My Bad Interview

I recently had an interview with a company that sounded like the perfect opportunity. The phone interview went fine. The call came unexpectedly after running an errand and I actually got back into my car for the interview because it was closer than the door to the house. I was relaxed and answered what was asked without difficulty. Later, I received a call from the Director of IT who said the phone interview went really well and they were looking forward to the next step which was a face-to-face interview. What could go wrong, right?

A few days later, at the face-to-face interview, I first spoke with the director and he said that everything looks promising and was excited to hire me after I spoke with the rest of the dev team. I thought to myself, “I got this job in the bag! What could go wrong?”

Well, the unthinkable happened. Whatever could go wrong in an interview did go wrong. First, I couldn't answer the simple questions that were asked of me. These were things like “Explain the architecture of the last project you worked on.” or “Why did you use that tool over X?” Second, the ones that I managed to answer was nothing more than an incoherent blabber. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Why were these brain farts happening now?

There was a sudden influx of emotions and thoughts that went through my head as I drove home. What the hell happened? How did this job that was presented to me on a silver platter vanish into thin air because I couldn’t present information in a coherent manner? I know that I’m smarter than this. I need to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.

In my reflection of this disaster called an interview, I do recognize some of the flaws in my actions. First of all, I never really thought about some of my daily activities at my last job. I should have kept track of the stuff I did in a detailed fashion. I felt that I contributed a lot to the team, but I never logged any of it. The result was on-the-fly recall of what I did when those questions were asked. Another flaw is that I kept using the word “THINK” which, I feel, gave me the appearance of being unsure of myself.

Finally, the most devastating flaw was that I couldn’t answer some of the questions regarding the technology that I was working with! I worked on it, but not knowing those questions gave the appearance of lying on my resume. This was inexcusable. I need to do something.

So my prevention plan of saving myself from embarrassment commences with this entry. The focus of this blog will serve as a journal for my technical endeavors on a professional level. I will thoroughly research the tech that I am currently involved in. Yes, I may not need any all of the features, but I will know that they exist and what they do. This will also be logged. I will make sure the next time I’m in an interview, this train wreck does not happen again.

This is my promise. This is my journal.