5 simple tips for senior IT professionals to crack an interview

Interviewing can be stressful affair even for veteran employees, who may feel unhabituated while facing interviews for senior roles in IT companies.

At times experienced manpower might not be up to date with the advanced interview protocols, but by following these five guidelines may help the professionals:

• Know the company and interviewer: The main motive is to move the interaction into a discussion so that a rapport with the company representative is built. Social media platforms make it easy as one can check out employee feedback about the company policies and management as well as interviewer’s background respectively.
• Preparation as per job description: Attentively reviewing the JD is a must. A focused groundwork on things which are exactly required can guide the professional to nail the session. Sharing work / project execution example against JD characteristics can give a professional an opportunity to talk about how he/she has executed projects, also can add an example of an important accomplishment and necessary skillset.
• Executive presence during interview: This term means ability to highlight decisiveness under pressure, also how assertively and compactly the professional can communicate to the company representative. Generally, an experienced executive usually tends to speak a lot but at times less is more.
• Self-projection: It is irrespective to say experienced manpower who has been committed to one role or organisation for a while decides to move to next position. Many interviewees don’t think about where they are headed and thus markets themselves with their current title and role versus branding themselves for the next move. Rather the interviewee reflects the new role vs the current role.
• Asking relevant questions: It’s crucial for interviewee to ask strategic questions during interviews. Interviewer’s answers will lead to the exact need of the company from experienced professional and the latter’s responses would give former confidence on the candidate.

Too many job seekers think of cracking the interview session at first go is positive, which usually doesn’t happen in reality. But applying of these simple interview skills may help any senior professionals nail any interview in IT profession.

Do’s:

• Make your interaction experience real
• Articulate your storytelling
• Use the ‘Achiever’ methodology
• HR means people
• Brush up your domain knowledge
• Learn all the latest technological updates related to your software
• Post interview ask for feedback

Dont’s:

• Get defensive
• Claim that you’re a ‘perfectionist’
• Dwell on reasons for leaving
• Salary negotiations at the beginning

Along with this, another important aspect needs to be kept in mind and that is strategic one pager resume writing. The key to good resume is not in framing it but in doing research one does before that. Aligning one’s own experience and most relevant strengths with the job descriptions and required expectations from employees is a major take away.

Senior IT professional’s resume must clearly elaborate the projects they have executed so far with the applied skill sets, available technology with domain expertise under shortest time frame. All the relative experiences gathered over the years must be put in bullet forms. It is appreciated if the senior professional supports his/her achievements with numbers or figures.

Additional career tips which may help candidates for interviews:

• Using of pertinent keywords from shared job descriptions and shared requirement can help a professional to get noticed. This can be useful in automatic algorithms or a manual keyword search
• A crisp summary about achievements related to education and career, experiences related to challenging projects and out of the box idea implementation can also help a professional to get an extra leverage during interview sessions.

While articulating about achievements, introduction must be attractive and act like your pitch statement followed by a list of bulleted skills as well as strengths and weaknesses. This will make sure that the recruiters get the general idea of the candidature within the first 10–20 seconds and goes through the professional’s whole resume.