Found this via the Lifehack blog.

Bhuvana collected the most common interview questions and listed recommended answers for each. I honestly haven’t heard some of them asked in my own interviews so I’m not sure how common they all are. Be sure to read the comments because there are some really good additions from several HR people and other experienced interviewers there.

I’ve experienced both sides of the fence, being interviewed and interviewing for job positions on my team and, to be honest, I never give the answers much weight since they’re all practically the same anyway. It’s like when you’re trying to get a girl to have sex with you while alone up in her room. You say what you need to say to get the job done. If anything, interviews are setup to allow you to disqualify yourself since you’re not getting one unless your experience and recommendations are relevant enough. But if you botch the answers, you’re cut. When interviewing, I instead look for other things that end up more telling about the person:

• Are they arrogant? Right off the bat, this is a strike in my book. It’s hard to function in a team with someone who will claim to know stuff they don’t, and act like they’re better than everybody else.
• Do they laugh during light moments? Laughter is the easiest rapport builder. People rarely laugh because something’s funny. People laugh to ease tension and build rapport. If they laugh nervously or do not laugh at all, I don’t like them.
• I like bringing up problems they’ve encountered in past jobs. Who do they blame? Do they blame the software platforms? Do they blame the hardware? Do they blame management? Anyone who cannot point to themselves as having a hand in any issue is automatically rejected.

Personally, I wouldn’t use some of the recommended answers. My advice is to take all the questions and come up with your own answers to them. Having personalized, stock answers as opposed to trying to come up with responses on your feet will really help make those interviews much easier for you.

Technorati Tags: Job Interviews, Preparation

1. Humans are learning machines. We’re wired to pick up and learn stuff. If you don’t exercise it consciously, it doesn’t mean you’re not learning new things. It’s more likely you’re learning wrong things like bad habits, laziness, and boredom. Use that learning capability to absorb things that will serve you and add value to your time.

2. It renews passion for living. Getting into something new just gets your blood flowing. Doing something unfamiliar for the first time is always an exciting occassion. It bring plenty of positive emotions that you end up carrying with you throughout the day.

3. It keeps you alert. When you’re unfamiliar with something and you’re trying to learn it, your level of focus is usually very high. When you keep doing the same things, you tend to tune them out and attend to them in a robotic manner. Spend 8 hours a day doing something robotic and guess what will happen to the next 16 hours of your day?

4. You may discover something that enriches your quality of life in an incredible way. The world is filled with people finding their life’s work after an accidental experience. When you involve yourself in new things, you increase chances of having the same experience.

5. You keep your mind sharp. I really believe the human mind is just like any muscle. It gets sharper, stronger, and more functional the more you use it.

6. It makes you more interesting. Having odd, unexpected skills in your arsenal is a fascinating thing to many people, considering that most folks stop educating themselves after school.

7. It’s a better alternative to spend your free time compared to television and other passive entertainment options. Consider how many hours you spend watching tv. Then add the number of hours you surf websites. Then add the number of hours you play videogames. Then add the number of hours you listen to gossip. Then add the hours for any other activity that doesn’t add value to your life. Now take 1/4 of that time and consider what would happen if you use that time to learn something new instead. What value will you gain? How much quality does it add to your experience?

8. It can lead to new income opportunities. Regardless of what you choose to learn, it’s an additional skillset in your repetoire. Whether it relates directly to your professional career or not, there is always a way to make additional income from it. Take your pick: you can teach it, integrate it into your curent work, start a business out of it, or…gasp…even blog about it. Learning something new automatically adds value to your potential income.

When learning new technical skills, I always use two methods that I believe really complement each other. One is predicated in memorizing and familiarizing with the facts you need for the new skill, the other is grounded in tactile learning of the new skill.

For familiarizing with technical details and facts, I use flash cards. I carry about 30 at a time and take 10-minute sessions throughout the day going through each one.

My flash cards consist of:
(1) One question in front
(2) One (and only one) answer at the back
(3) A visual clue in front as well, when I can think of an appropriate one

No multiple choice. No enumerate-type questions. Just a single question with one specific answer.

I go through the cards throughout the 10-minute sessions. When I successfully answer a card at least three times throughout the day, I retire it from the deck and replace it later at night.

Doing this process, I can successfully retire around 10 cards per day and get very familiar with the bookish aspects of the technical skill.

For actually learning the skill, actual experience is important so I always set projects that I could work on that involve the skill. I like to do two or three really small projects, then one average-size one that can take around a week or two. When i first learned PHP, I volunteered to do a PHP-based three-page ordering website for a friend who needed it that took me around two days. I also resolved to write my own Wordpress theme, which took me too long and looke dto sucky anyway. For my longer project, I did a PHP/MySQL photo album creator. None of those projects were commercial quality but they successfully let me learn the basics and some intermediate aspects of the skill.

I recommend the same process for others.

Most people like to do the second part - taking on a project - but what you will find when you do both is that all the familiarizing and memorization do help you think faster when actually applying the skill.

In the above example, having been familiar with several constructs of the language allowed me to focus more time on the actual coding instead of constantly looking for which construct will be more appropriate for which functionality when I encounter the need for them.

It’s actually a lot like school except you get to choose which new things you try and learn instead of having a required subject you are hardly interested in learning.

Technorati Tags: Learning, New Skills, Technical Skills