How To Ace an Interview: Real Advice from a Silicon Valley Professional

Editor’s Note: While we at Flyby love giving you advice, we’ll be the first to admit that we don’t always quite know what we’re talking about when we do. But rest assured, dear readers—here is some advice worth taking notes on. In the hope of helping you to land that dream internship and/or job, we’re proud to present the advice of a real live Silicon Valley Professional, Jeremy L. Lizt ’97. Take it away, Jeremy.

As a Harvard undergrad applying for jobs, I had a substantially different idea of what made for a successful interview than I have now. My primary objective then was to perform the same way I was used to performing on every other test I had taken until that point in my life, namely, get the right answer to every question and demonstrate knowledge and intelligence.

Things look a lot different from the other side of the table. Having hired and managed dozens of software engineers (and having interviewed more than 800) over the past seven years, I have an evolved perspective on what to look for in a candidate. I share a few tips here in hopes they will help you become a better interviewee than I was.

Put Yourself in Her Shoes
You will be a far more effective interviewee the better you can sympathize with the motivations of the person on the other side of the phone or desk. What kinds of challenges does she face? What does she look for in a candidate? You may not be able to answer these in advance of the interview; that’s okay, they are perfectly good questions for you to ask directly.

Perhaps the most fundamental thing I didn’t recognize as an undergrad but that is shockingly obvious to me now is this: as a hiring manager, my primary motivation is not specifically hiring the most talented individuals, but building the most effective team. With that in mind, I think about three key dimensions when evaluating a candidate: capability, communication, and attitude. The last two are far more important to me than I ever would have guessed years ago.

Communicate, Don’t Dazzle
Good communication skills are critical to any team enterprise. An engineer may be sufficiently bright, knowledgeable, and individually capable, but if she is unable to communicate her thoughts, feelings, and ideas in clear and concise language, there will be commensurate cost to the effectiveness of the team.

Communication is about effectively transmitting information and enabling others to understand something new. When a candidate regales me with esoteric jargon, I feel that only two things have been communicated: she knows what she’s talking about, and she’s not a particularly good communicator.

Give 'Em Attitude
I value a positive attitude far, far more than I ever would have imagined when I was an undergrad. Remember, I am hiring to build an effective team. An individual’s attitude can have an outsized effect (in either direction) on the entire team.

“Attitude” can mean a lot of things, so let me suggest a few concrete behaviors you can exhibit in an interview to demonstrate a positive attitude. The first I hope is obvious: show humility, not arrogance, and don’t be afraid to admit when you don’t know something.

Second, work hard. Some candidates give me the distinct sense that they will continue to think about a problem long after the interview is over; this is often more instructive to me than someone’s quickly getting to a correct answer.

Third—and I hope this is obvious as well—do your homework! Read through the company’s website at a minimum; look up your interviewer on LinkedIn (you expect her to review your resumé, right?); and prepare a handful of intelligent questions.

Don’t Worry Too Much
There’s only so much you can do to prepare for an interview. You’re not going to meaningfully improve your technical capabilities or core communication skills in a short period of time.

Try not to beat yourself up over an interview performance, especially because your feelings about how it went may be wildly off-base. Some candidates think they did badly because they didn’t get a particular answer, while some think they did well because they weren’t challenged. In fact, both may be wrong. When I find a promising candidate, I’d like to see how they work through a problem they might not solve; when a candidate is clearly not a fit, it’s not worth doing the exercise.

The job interview is an awfully imperfect process, riddled with both false positives (candidates who get jobs in which they won’t succeed) and even more false negatives.

A job is a relationship, a pretty serious relationship that often lasts years. Know that the real goal of an interview is not simply “getting a job,” but evaluating whether it’s a relationship worthy of investment.

Jeremy L. Lizt '97 is VP of Engineering at LiveRamp, a San Francisco based startup.