesn’t like you they are not going to forward you to the next round”. 

This is not to say the technical interview isn’t crucial, of course. But Anurag put it very well, “here [the international market] they see you as a human being”. What this means is that the candidate’s attitude, posture, and words will be assessed throughout the entire hiring process. It is not just about giving the “correct answer”, it is also about how you present yourself.

🙅‍♂️ Myth: Telling the interviewer you are being interviewed somewhere else too is bad 

That is a very common question in interviews. The candidates will be asked about going through other hiring processes. It is ok to say you are.

🙅‍♀️ Myth: Interviewers are judges and not matchmakers

HR people want to find the best candidate for the positions. They are not there to judge you. Their job is to match tech talents with the opportunities they have. And that means finding the best fit in terms of skills, goals, and personality.

🙅‍♂️ Myth: You cannot ask questions about work / compensation / work culture

“That’s wrong. They actually encourage you to ask questions”, Anurag says. 

https://blog.vanhack.com/blog/how-can-your-behavior-impact-your-recruitment-process-performance/

This is what you should say and they ask “tell me more about yourself”

The most likely first request in every job interview is, “please, tell me more about yourself”. The best way to answer that is to give the interviewer some useful information about you, but also show them who you are as an individual. Anurag breaks down what your answer should look like:

“You are talking to a human being for the first time. Start with something personal. Tell them what kind of person you are. What you like, what you don’t. And then move on to your professional life. And don’t repeat from your resume. Maybe, talk about a project that is relevant to the company. Then finally, in the end, tell them what you are looking for”. 

Two keys to any International Job Interview

Ok, so to get to the meaty part of the masterclass where our instructor talks about his key two pieces of advice, he wants you to answer this common interview question:

Tell me about a fascinating project you have worked on and why you are proud of it. 

Most people would give a detailed technical explanation about the project itself. Anurag says this is the wrong approach. The interviewer is probably not trying to replicate your success, right? They want to know about our role. So tell the recruiter about: your contribution to the project, the challenges you faced, solutions you came up with, resources you used, and so on.

🗒 Take note. The first key to a great international job interview is: understanding the interviewer’s perspective.

In other words, learn why the question was asked. Then, try to formulate an answer that will meet the demand. Anurag explains that the best answers show a win-win situation. So help the interviewer understand how your interests fit the company’s goals.

Now, to get to the second key idea, let’s think about this common question:

Why should I hire you?

Now that we already know what recruiters want to learn, how would you answer this? Our instructor says most of us would probably say things along the lines of “I am a quick learner” or “I communicate well”. That’s not the best answer because everybody else will say the same.  

🗒 Here comes the second key: back everything you say with data.

As much as you can, don’t just claim things, prove them. Try not to use generic words. Link what you are saying with your experience and work projects. Be specific. 

Get prepared for international job interviews and opportunities

Premium Academy is an education program at VanHack in which we offer a live interview practice. Candidates get hands-on experience with the international hiring process. Premium Academy members get prepared for both the HR interview and also the technical interview. We have live classes available three times a day, four days a week. Candidates also get access to profile analyzes and feedback, exclusive content, and a group of amazing people to network with. ✨ Sign up to the Premium Academy now. ✨

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