How to handle a job interview in an IT company
Survival guide to the world of software development
In this article, we will give you a series of tips on how to best approach the selection process in technology companies, from filling out your CV to preparing for the technical interview. We will also give you some tips on how to choose your ideal type of company and how to give a professional image of yourself during the interview; we will also look at the most common mistakes made by candidates and provide you with some information on the world of software development companies.
- How to get to the interview (aka write the CV)
- How to prepare for the interview
- How to choose the right companies
- How to prepare for the technical interview
How to get to the interview
The CV
Let’s start with a premise: the perfect CV does not exist, just as there isn’t a standard resume to use for responding to any job offer.
The most important thing is to personalize your resume, as it is your business card to the company, even before you have the chance to speak with them.
So the first piece of advice is not to use the Europass format—not because it is wrong, but because your resume should be personal and express who you are. If you lack creativity, you can take inspiration from Canva templates or similar platforms.
The second piece of advice is to avoid ‘copycat’ resumes. Within the scope of the skills you have genuinely acquired, try to tailor your resume based on the skills requested in the job ad you are applying for.
Last piece of advice: be concise, it’s important to get straight to the point. One well-formatted, clear, and honest page is more effective than a lengthy resume. Keep in mind that recruiters receive many applications daily, so it’s important, especially for your benefit, to make it easy for them to read the key information you want to highlight.
Since we’re talking about IT companies, remember that they’ll likely prefer to spend more time looking at your GitHub than your resume! 🙂
The Photo
Including a photo on your resume is not mandatory, but if you decide to do so, avoid inappropriate photos. So, no photos in swimwear, selfies, or group photos with a friend’s arm around your neck! 🙂 Instead, opt for front-facing photos, taken from the waist up, with a neutral background.
As mentioned, the photo is not mandatory, but adding one could be important because it allows the person reading your document to associate that information with your face.
Tell us who you are
Write something about yourself
Start with a brief description of yourself: just a few lines – a paragraph is enough – to give the person reading your resume an overview of who you are, the skills you have, and what you are looking for. This gives the recruiter a summary of what they will read in more detail later on.
Above all, always clearly state your personal information, including your full name. It may seem trivial, but it’s not!
Make yourself easy to find
Include your contact information
Always remember to include your contact details so you can be reached: both your email address and phone number. Make sure to place them at the top or immediate visibility. Making it easier for someone to read your resume always works in your favor!
Additionally, always use professional email addresses.
Be present online
Are you in doubt whether to create a LinkedIn profile? Yes, do it, and do it well: manage it, keep up with it, and maintain it updated. Your online presence is important: create accounts on professional platforms where you can be discovered and contacted by companies or consultancy firms (such as LinkedIn or Stack Overflow), join communities or sector channels, and try to cultivate, in general, a sector network that will be very useful for you in the future. Remember that networking is the primary channel for job searching today.
Highlight your work or educational experiences
With all that done, let’s move on to the central part of the resume: your professional experiences, which might be the most important part of your resume because they speak to what you have done and what you are currently doing. It’s important to highlight them without being too verbose.
List your professional experiences starting from the most recent and working backward, including the duration of each position (at least the year), the name of the company you work for/have worked for, and a few words describing the industry it operates in.
Then, describe the main activities you performed in each role, the technologies you used, and the projects you worked on.
But what if you haven’t worked yet or haven’t worked in the IT field? Don’t panic!
If you don’t have significant professional experience, you can certainly highlight your educational background by listing it first. The same rules apply as before, so include the dates and the school/university/course you attended, from the most recent to the least recent. Include links to your GitHub with your projects (whether personal, for fun, or for academic purposes—show what you can do and how you are investing in your education) and emphasize the technical and soft skills you acquired during your studies or personal life experiences (sports, scouts, etc.). The advice is to talk about all your cross-disciplinary skills, such as the languages you know, the certifications you have obtained, and, why not, your hobbies. Don’t lie! Write precisely and honestly about what you truly know and the skills you have acquired.
A note on soft skills: they are often taken for granted and seen as an added bonus. We encourage you to take a moment to identify the soft skills that truly represent you because this will help you during a potential interview, when these skills will be explored in depth, and also to understand whether a work environment may be truly suitable for you.
Finally, review what you’ve written several times, paying attention to grammatical errors and typos, and don’t forget to include your consent for the processing of your personal data!
Now, let’s move on to the next phase, the actual interview.
The Interview
Respond to recruiters
Before the interview, you will have surely interacted with someone who contacted you. Our first piece of advice is: respond to recruiters—it shows kindness and good manners.
Additionally, it helps you build a positive network that, as mentioned earlier, could be useful to you in the future. Taking a little time to send a quick reply can foster a virtuous cycle. Of course, this approach should also apply to recruiters: receiving a response after submitting a resume and not being ignored is always appreciated.
Once this is done, hopefully, you’ve reached the interview stage, and a common concern we often hear is: is it better to be formal or informal?
The advice is: adapt to the person you are speaking with. You can try to gauge from the job ad whether the tone is particularly formal or not.
Prepare some examples
The interview begins, guided by the recruiter’s questions, who should actually speak very little. You will need to be the one to talk and make yourself known. Therefore, prepare practical examples of what you will talk about.
For instance, if you write on your resume that you have strong problem-solving skills, tell your experience and prepare a real example. What was the problem? What happened in that specific instance? How did you act? What might you have done differently?
In any case, it’s important that you go to the interview prepared and without lying!
Prepare questions about the company
Finally, ask questions yourself—be curious! This will undoubtedly demonstrate your interest in the company and provide an opportunity to determine whether that environment might be a good fit for you.
Some questions to ask
- What are the main challenges of this position?
- Does the company have a training and development program?
- How has the company changed over the last few years?
- Where does the company envision itself in 5 years?
- When do you expect to provide me with feedback on the interview?
… and some to avoid asking
- I don’t know anything about you—what does the company do?
- I don’t have any questions.
- How did I do? (Don’t be impatient!)
- In any case, and we’ll always remind you, be yourself!
What awaits you in the industry
Technologies
Now, let’s see what awaits you in the IT sector, i.e. what companies you can find around, what the working methods are, etc.
First of all, though, let’s talk about technologies. Because, especially at the beginning of your career, you may not have a clear idea or specific preferences, and you might think of trying to jump on the ‘trending technologies’ because you think you’ll definitely find work that way.
Here, we’ll give you a non-exhaustive overview:
C and C++
The world of C/C++ is far from being outdated, and these technologies are widely used today in desktop applications, networking, embedded devices, and firmware.
C and C++ are everywhere.
Java
Java was the king of the past, and its reign extended beyond the horizon, from web to enterprise applications, and it is still somewhat that way. However, it has gone a bit out of fashion and is now harder to find in startups.
Web
The web world is the future that has become the present. Whether you’re talking about frontend technologies (ReactJS, AngularJS, VueJS…) or backend (PHP, NodeJS, Go, Python…) or aiming for full stack, it continues to be the next big thing.
Mobile
Smartphones? Tablets?
More than a technology, they constitute an increasingly important platform for user applications, whether Android or iOS.
As you can see, there are many areas to choose from, and there isn’t one technology that is better than another. What you should ask yourself is not ‘Which technology is the most popular?’ but ‘What am I most passionate about?’
Only then can you make a choice that will bring you satisfaction in the future.
Companies
How do you choose the company that suits you best?
There are many aspects to evaluate, but you should definitely consider the type of company, the company culture, team culture, and work pace.
Type of company
Roughly speaking, we can classify companies for programmers into three main categories:
- Those with in-house development teams: these are product companies that create physical products or SaaS (software as a service), and you work within the company’s teams. Typically, the focus is on the tech stack the company is built on, observing how the product evolves over time and how it is maintained. The disadvantage is that the tech stack is fixed, and it’s difficult to change projects.
- The second category consists of custom software development companies. These are generally consulting firms with clients who lack an in-house development department, and they handle many different projects. For example, at Develer, which is primarily a consulting firm, there are usually between three and seven active projects at a time, involving various teams. The advantage of working in such a company is that you’ll encounter many different projects in your work life. The downside is that you lose touch with what you’ve done: after developing the product, you hand it off to the client for maintenance and, therefore, can’t see the effects of the technological choices you’ve made, losing the opportunity to gain long-term experience.
- Lastly, you have the option to work as a freelance consultant. So you either have your own business and clients or you can collaborate as an external consultant with a company. Pay close attention to taxation and consult an accountant: in general, the invoice you issue is not comparable to the net salary you would receive as an employee.
Company Culture
First of all, you need to understand your own preferences and what kind of environment suits you best.
Do you need someone to tell you what to do, step by step? Do you need to know your role and responsibilities in detail?
You may feel more comfortable in a company with a well-structured, vertical internal hierarchy and an ID badge always within reach.
On the other hand, do you prefer an informal environment where proactivity and personal initiative are more important than hierarchy?
Do you need freedom and the ability to express your creativity more flexibly?
You may be looking for a less stratified, horizontal company with a garden barbecue.
Team Culture
Let’s quickly look at the main roles you’ll find in a work team:
- Project Manager: the person who communicates with the client, assigns tasks, and sets deadlines.
- Team Lead/Architect: broadly speaking, a senior figure who guides the team in achieving goals.
- Developer: develops the software (this will probably be your role initially).
- UX Designer: studies the usability of the product and helps the client refine the product’s specifications through specialized techniques.
When it comes to team culture, there is a wide spectrum.
It ranges from what we might call the ‘classical organization,’ with a Project Manager who assigns tasks and sets deadlines, a Team Lead/Architect who guides the team and designs the overarching software architecture, and a development team.
On the other side of the spectrum, there are organizations that use ‘agile methodologies’: self-managed development teams with a Product Owner who only identifies development priorities so that each release generates the most value for the product, while work estimates are made by the team itself, which self-organizes. There are no top-down imposed deadlines.
Work Pace
Speaking of deadlines, let’s also talk about work pace.
In some environments, lighter periods alternate with times of high stress, featuring long workdays and heavy workloads. If you are in such a work environment, make sure this discomfort is compensated once goals are achieved.
In other environments, the focus is on maintaining a steady work pace over time, which is sustainable indefinitely. Sustainable productivity is considered more important and successful in the long term (for both economic and human reasons).
This concludes the overview of companies.
And finally…
Let’s wrap up with some tips that can be helpful to you.
We don’t have a magic wand, but some basic rules always apply.
In particular, for remote interviews:
- Make sure you have a good internet connection and enough bandwidth to send video and share your screen.
- Have a webcam, even if it’s low resolution, and remember to turn it on—seeing a person makes a difference.
- Use high-quality headphones and a microphone (preferably with a headband), as it may not make a difference for you, but it does for the interviewer!
- Test screen sharing before the interview and turn off all notifications and chats that might disturb you or cause embarrassment.
- Always have paper and pen, as well as water, nearby.
In general, for any type of interview:
- Research the technologies or languages that will be covered.
- Prepare a computer with everything you need for that technology, with all the tools you are used to using, such as the editor and development environment. You need to feel comfortable, and the interviewer needs to understand how you work. The final question they ask at the end is: ‘Would I want this person as a colleague on my team?’
- Review the technology or language using resources like Advent of Code, LeetCode, or HackerRank to refresh your knowledge of the standard library, procedures, tests, etc.
And finally, even if you have little or no experience, apply! The interview for junior profiles heavily assesses potential—it doesn’t matter if you are not familiar with the technology. Languages can be learned, but at Develer we evaluate your potential as a developer: whether you have a programmer’s mindset, if you understand programming logic, and if you know what is required of a programmer.
For us, within the limits of junior profiles, technology takes a backseat. If you pass all the interviews because we believe you have passion and ability, we can then initiate internal training paths alongside tutors to grow together.
Your enthusiasm will be your most valuable resource!
PS: And if you want to put our advice into practice, apply! 👉 develer.com/lavora-con-noi