Interview Phrases

How to push back against your interviewer in a helpful way

Example of a candidate pushing back:

Interviewer: “I wouldn’t use a cache here in my opinion” Interviewee: “Sure we can take out the cache, though the reason I think a cache might be useful here is [insert technical reasoning here]. Do you think there might be a better way we can approach this?”

Choose your words carefully#

1. Acknowledge and affirm your interviewer. Start with “sure,” “OK,” or “yes,” so they are open to what you’re saying. This results in them being less likely to push back against your pushback.

The best language to cause your counterpart to let their guard down is “I’m sorry”. If you want to push back, and you don’t want the interviewer to challenge it, start your push back with “Ok. I’m sorry, but if we take out the cache won’t that result in [insert technical reasoning here]…”

2. Remember that you are colleagues on the same team. The best way to demonstrate this is to use collaborative language. This is the easiest way to build empathy and score micro points to get them on your side.

The best language to demonstrate collaboration is “We” or “Let’s.” For example: “We could take out the cache. However, if we did that one drawback would be [insert technical reasoning here]…”

Handwave stuff for the sake of time#

No one can design a real-world system in 40-60 minutes. You can only design partial non-usable systems in that amount of time. As a result, you won’t be able to cover everything in depth.

[!note] Handwaving stuff is a smart time-management choice. It’s also a tactic to avoid getting derailed.

When we say “handwave stuff,” this means that you can say, “I’m going to skip going into [detailed thing] for now, but if we want, we can come back to it later.” If you dive deeply into the details of every single thing, you’ll fall down too many rabbit holes to be productive. But if you notice and address this so your interviewer understands, by saying something like, “Hey, here is a rabbit hole we could go down, but let’s skip it for now,” you’re killing a few birds with one stone. You’re demonstrating your knowledge by calling it out, and simultaneously you’re keeping the interview on track, because in an open-ended situation like this, it’s just as important to know where you’re not going as it is to know where you are going.

Example#

of a smart way to handwave stuff (taken from one of our mock interviews)

Be Proactive#

Be proactive when you know there’s a particularly tricky part coming up, and you know you want to take it on

If you feel some part of the question could/would become problematic, fight the instinct to avoid it and instead pinpoint it right away.

You can say something like this:

“The challenge we would face very soon would be with [multiple workers updating their offsets while grabbing the next task concurrently?]. Let me finish the [API specs / DB schema / etc] part and then begin attacking that challenge. I know that would be a hard part, and might kindly ask you to navigate it if I begin approaching the problem from the wrong end.”