I am an experienced IT professional and my expertise include Cloud, DevOps, Virtualization, and Infrastructure as Code. Over the last 6 years, I had the opportunity to interview with several medium to large companies including Amazon. In my opinion, here are a few important things that employers look for in a candidate:

  • Does this person have the required skills to do the job?
  • Can he communicate clearly and will he get along well with the rest of the team?
  • Will he remain with the company long term and have a career?

Here are a few tips that I came up with from my experiences to have a good interview day:

Sell yourself:

  • I always believe that an interviewee is a salesman. The skills which you have gathered over the years are the products which you should try to sell on the interview day.During your interviews, you must sell yourself by describing your accomplishments. Some people may call this tooting your own horn. Be careful here as you don’t want to go too far and also make it sound realistic. Form a connection. You will get to meet several employees from the company you applied for throughout the interview process. You may only get an hour or so to impress the person you are talking to. This is your time to form a connection with the interviewer during your time with them. There are several ways this can be done and with enough practice you will master this technique. It is your job to make sure that the interviewer won’t lose interest in you so try to ensure that you conversation isn’t boring. Don’t forget that this is still an interview and you don’t want to go off track.

Research the company:

  • Do a little research of the company you wish to work for. Try to get more information on their business and where you fit in if you get hired. Although it may not be asked during your interviews, have a look at the mission and vision statements of the company. In case of Amazon, make sure you go over their leadership principles and have stories for each LP.

Don’t fluff your resume:

  • Some people may fluff their resumes to get interview calls. However, this may turn against you on the interview day. Interviewers may ask whatever they want from your resume and if you have mentioned something which you never worked on in the past and if they ask you questions on that topic, then it will be embarrasing and have an impact on the outcome of the interview. Have a clear picture in your head of the things you know and the things you don’t know.

Never ever say anything negative:

  • Never say anything negative about your past employers or teammates. Be smart enough to avoid such questions and turn them in your favor by saying positive things. Employers want to hear you say negative things about your past employers/team mates. They may also dig deep to see how far you will go. Stay the course and don’t lose focus.

Talk out loud:

  • What I mean by this is it’s always possible that you will be asked questions on the interview day which you are not sure about. It’s fine if you don’t know the answer. Always make sure that you talk out loud what’s going on in your head. Sometimes interviewers are more interested in knowing how you think rather than if you get the correct answer or not. Be confident and explain them how you would go about solving a particular problem.

Communication:

  • This is probably the most important skill that you must have to have a successful interview day experience. Anybody can communicate, but effective communication is something that you can only do with practice. Spend a lot of time sharpening this skill to ensure that you can successfully tackle behavioral questions.

Know the skills required to do the job:

  • Depending upon the role that you have applied for, work on the skills required to do the job. If you answer behavioral questions correctly, but couldn’t answer functional or technical questions, then it’s more likely that you won’t get an offer. Nobody knows everything so it’s okay if you don’t know something. Always learn and be curious. This is again something that you can master with enough practice.

Ask questions:

  • Many good companies will allow candidates to ask questions towards the end of each interview round. Make sure that you make full use of this segment. Ask good questions and don’t just scratch the surface. Go deep and try to understand how your day would look like if you get the job. Internet is your friend in this case. Try to look for some quality questions to ask the interviewers which may impress them.

I hope these tips will help you get offers from many companies. All the best!