That's the challenge in all engineering interviews - determining weather they did anything useful or were just on the team. I've had to tell people to stop telling me about "we" and tell me what "you" did. Some people are so caught up in trying to be a team player that they hide their contributions. Others use it to hide their lack of contribution. It's not hard to separate these once you're aware of the issue and start asking the right question "what did you do?"
I personally always talk about what "we" did because it helps me get out of my own way.
I worked at a company for like 6 years, and for almost 4 of them i was the sole engineer tasked with designing a database for the data, creating and deploying/maintaining an API server, and creating a handful of react frontend applications. The last 3 years we expanded into a "team" that I led and scaled it up from there.
I never talk about what "I" did because I'm always afraid it will come across as lying or exaggerating, and at the same time I know that I didn't do all that alone even if I was the sole contributor for the vast majority of it. I had managers that helped carve out time and lay out requirements, I had executives that were willing to let me make multiple mistakes as I found my footing, I had devs focused on other areas at the company that I could bounce ideas off of and learn new skills from. And to be honest there were some months that I was SO productive that I genuinely don't think I could ever do it again, and I don't know exactly why it happened.
I'm currently looking for a senior/lead job, and writing about what "I" did and what I feel i'm capable of is by far the hardest part of it. I feel like I flip flop between basically saying "I was part of a team that did awesome things" and "I did all this awesome shit all on my own", and in both cases it feels like i'm lying.
Once I'm talking to someone I feel i'm really good at talking through the choices and tradeoffs made, the mistakes I made, the parts of the job I'm good at and the parts I feel I'm not. But I can't seem to write that down well, and I think i'm throwing away chances because of it.
Frankly, what you just wrote is what I want to hear in an interview. That you were first and the team grew around you and if mistakes were made how what would you do differently. To me, the company/team talk eats away at the limited time in the interview and doesn't generally matter since we are not hiring your company but how you helped is very relevant.
I will slightly demerit people if I have to resort to asking what they individually did as opposed to the team and a lot if I still don't get a good feel for it. I realize at large companies it can be hard since you might be the guy that maintains a small section of a website but I prefer upfront honesty to having to sort it out with more questions.
I feel I do great during the interview, it's just getting to that point is where I'm struggling. Writing that out seems to really bring out a part of my brain that makes it always feel braggy. (I really think it's the fact that during a conversation I have realtime feedback on what the interviewer wants and what parts I should focus on)
I'm "full time" looking for a job at the moment, and it's rough with how much of "nothing" you get back. A lot of no responses, no way to gauge how i'm doing, and even when rejections come in there's no information along with them to help me understand why or how to improve.
I'm trying to learn to write about myself more and feel more confident in writing about what i've done and that I really feel I was an integral part of the success of the things i've been a part of, but without any kind of feedback I'm constantly second (and third!) guessing literally every word.
A recruiter I respect said that the interview process is the most egotistical, selfish thing we do as professionals and it does the process a disservice if you do not follow it as such. Selling yourself to your peers and to those that want to hire you is important for the accuracy and precision of the hiring process if your contributions are not self-evident.
Getting good feedback is definitely one of the hardest parts though and thus makes getting better at interviews tough without good mentorship / network. Heard of a guy that was one of the top n TopCoder engineers and was having trouble landing a solid gig. Turns out he’d just zoom through the whiteboard problems, hardly talk, and interviewers were just weirded out. When he started slowing down and explaining his thoughts better to the panels he finally got the offers he deserved.
> A lot of no responses, no way to gauge how i'm doing, and even when rejections come in there's no information along with them to help me understand why or how to improve
If you don't come out of an interview and know you have an offer coming your way: assume you have no offer coming your way. It's usually very obvious and both parties are trying to say your hired without actually showing your cards. It's kind of a funny dance.
Your problem, where you feel you have no feedback is a problem but it's most likely a problem with you.
You need to be asking for feedback if you're not getting it. Get blatant if you have to.
What do I need to show you to get an offer today? What are you looking for? Your job ad didn't clarify on this this and this, can you spell out exactly what you're looking for in me today?
You're not really responding to my answers, is there something I'm not explaining well enough? Feel free to interrupt and get me to clarify, this point is important to me because it illustrates this skill which I think is important as a developer, do you agree, disagree or don't believe me? Why? What facts do you need me to spell out?
If you think it's on them to figure out how to be good at interviewing, you're right, it is, but that doesn't help you get a job offer today.
I appreciate the advice, and i'm going to try taking this to heart.
It's funny how i've been on the other side of the interview many times, and all the advice I'm hearing here rings true, and I know it is, but I just seem to have this blocker where I'm judging myself too harshly in all the wrong areas.
Regardless, I really do appreciate it, and i'm going to try and be more blatant and firm in this process.
> You need to be asking for feedback if you're not getting it. Get blatant if you have to.
Also consider that at that point it's completely risk-free. If you just leave, you're not hired anyway, so regardless their response, you can only win from there.
One of the other posters here responded to you with:
>> Frankly, what you just wrote is what I want to hear in an interview.
I completely agree. Look back at what you wrote here. The word "I" appears plenty of times in your post and is very appropriate. You're talking about your experience so it makes perfect sense to mention yourself in that. You also mentioned the team and "we" a bit. Good. There is a lot of space between talking about your experience and being an egotistical jerk. Talk about your experience just like your post here and you should be fine.
When I interview I'm primarily looking for 3 things on the technical side:
1) Can this person DO things?
2) Can they learn things?
3) Are the interested in doing and learning the kind things we need done?
In that short post you've demonstrated #1 and #2. You also covered some of the non-technical stuff. If you showed experience or interest in embedded C on micro controllers I'd be telling you to apply here (Detroit area).
>It's not hard to separate these once you're aware of the issue and start asking the right question "what did you do?"
Another useful technique I've developed for interviewing senior folks is to probe them for details about important technical or other decisions that were made related to the things they say they did. I'll then challenge those decisions and make them justify and explain.
