Thoughts after interviewing 90 tech students for StartupRootsSG

So earlier this year, I joined the StartupRootsSG team, and it was an interesting experience interviewing the students, being a student myself. 4 key points I brought away from it, which I believe would be helpful to students applying for jobs.

1. I only want to read the relevant stuff
   Please don’t tell me things like you went skydiving, or is a sergeant in the army. You are applying for a tech position. I’m not interested in how daredevil you are. I’m only interested to know if you can get shit done.
2. Know your technology
   I received and look through applications which listed their top 5 skills as “SQL, mySQL, Oracle SQL, basic PHP, HTML” or something similar.. Having 2 different database systems that pretty much does the same thing, and 1 listing as the name of the language used in both database systems tells me 1 thing. You have nothing to put there. And you’re desperately trying to put stuff in there.
3. Be ready for the interview
   Make sure you’re on time for the interview (applies to both interviewers and interviewees). And when the interviewers ask you to code, code. Don’t make excuses like you need to prepare for the coding interview, and then asking to postpone the interview. (A surprisingly large number of applicants did this)
4. Stop the keywords spam
   There was another application that listed the top 5 skills as “Innovative. Self-starter. Intelligent. Motivated. Hard-working.”. Those are not skills. Those are traits. I want to know what you can do. Spamming keywords will not get you past the BS filter, at least not those of good bosses.

So yup, pretty much that’s it.

/rant

Similar Posts:

• When you(the biz people) are looking for tech cofounders
• What kind of students are we producing?
• Random thoughts on education
• UX panel with StartupRootsSG
• StartupRootsSG event with Darius